Return of the Ape Man (1944), dir. Philip Rosen, Banner Productions
By this point, Caradine's career hadn't quite hit the skids yet, but he was doing more B movies than A, usually alternating between westerns or horror. We've covered quite a few of his Universal work during this period but we'll finish our look back with his Poverty Row flicks.
Professors Dexter (Bela Lugosi) and Gillmore (Carradine) are partners. They've had some success, namely freezing a tramp in ice and thawing him out four months later. You would think this would be bigger news, but I guess 40's audiences were more jaded.
But the freezing tramp experiment was only the first step. The next step would be finding a caveman and thawing him out. Not seeing how that would be the next logical step, but what do I know?
After some searching, they manage to find a body frozen in the Artic. The ape man (George Zucco, later Frank Moran) is revived but he proves to be violently uncontrollable. He manages to escape their lab and murder a cop (George Eldredge). This puts a damper on the boys' enthusiasm for their work.
Dexter has a solution though. Why not pop the Ape Man's brain out and give him a new one? And he has the perfect brain in mind. Gilmore's niece Anne (Judith Gibson) clearly isn't using her brain for anything, why not use hers?
Gilmore, for some reason, has a problem with that. Dexter then figures that Gilmore's brain would be a better fit...
Lugosi and Carradine make a fine paring, even if Dexter is a purely by the numbers mad scientist. Carradine still has the passion and makes his screen time count.
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