Return Of The Ape Man 1944 Screenplay by an uncredited Robert Charles, directed by Philip Rosen. Philip directed over 140 films in his long career, 1915 to 1951, and I've seen several from the 30s and the 40s. I thought I had seen this film but my Watched Movie list says no. It's one of nine pictures Bela Lugosi made for Monogram between 1941 and 1944. They were all pretty low budget.
Bela Lugosi and John Carradine are professors, they find a frozen caveman on an Arctic expedition and bring it home. Bela has developed a way to re-animate the dead, trouble is, you need some fresh brains to make it work. John doesn't go along with the idea of killing a peasant to bring the caveman back to life. Bela resents the thorn in his big science paw and kills John instead. The operation as a success and the caveman gets locked up in Bela's basement lab.
Bits of John inside the caveman brings out John's personality and he's not to happy to have been murdered for science. George Zucco plays the caveman at the start of the film and Frank Moran plays the caveman for the rest of the film. Producers said Zucco got sick. No matter. The caveman escapes and kills people and the control Bela expected to be able to assert over the caveman doesn't pan out as he hoped.
It's a dead average mad scientist picture and there's nothing too exciting about it other than decent performances from Bela and John. There's a bit of excitement when the caveman starts roaming around but there's much more yakkin' than action. It's got nothing to do with Lugosi's The Ape Man. You can check them both out on YouTube at the links provided.
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