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The Jungle Captive More at IMDbPro »

8 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
OK 3rd in overlooked Universal horror series, 10 September 2004
Author: FieCrier from Upstate New York

As in the first movie in this series, Captive Wild Woman, we're introduced to an apparently kind man who is apparently pursuing beneficial medical research. As in that movie, we just as quickly find out he is a mad genius, with little regard for human life.

The movie quickly picks up where the second on the series left off, where Paula, the Ape Woman was in a morgue. Mr. Stendahl (the end credits in the copy I viewed named him Dr. Stendahl, but he is usually called Mister) has developed a process for bringing back life to the dead through blood transfusions and electricity. Supposedly, he wants to bring back life to Paula because she's a step up from the rabbits he had been using, but avoids the ethical problems of using a human subject. Since he doesn't care, however, if people die (his servant Moloch kills a man while stealing Paula), it's unclear why he doesn't simply revive a dead human body, or kill a human, and then revive them.

After he brings Paula back to life, she is still in her ape-woman form. Unlike in the second film Jungle Woman, where she could change back and forth between ape-woman and woman, in this film (as in the 1st) she requires human blood and hormones to appear as a woman. To become more human, she would require a transplanted cerebrum from a human, again as in the first. In order to learn how to turn Paula into a human, Stendahl had to have Moloch steal the files of Dr. Walters (from the 1st film) from the office of Dr. Fletcher (from the 2nd film). Apart from these references to the earlier films, no one from those films returns to this one; the only recurring character is Paula herself, and she is played by a different actress. There does not seem to be any footage used from the previous films, except perhaps a short close-up of Paula's hand transforming while she is strapped to a table. There was a shot like that in the first film, but they may have just re-created it.

Stendahl's reasoning for wanting to turn Paula into a human after reviving her is just as questionable as his reasoning for wanting to revive her. He thinks turning her into a woman would prove he could bring a human back to life. It would seem to me that it would only prove he could turn an ape-woman into a human, or at any rate, something like a human.

People seem divided as to whether the second or third film is the worst of the three, and I'm not sure myself. They're all decent, at least, but there is no question the first was the best of them.

5 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Brings back fun memories..., 7 July 2006

Author: babeth_jr from United States

This little seen Universal horror movie from 1945 brings back fun memories for me as I remember watching this with my sister Tammy and my cousin Shalaine on the local Friday night creature feature on TV. Even as a teenager I can remember thinking that this movie was more funny than actually scary.

The basic plot revolves around Mr. Stendall, a mad scientist who is trying to revive the dead ape woman, Paula Dupree, from the previous two Universal movies Captive Wild Woman and Jungle Woman. Rondo Hatton plays the menacing servant of Stendall, Moloch, who kills several people in order to help Stendall achieve his goal of bringing the ape woman back to life. Armelita Ward portrays Mr. Stendall's pretty assistant, whom he kidnaps in a bid to use her blood to make the ape woman into a real woman. Vicki Lane is Paula, the ape woman, when she is actually a woman (are you following all this?). Lane is pretty, but has no lines and basically just wanders around looking like a zombie. The scenes when she is actually an ape woman are hilarious, she is grunting and snorting...it's a hoot.

This movie is a lot of fun for people who enjoy the old Universal monster movies. Although this is definitely not frightening, it's fun to watch on a rainy Saturday night.

3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Effective mad scientist thriller with the Ape Woman at large again, 7 April 2009

Author: mlraymond from Durham NC

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This final installment in the short-lived Universal series about Paula Dupree, the Ape Woman, has some fairly creepy moments, and a good monster. Unfortunately, the Ape Woman doesn't have much to do here, unlike her two earlier appearances. She spends most of her time in the secluded laboratory of Stendhal, the mad doctor who hopes to achieve some kind of scientific goal by reviving the deceased creature.

Rondo Hatton turns in his most multi-faceted performance as Moloch, the assistant to Stendhal. Unlike most of his other movie roles, where he just stalks around and kills people, here he acts friendly toward the beleaguered heroine, even smiles and makes a joke at one point, and is about as normal and likable as he would ever be shown in his Forties horror pictures. He becomes a sort of human King Kong, whose sympathy for the captive girl finally causes him to turn on his master to save her from further cruel experiments. It shows possibilities unhinted at in his other roles and is quite unexpected.

Jerome Cowan is good as a breezy police detective investigating the various murders and disappearances, but Otto Kruger is so menacing as the crazy scientist that he all but steals the picture. His low key portrayal of the cold blooded experimenter is actually quite unnerving in its realism. He refuses to play the part in an eye-rolling, hammy clichéd way, and is thus frighteningly believable.

Not a great movie by any means, but worth seeing for fans of low budget Forties horror movies.

4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Flogging a dead horse!, 9 March 2002
Author: jim riecken (youroldpaljim)

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** JUNGLE CAPTIVE is the third installment of Universals "Paula the Ape Women" series. In terms of over all entertainment quality, JUNGLE CAPTIVE falls somewhere in between the three, with CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN at a high and JUNGLE WOMEN at a low. Although this film is slightly better the previous JUNGLE WOMAN, the gulf in quality is not that wide between the two.

Otto Kruger plays Mr. Stendahl, a brilliant doctor (although no one in the film ever calls him doctor) and medical researcher. Stendahl has been researching ways to bring the dead back to life, and has succeeded with animals. However, Stendahl feels the only way to really convince the medical community is to prove his technique can be used on humans. So Stendahl sends his ugly henchman Moloch to steal the body of Paula Dupree the ape women, from the morgue. In the process, his henchman kills a morgue attendant and steals a hearse. Stendahl then lures his nurse out to his secret country house and laboratory out in the boondocks somewhere, in order to use her blood in his experiments to bring life to the dead ape women. The ape is revived and turns back from a hideous creature into a beautiful women again. However, Paula"s brain is damaged and decides she needs a new one. So Stendal sends Moloch to the home of Doctor Fletcher (from the series previous film JUNGLE WOMEN) to steal his records and those of DR. Walters (whose records Fletcher had in his files) the scientist who created Paula.In order to learn how to transplant a brain. Fletcher is killed by Moloch off screen. Stendahl decides to use the brain of his captive nurse.

Now shall we begin? I have gone this much into the plot because this film has such a bizarre far fetched plot. Stendahl is obviously a scientific genius, but when comes to real world smarts, he is really a few cards short of a full deck. In order to prove his life restoring technique to the scientific community, why does Stendahl use the body of a hideous mutation? Why not say, the body of some recently deceased father of five whose widow and children would happy to have their father back. Presenting the revived ape women to the public would implement him in the murder of the morgue attendant and Dr. Fletcher. Then their is actual theft of the body and the hearse. Not to mention removing the brain of his nurse and placing it in the body of the ape women he could be charged with a whole host of charges on that alone.

In most of the film, the ape women spends most of her time on the lab table. The ape women this time around is played by Vicki Lane, but there is little here for her to do but lie on a lab table. When she is transformed into a beautiful women, she does little more than roam around zombie like. Vicki Lane is pretty, but she does not have the raw animal sensuality of Acqanetta from the previous films. Also, Paula's hypnotic control over animals is ignored here. When Paula escapes from Stendahl"s house, she trapped by Stendahl's dogs. Otto Kruger isn't bad as the evil Stendahl, he gives a very good low key performance. However, he has to recite so many clunker lines that his efforts are hampered. Rondo Hatton is Moloch. This was his second time in a Universal horror film. He was quite effectively used in his horror star debut, the Sherlock Holmes thriller, PEARL OF DEATH. However, in PEARL he was mute, here Hatton has lines. This time around he is more funny than scary. Hatton from here on was not an actor, but a human prop.

Universal should have left Paula Dupree the ape dead for good in the first film. The ape women was only good for one film, and JUNGLE CAPTIVE confirms this.

2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
The Jungle Captive (1945) **1/2, 20 October 2009

Author: JoeKarlosi from U.S.A.

Pretty good and under-appreciated finale to Universal's "Ape Woman Trilogy". Otto Kruger plays an older and grandfatherly doctor who appears kind and respectable but has sinister plans up his sleeve to revive Paula the Ape Woman and transform her into Vicky Lane (since Acquanetta left the series). His perfect assistant is none other than Rondo Hatton, the actor who in real life suffered from the disease Acromegaly, which enlarged his face and hands. Rondo was never an actor, but he's better here than in any of his other films, with a generous helping of dialogue and emotions on display. We also get a little more time with the actual Ape Woman than usual and this is a short 60 minutes of typical mad doctor/assistant/monster nonsense that's fun, if not anything exceptional. A favorite line is when the doc looks at the deformed Rondo Hatton who's admiring the human female patient on the table and says to him: "No offense, but with that face you're not exactly a Casanova, you know". And then, pointing at the beastly Ape Woman on the next table: "This is more in your line". I wonder how Otto Kruger felt delivering an insult like that to the unfortunate Rondo?

THE JUNGLE CAPTIVE (Harold Young, 1945) **, 5 October 2011

Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

Third and last entry in the series, deemed the worst (rated BOMB in the "Leonard Maltin Film Guide") but actually slightly superior to its predecessor due, for one thing, to its having a proper plot line (rather than a rehashed one) and the fact that the mad scientist (even if he is stubbornly referred to as "Mr." Stendhal throughout!) this time around is just that. Indeed, here too, the mainstay (apart, that is, from the standard 'house style' for this type of fare) is Otto Kruger's central performance (the Ape Woman herself, now played by Vicki Lane instead of Acquanetta and reverting once more to being a mute, is certainly not the protagonist in this case!).

Kruger is involved in the revivification of small animals but is keen to progress on to larger ones – with his ultimate goal, of course, being Man himself; since the title creature (a convenient and somewhat lazy amalgam of the earlier 'episodes' in the franchise) is a hybrid, he knows he will be almost there if he manages to resuscitate her. The problem is that, once she has assumed human form yet again (having made imposing henchman Rondo Hatton steal the necessary files from the home of the doctor played by J. Carroll Naish in JUNGLE WOMAN {1944}, the process having actually been laid down by John Carradine in CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN {1943} – neither of these actors, however, put in 'unofficial' appearance and, thankfully, we are also spared the circus stock footage that made-up a sizable amount of the earlier films' running-time), it is discovered that she has suffered brain damage and he plans to replace it with that of his own female aide. Why the doctor, certainly among the coldest of his ilk, does not simply abduct another girl, when he would invariably have benefited from the heroine's presence by his side rather than as a laboratory subject, is anybody's guess…but, then, the latter is vehemently against her superior's intention to play God so, in this way, he would be removing the threat to his Great Experiment, were it not for the fact that, through Hatton's sloppiness, the Police – in the guise of a bemused Jerome Cowan – are already on his trail, and so is the girl's fiancé, yet another assistant!

The busy finale has hero and heroine taking advantage of the Ape Woman's disappearance to escape Kruger and Hatton's clutches, only for the three to be recaptured after a short while in one fell swoop. Needless to say, however, the villain is not allowed to go through with the operation as Hatton, enamored of the leading lady (which Kruger puts down by referring to his "hardly Casanova" looks, the actor having been stricken with the deforming affliction acromegaly, and to add salt to the wound suggests that the Jungle Captive is "more in your line"!), turns on Stendhal at the instigation of the girl's boyfriend. The doctor shoots his thug dead, Lane metamorphoses into monster and cuts free of her straps and, just as she is about to incongruously attack her 'donor', Cowan appears on the premises to intervene. For the record, director Young, who had the classic swashbuckler THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1934), an Alexander Korda production, on his resume' was now reduced, for whatever reason, to helming the lowliest of Universal Horrors – though, to be fair, he sure made an entertaining job of it!

1 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Trilogy, 11 March 2008
Author: Michael_Elliott from Louisville, KY

Jungle Captive (1944)

* (out of 4)

Third and final film in Universal's "Paula, the Ape Woman" series. Another stupid scientist (Otto Kruger) steals the body of Paula (now played by Vicky Lane), brings her back to life only to learn that she's a killer. Slow, boring and just downright stupid film is slightly better than the previous one but that's like saying it's better to get shot ten times instead of eleven. With these three Paula movies and She Wolf of London it's rather obvious Universal did better by turning men into monsters.

Jungle Woman (1944)

* (out of 4)

Sloppy sequel to Wild Captive Woman opens up with twenty minutes worth of footage from the previous film!!!! Another doctor (J. Carrol Naish) tries experiments on Paula (Acquanetta), which turns her into a half ape/half woman. This is an incredibly bad film hampered big time by all the stock footage from the previous film, which also contains footage from another movie so we've basically got three movies going on here. The performances by all are pretty bad and once again Acquanetta is as dull as who knows what. Lazy on all accounts, although things pick up towards the end.

Captive Wild Woman (1943)

** (out of 4)

Lifeless Universal horror film has an animal trainer bring back a large ape from Africa only to have a mad scientist (John Carradine kidnap it. The scientist then turns the ape into a beautiful woman (Acquanetta) who gest jealous of the trainer's girlfriend (Evelyn Ankers) and soon turns into a part ape/part woman creature. This was a very slow going film and it doesn't help matters that half the footage is recycled from 1933's The Big Show. Carradine is pretty dull in his role and the monster isn't interesting. Even at 61-minutes this thing seems long.

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