Newspaper mentions of Return of the Ape Man

 

This week at Plan9Crunch we re-visit Monogram with Bela Lugosi's "Return of the Ape Man." For a very long time this was a hard Lugosi poverty-row effort to find. I remember high-fiving after snaring a weak DVD-R duplicate via E-Bay. Of course now, you can buy the Blu-Ray, which I have done. My friend David Grudt and I have checked Newspaper Archives and Newspaper.com and found a healthy selection of ads and even reviews, no doubt from the film's PR department, though.

Here's a few ads. It was paired with many films, including an 'oater, Trail to Gunsight, many serials, including Perils of Nyoka, a comedy short, Wedded Bliss (I ended up acquiring a copy of that Columbia short), as well as a Universal ghost comedy, Ghost Catchers. Also Monogram ran it with an East Side Kids feature, Follow the Leaders, and other features of the glorious '40s. It even was paired with what must have been a re-issue, the mid 1930s Boris Karloff horror, The Walking Dead. The film also headlines a Halloween spook show!

Here is a review of Return of the Ape Man I posted in the past:

In “Return of the Ape Man,” one of Bela Lugosi’s final Monogram offerings, his deviously mad scientist, Professor Dexter, offers , with polite arrogance, this laconic remark at a fashionable party to another guest. “You know, some people’s brains would never be missed.” Shortly afterward, Dexter tries to prove it by luring the intended of his partner’s niece to his laboratory for an unwilling partial brain transfer to a reanimated, prehistoric “ape man.” Only the interference of partner Professor Gilmore, with the added persuasion of a gun, stops Dexter. “He might not die,” is Dexter’s defense.

If not for Lugosi, “Return of the Ape Man” would be virtually forgotten. Even John Carradine underplays his role as Gilmore to the point of near narcolepsy. The rest of the cast also seems to play their roles with lethargy. The script, frankly, is unimaginative, and cheats viewers of a climax with Bela’s character alive. But Lugosi’s Dexter is his second-best mad scientist role; only Dr. Vollin in 1935’s “The Raven,” surpasses Prof. Gilmore in mad, ethics-be-damned-crime-be-damned, obsession. Like Vollin, Gilmore is courtly, charismatic, dedicated and mad as a hatter in his desire to reanimate a primitive human and provide him a decent brain, at any cost.

Casual fans of the genre may not know that Lugosi played a mad scientist far more often on screen than he did a vampire. He has some great lines in “Return of the Ape Man.” They include: “Murder is an ugly word. As a scientist I don’t recognize it;” and “Fool, you’ll pay for this!” is Dexter’s angry retort when Gilmore stops him the first time. The too-passive Gilmore eventually becomes the subject of Dexter’s partial brain transplant, and the mad glee that fills the countenance of Lugosi’s Dexter is chilling and unforgettable. Do yourself a favor, Lugosi fans, see “Return of the Ape Man.

Now, here are a few newspaper "reviews" of the film and more ads.: One review is a "phooey" pan from then Hollywood columnist Jimmie Fidler.

Watch this film via YouTube here.

The Grapes of Death - Jean Rollin's Most Frightening Film

 

Review by Steve D. Stones

Although made in 1978, the opening scene of The Grapes of Death (French title Les Raisins De La Mort!) reflects the times in which we live today with the Coronavirus pandemic. Winery workers dressed in cloth coverings and masks on their faces walk the fields of the Roubles wine making vineyard in central France while spraying pesticides on the grape crops. Tractors also drive over the fields spraying pesticides.

A young vineyard worker named Kowalski collapses in the arms of his supervisor after driving the fields in a tractor and complains of having a fever and neck pains. The boss dismisses his complaints and orders him back to the fields to work. He tells Kowalski that more tightly fitting masks are soon to arrive.

After his shift, Kowalski boards a train with only two other young women college students on board who are traveling to Spain. One of the girls named Elizabeth (Marie George Pascal) leaves her compartment on the train to find another empty compartment. While Elizabeth sits in the compartment reading a magazine, Kowalski enters the compartment and sits down. His neck and face begin to drip with a disgusting ooze of pus. This frightens Elizabeth, so she runs out of the compartment as Kowalski slowly chases after her. Elizabeth finds her friend Brigitte dead in another compartment. She pulls the emergency stop cord on the train and quickly runs from the train.

After walking for hours in the French countryside, Elizabeth arrives in a small village and runs to knock on the doors of local residents to get help and call the police. She enters the home of Antoinette (Patricia Cartier) and her father. Antoinette's father has a strange growth on his left hand – similar to the growth Elizabeth saw on Kowalski's neck and face on the train. The father and daughter offer Elizabeth a glass of wine as she desperately pleads to use their telephone to call the police. They tell her that their phone and car do not work.

Antoinette and her father insist that Elizabeth stay with them as she tries to flee the house. She is taken to a bedroom upstairs where she finds Antoinette's mother lying dead on a bed with her throat slashed. Antoinette explains to Elizabeth that it was her father that killed her mother. She gives Elizabeth the car keys to leave the village, but both girls are confronted by the father as they try to leave the house. Antoinette is raped and impaled with a pitch fork by her father as Elizabeth leaves the house in the car.

After crushing Antoinette's father against a rock with the car, Elizabeth drives to another nearby village and is confronted by another young man who has a strange growth on his forehead oozing with pus. Elizabeth leaves the car after shooting the man in the head with a gun. She then encounters Lucy (Mirella Rancelot), a blind girl who has wandered away from the nearby village.

Lucy and Elizabeth make their way back to Lucy's home after walking the French countryside all evening. The village is a grim sight of dead bodies lying on the ground and fires burning homes throughout the village. Lucy is desperate to find her brother Lucas (Paul Bisciglia). When Lucas is found, he too has a growth on his face – along with the rest of the villagers who appear to be zombies.

Nailed to a door in crucifixion style, Lucy is found raped and dead, killed by her brother Lucas. Lucas decapitates Lucy in the most gruesome scene of the film. The village zombies begin to chant - “Lucy, we love you, Lucy, we love you”

Elizabeth is pulled into a house in the village by porn actress Brigitte Lahaie. Lahaie's character does not have a name in the film, so I will refer to her as Lahaie. Elizabeth is told by Lahaie that the house is owned by the local mayor and his wife, both were killed by the villagers. She also tells Elizabeth that they will be safe if they remain in the house.

Eventually leaving the mayor's house, Lahaie incapacitates Elizabeth outside the house so the zombie villagers can attack her. In a sexy see-thru night gown, Lahaie blazes the town with a torch while walking two dogs. Two men in a pick up truck, Paul (Felix Marten) and his friend Lucien (Serge Marquand) arrive to save Elizabeth. Lahaie removes her night gown to prove to the two men that she is not marked like the rest of the village zombies. Director Jean Rollin never misses an opportunity to show naked female flesh in his films, as Lahaie has done for him many times.

Elizabeth, Paul and Lucien eventually make their way to the vineyard where Elizabeth's fiance Michel (Michel Herval) is employed. The trio determine that the zombie outbreak of the villagers must have been a result of the wine consumed by the villagers at the Grape Harvest Festival a week earlier. Paul and Lucien claim they were immune because they drank beer at the festival instead of wine.

It's no mistake that throughout the entire film Elizabeth wears a purple colored shirt, the color of grapes and royalty, as she stands in a winery tank at the end of the film with the purple walls of the tank sharply contrasting the purple of her shirt. The blood of her fiance Michel drips on her face from above the tank. The blood sacrifice symbolism in Christianity is apparent in this final sequence of the film – both with the blood on Elizabeth's face and the reference of wine as part of the sacrificial ritual. This scene connects well with the crucifixion of Lucy in an earlier scene. I'm not sure if director Rollin had this symbolism in mind as he constructed the final scene, but viewers could certainly interpret it this way.

The Grapes of Death may be Rollin's most commercial effort in film making and is said to be the first French zombie film. It is certainly Rollin's most frightening and well-made film. Most of Rollin's previous films are an exercise in strange surrealism and have interesting elements of experimentation to them. The Grapes of Death has often been compared to George Romero's Night of The Living Dead (1968) and The Crazies (1973). Both Romero and Rollin employ zombies to communicate the perils of a natural disaster. Happy viewing. (Watch the trailer here.)

'Glamour Ghoul' is a biography that Maila Nurmi, Vampira, merits

Review by Doug Gibson

In January of 2008, Maila Nurmi, better known as Vampira, was found dead in her small Los Angeles home. She was 85. She died alone, on her couch with her feet propped, resting on a patio chair. The TV was running. Her cat, Violet, had died next to her. Her dog, Houdini, was alive but had to be put down. In her last days, she had felt exhausted, but thought it was due to her thyroid. It turned out to be her heart that was failing.

It's a death that arguably could be described as tragic. However, it's an example of Nurmi's survival instincts. She made the decisions in her life. Relying on chance, or others, had harmed her too much during 65-plus years since she stepped off a bus in Los Angeles in 1941.

 

Maila was also Vampira, a host whose weekly scream during the staid 1950s represented an orgasm. The censors, of course, never knew that.  Several dozen episodes hosting a horror movies show gained her short-term fame in the 1950s. Her brief appearance in Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space," a film she acted in for $200 and didn't see until 1980, 20-plus years after its small release, re-ignited interest in her dark beauty and gothic, sexual look.  Below is a picture with Bela Lugosi. Ironically, he didn't plan on being in "Plan 9 From Outer Space," either.

After the "Plan 9 From Outer Space"/Ed Wood cultural craze, we saw our share of Maila in a slew of documentaries, and interviews and writings in books and magazines. She teased those interested with tidbits of information about experiences with Orson Welles and Elvis Presley, jobs with Mae West and Liberace, meals with an Ed Wood crony, Criswell, and her friendship with James Dean. But there always seemed to be more to the story.

 

Four years after her death, friend and filmmaker R.H. Greene provided a deeply personal, fascinating documentary, "Vampira and Me," that filled gaps in the often-coy past reminisces from the late actress. Frankly, despite a couple of other books and an earlier film documentary, "Vampira: The Movie," I thought Greene's effort might be the best we'd get.

I was wrong. Sandra Niemi, the niece of Maili (who receives thanks in Greene's film), penned "Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maili Nurmi," (Feral House, 2021). It took Niemi a long time to get this to publication, but it's worth the wait. 

Maila Nurmi was born in Gloucester, Mass., not Finland. Her father, Onni, a Finnish immigrant, was a lifelong newspaper editor and a fierce advocate of Prohibition. Ironically, her mother, Sophie, a U.S. native, was an alcoholic. A spotty employment record caused the family to move often, to new newspaper jobs. She had a brother, Bobbie, author Sandra's father.

Nurmi graduated from high school in Astoria, Ore. For a while, after a brief stint in college, she tried to follow her parents' vision -- work in a fish cannery and get married. It was that manufactured future she rebelled from, and prompted her leaving for Los Angeles in 1941.

A theme to "Glamour Ghoul" is survival. Except for several years in a common-law marriage with screenwriter Dean Riesner (during the Vampira years), and some gigs in Las Vegas, including with Liberace, Maila Nurmi was poor. In her worst times, she cleaned houses, was discreetly half-starved, and lived in garages sans furniture. It's likely her highest income never put her ahead of the middle class.

At the same time, she was a success. In the mid 1940s, through sheer grit, she appeared on Broadway stages in New York City. She was part of a Mae West show. Her youth and beauty apparently made West jealous, who then fired her. A cool irony of her West experience is that in later years her friend Criswell, a friend of West, would bring Murmi meals cooked by West. 

"Glamour Ghoul," besides providing new information on Maila's life -- and I don't want to provide spoilers to readers -- offers more meat to her relationships with Orson Welles, James Dean, Marlon Brando, Anthony Perkins, and Elvis Presley. All these individuals, and many more, serve as players in Maila's real-life drama from naive, exploited, adult-child to hopeful, to star, to ex-star, to forgotten star, and to survivor. All of the players in Mails's life have flaws. Some are utterly despicable; some much better and kinder than others. 

Maila was impressive enough to get the notice of Hollywood mogul Howard Hawks, who brought her to Los Angeles and signed her to a contract. In a rash act, Maila, hurt by professional criticism, burned bridges with Hawks, tearing up her deal. Nevertheless, she survived in Hollywood, dancing, working clubs, bit roles in a couple of films, and getting notice as a model for magazines. In her 30s, "Vampira" achieved her fame, but very little money. The 1960s and '70s were a rough time for Nurmi, but her will to be independent, and abide with what life dealt out, kept her going.

Maila made a lot of mistakes, including turning down more work with Liberace. She suffered badly from deranged fans who hassled her. Through her life she was assaulted, physically and sexually. Emotional abuse hurt and affected her mental stability at times. Powerful people abused her. Although she retains her icon status, she lost any significant monetary reward for her creation with the emergence of Cassandra Peterson's "Elvira."

 

"Vampira" is a sophisticated, dark, alluring creature with devastating wit. "Elvira" is a cleavage-heavy ditz designed to appeal to the lusts of over-sexed teenage boys. I can state that with authority because I was one of those over-sexed teenage boys captivated for a time by Peterson's juvenile performance art and wisecracks.

It is endearing to read more about how the then-beginning punk rock movement enhanced Maila's later years. They embraced her; they appreciated her. That is so appropriate because Maila was a real bohemian, unforced, and no cliche. She was a kindred spirit, and they responded to her. I enjoy the anecdotes about Maila's success as a street merchant, as well as working the front-desk phone, very late in life, at a dominatrix escort center. God bless Sandra Niemi for the biography. It's appropriate that Feral House is the publisher, as they also published the gem "Nightmare of Ecstasy," the Ed Wood oral biography by Rudolph Grey.

A final note: One quibble: Please provide an index in a further printing. And, very important, the final epilogue will give you chills, and possibly tears. I've tried not to be too specific in this review. I don't want to spoil things for readers. I urge readers to always keep the epilogue a secret too. Don't spoil it. 

Hellborn -- the Ed Wood wannabe movie that never was completed

 Review by Doug Gibson

Thanks to Greg Dziawer, Ed Wood researcher, I finally was directed to my first viewing of "Hellborn," a video marketed by Cult Movies Magazine 27 years ago. It contains takes from an Ed Wood-directed wannabe film that would have been titled, drum roll, "Hellborn." Plans were to have Conrad Brooks and Ed Wood star in this Wood-directed effort on the juvenile delinquency "crisis" of the 1950s.

Michael Copner, former editor at the magazine, hosts the video along with the late Wood company actor Conrad Brooks. Long ago I wasn't persuaded by the ads to buy "Hellborn." Later, after the magazine ceased publication and my interest in Ed Wood increased, I couldn't find a way to purchase "Hellborn." It wasn't streamed. It wasn't for sale on EBay or Amazon. I thought I'd missed my chance on this one.

Until this weekend, when Dziawer alerted me it's now on YouTube. It's not easy to find in the site's search function so here is a direct link.  So, after wanting to see this film for roughly a generation, what's my take?

First, the "Hellborn" takes included are not the best parts of the film, although they are fun to watch and mandatory for a Wood completist. The best takes from "Hellborn" are not in this film because they were used in two films, "Night of the Ghouls," and "The Sinister Urge," which features the best scene, a pretty cool fight between Ed Wood and Conrad Brooks. Wood apparently sold or donated that footage to producer Roy Reid, of Headliner Productions, for whom Wood directed "The Sinister Urge." The "Night of the Ghouls" "Hellborn" takes include a decent crash scene with a teen dangling, presumably dead, from the window of a car.

So what's left for "Hellborn" the video is a long take of a particularly violent beating on a street, with another Wood actor, Mona McKinnon, watching the beating. (A little bit of that is in "Night of the Ghouls.") The primary new scene for viewers is one of a bunch teens going out to a picnic of sorts, filmed at Griffith Park, and then pairing off later for sexcapades. As Wood fans know, several scenes include Wood in drag pretending to play teenage women. Even with the poor quality of the then almost 50-year-old footage in 2003, Wood does not really fool anyone.

Prior to the takes, Copner and Wood discuss the history of the Hellborn effort. The genesis of the film extends as far back as the "Glen Or Glenda" era. Producer George Weiss, Brooks relates, failed to generate interest initially among investors. Then later films crowded out time for and interest in "Hellborn," although sporadic filming continued well into the mid 1950s.

There's more to this roughly hour-long documentary. Although I think much of the footage can be seen in other films, Brooks narrates footage of a "home movie" Wood directed and produced for Conrad and his brothers in 1948. It's a western of sorts. As entertaining as the footage is Brooks' narration, pointing out Hollywood of 70 plus years ago and noting other Wood characters such as Johnny Carpenter. 

Frankly, in this footage the still-young Wood is incredibly handsome. Calling him an Errol Flynn type is not an exaggeration. It's easy to see why he attracted Dolores Fuller, for example. It's jarring to see this Wood and then turn the clock ahead 20 years and see the bloated, red-faced, alcoholic Wood of 20 years later in "Love Feast." 

There's more in "Hellborn." We then see an eight-minute short that Brooks directed, called "Mystery in Shadows." It's shot with actors as shadows, accompanied by a narrator/storyteller. It's actually kind of interesting and entertaining; as a one-reel short.

Finally, there's even one more segment to "Hellborn." It's my favorite part of the film; definitely the most bittersweet. It's an interview with former movie actor, Peter Coe, in whose house Ed Wood died in late 1978, soon after he and his wife Kathy were evicted. Coe's films included "House of Frankenstein" and "The Mummy's Curse." Coe relates incidents such as hunting with Lon Chaney Jr.

It's very emotional to see Coe in this interview. He looks very old and emaciated, lying in bed. He was very near death when this interview was conducted. Brooks is very kind, as is Copner, during the interview. Coe seems exhausted early and his answers are brief, due to his condition, not his temperament, which is polite. He perks up later, seemingly genuinely pleased when told fans of the magazine ask about him. Near the end of the interview, describing how Wood is removed from his home in a mere bag, Coe effectively conveys his outrage at the disrespect Wood was shown. "It was sickening," he says with passion and emphasis.

Issues of Cult Movies magazines contain articles on "Hellborn." I recall Brooks sharing some faux publicity blurbs Wood had written, including one about it being the "winner" at the Cannes Film Festival. Also, in another edition of Cult Movies magazine, there's a longer interview with Coe.

So that's the elusive "Hellborn" video. It's a must for the real fans of Ed Wood, and we know who we are. The takes from the main film are of interest. The footage of the Brooks film directed by Wood is great, and the interview footage with a dying Coe is priceless.