Truly one of my favorite Universial horror classics along with the original Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man. Does anyone else consider one of they're favorites as well?
We can DO IT ALLLL DAY LONG, (We'll have to pay more for the light bill if we do it at night!)
It's certainly a brilliant one. As one person pointed out, great early use of non-static camerawork, and given the horrible ape costumes of films from the 40's and 50's, this one at least tried to show a real ape (chimp) in the close up scenes, giving more realism to what could have been just another obvious guy in a gorilla suit.
shareKarl Freund did the cinematography and as I'm sure U know worked on German films of the expressionistic kind. Robert Flory directed and both of them will never be forgotten by those who know true classic cinema.
The sense itself was I.
I found it one of weakest amongst the reputable horrors of the early 1930`s - the dialogue is consistently ridiculous (especially the cooing between Waycoff and Fox), the acting corny all around (Lugosi does better than the others, but it isn`t amongst his better performances, either) and the film never really builds up any notable suspense, the darker tones being constantly undermined by that lame "comic relief" (most disastrously during the last 15 minutes where the chase is interrupted by 5-6 mins of goofy yapping at the police station). And they probably should have played it more from the whodunit angle, which was the way the original story was written. The set design was nicely atmospheric though.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
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The first times I watched it, I didn't appreciate it fairly; however, last night I gave it another chance, and ended up loving it. A great story, and that "sadistic" scene at Dr. Mirakle's laboratory was truly disturbing and way ahead of its time.
Animal crackers in my soup
Monkeys and rabbits loop the loop