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JUNGLE WOMAN
Rating: 
USA. 1944.
Director – Reginald LeBorg, Screenplay – Edward Dein, Bernard Schubert & Henry Sucher, Story – Sucher, Photography (b&w) – Jack MacKenzie, Music Supervisor – Paul Sawtell, Art Direction – John B. Goodman & Abraham Grossman. Production Company – Universal.
Cast:
Acquanetta (Paula), J. Carrol Naish (Dr Fletcher), Richard Davis (Bob Whitney), Lois Collier (Joan Fletcher), Milburn Stone (Fred Mason), Evelyn Ankers (Beth Mason), Edward M. Hyans Jr (Willie), Samuel S. Hinds (Coroner), Nan Bryant (Miss Gray)
Plot: Dr Fletcher is placed on trial for murdering a woman. He explains his incredible story. He obtained the body of a gorilla that was shot during an escape from a circus and revived it, but then it escaped from his laboratory. At the same time the mysterious Paula turned up. She became obsessively fixated on Fletcher’s daughter’s fiancée Bob Whitney. But then those who angered Paula or stood between her and Bob ended up being threatened by the gorilla. Fletcher then began to realize that the gorilla and Paula might be one and the same.
Jungle Woman was the second in a trilogy of ape woman films begun with Captive Wild Woman (1942) and subsequently completed in Jungle Captive (1945). All three starred the exotically beautiful Acquanetta as a woman who had the ability to transform into an ape when aroused. The series was a belated attempt by Universal to add another famous monster to their ongoing lineup which already included the Frankenstein, Dracula, Mummy, Invisible Man and Wolf Man series, and later teamups – although the Jungle Woman series never really became as popular as the others or would met any of the other monsters. There is also a clear attempt to emulate the success of RKO’s Cat People (1942), which had Simone Simon turning into a were-feline when aroused, with the Jungle Woman series merely substituting an ape for a panther. (For this era an ape represented the untamed animal side of human nature – in this case female sexuality, which was always regarded as an exotic, primal and unknown quality).
Jungle Woman is slightly above the routine. Reginald LeBorg, a genre regular who went onto direct films like Destiny (1944), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), The Flight That Disappeared (1961) and Diary of a Madman (1962) among others, creates some occasional atmosphere. There is one fair scene with Richard Davis and Lois Collier in a canoe being attacked from underneath by an ape in the water (the credibility of the scene being slightly beset by the fact that apes don’t swim). Acquanetta has a charged, piercingly intense presence whenever she appears. Her mysterious foreign beauty and accent (she was in fact an American Indian but publicists invented an entire mystery background for her and claimed that she was from Venezuela) gives the film an eerily exotic appeal. Alas LeBorg doesn’t really give her much to do except wander around in a trance whenever she is on screen.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
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