Professor Franklin Arnold (Ralph Morgan, look-alike brother of Frank "The Wizard of Oz" Morgan) has revolutionized the field of robotics with his Metalogen Man. At a demonstration before reporters at the Bainbridge Research Foundation, Professor Arnold actives his humanoid machine, which lifts one-ton weights as if they were helium balloons.

However, soon thereafter, three of Professor Arnold's colleagues are killed by Thor (Ray "Crash" Corrigan), a "giant" gorilla, and gangsters steal the Metalogen Man. Ken Morgan (Robert Lowery), representing the company set to purchase the robot, soon learns that another scientist, Ernst (velvety-voiced George Macready) is behind the deed. Assisted by Professor Arnold's daughter, Babs (Carole Mathews) and the family chauffeur, Flash (Willie Best), it's up to Morgan to thwart Ernst's plans for world domination.

The Monster and the Ape was Columbia's 26th serial, the second of four chapterplays they'd release in that year alone. Fans of these films generally regard Republic's serials as the best, usually ranking Columbia second, and Universal (which stopped making them in 1946) a distant third. Republic's serials had better stuntwork and special effects (by Howard and Theodore Lydecker) while Columbia and Universal, moderately bigger companies, were able to draw on better resources: contract players, a larger backlot, a big music library of stock themes, etc.

Monster and the Ape exhibits some of this. Nobody in the cast could be considered a big star, but it's still better than you'd expect for a Columbia serial. Macready was at the beginning of a long career specializing in cultured villains, mostly on television and in lower-end features, but which included a major role in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) and as a regular cast member on TV's Peyton Place. Lowery's career as a leading man was confined almost exclusively to Columbia and, later, Poverty Row before finding steady work in TV Westerns, but he had a genuinely likable, laid-back, John Payne-ish type of persona.

The serial itself is utterly unexceptional, strictly by-the-numbers: villain's lair, rife with secret panels and passageways; the henchmen's repeatedly failed attempts to retrieve a vital component needed to implement the villain's destructive plans, etc. Nothing new here.

There are some unintended laughs. Ernst is so cheap that instead of keeping his own gorilla in a basement laboratory, he "borrows" Thor from the municipal zoo, resulting in some funny dialogue. After each caper, one henchman turns to other with lines like, "We've got to get that gorilla back to the zoo!"

Howard Bretherton, known almost exclusively for his B-Westerns - he doesn't seem to have directed anything before this remotely like The Monster and the Ape - delivers workmanlike product, but it's nothing special, merely made-to-order.

Ray "Crash" Corrigan appears to be the man in the ape skin, the kind of monster gorilla that existed in movies of the 1920s-1960s but not after, that populated jungle movies, comedies, and horror films but which bore no resemblance at all to their gentler, more intelligent real-world counterparts. In any case Corrigan's pantomiming is exceptional here; I wouldn't be surprised if the other actors sort of forgot Thor wasn't a real animal in the same way human actors respond when appearing opposite Jim Henson's Muppets. In some ways Corrigan gives this serial's best performance.

Video & Audio

The Monster and the Ape is presented full frame, but the film sourced is curiously out of alignment throughout: everything looks off-center, with the bottom and right side of the frame cut off while there's extra room at the top and to the left. Contrast is poor and generally this looks like an nth generation dupe that might even be lifted off VHS. There's a lot of film damage; the entirety of chapter three looks like it was scrubbed with steel wool. Audio is below average and there are no subtitle options. The serial runs 15 chapters (the first running 29 minutes, 20 minutes thereafter), with chapters 1-9 on disc one, 10-15 on disc two. The first review copy we were sent arrived with one disc cracked and the other severely scuffed.

The major studios have treated serials pretty shabbily since the advent of home video. It's taken public domain outfits like these, which rely on 16mm TV prints and worse, to get 'em released at all, albeit using transfers rarely better than mediocre. With Sony having announced their film classics-on-demand program (i.e., DVD-Rs), here's hoping that some of these serials will become available, using far superior masters that definitely exist.

Extra Features.

The packaging promises the original trailer, but this reviewer found no sign of it on either disc, though both feature previews for other dicey Cheezy Flicks product (including Sam Peckinpah's Convoy, surely not in public domain?). Both discs also include "Intermission Time," drive-in filler that, incredibly, looks even worse than the serial, as if derived from a Sinister Cinema VHS tape.

Parting Thoughts

A disappointing serial with an awful transfer. Skip It.

Stuart Galbraith IV's audio commentary, for AnimEigo's Tora-san DVD boxed set, is on sale now.