Night of the Bloody Apes

Dr Krellman, a leading surgeon in his field, is desperately unhappy. His son Julio is dying of a rare heart disease.

One evening Krellman and his faithful assistant visit the city zoo and, armed with a rifle, drug the largest gorilla they can find. Smuggling the oversized monkey back to the doctor's lab, they perform a bizarre heart-transplant, instilling the ape's ticker into the chest of the near-dead son.

These preposterous events coincide with a female wrestling match that turns ugly - leaving one of the wrestlers comatose and in need of medical attention. She is, naturally, sent to Krellman's surgery.

These two apparently unconnected plots come together when Julio awakes as a deformed monkey-man with huge biceps and bloody murder on his mind.

A night of gory rampage ensues - a naked young woman is fondled and murdered in her own apartment; followed by great hammy episodes including eye gouging, throat tearing, decapitation, scalping and rape.

These scenes are surprisingly gory for their time - 1972 - and the rape scene's graphic in the sense that I imagine seeing women thrown to the floor, breasts exposed, having their clothes torn off while screaming was still pretty radical at the time! (this scene is still cut from the UK release)

The father tracks Julio down and sedates him. Back at the lab, Krellman assumes the safest thing to do is remove the offending simian heart and replace it with the nice girlie wrestler one - after all her skull is crushed and despite the doctor's surgery, she is sure to die!

Uh-oh, bad mistake - and more mayhem unfolds ...

The monster make-up is horrendous, the dialogue laughably bad and the dubbing atrocious. Witness the medical assistant's comedy limp! And who the fuck conducted the (undoubtedly genuine) heart transplant footage?! Their hands are shaking more than a belly-dancer's arse. I only hope they don't perform my inevitable bypass surgery!!

But in the tradition of BLOOD FEAST, this is entertaining fast-paced fun ideal for party audiences or those cheeky little evenings home alone with a few beers and brain switched quite securely off. For unrepentant gore, minor nudity and a cracking 'bad' script - you can't do any better!

Rene Cardona's ridiculous monster movie has earnt itself a reputation on UK shores over the years thanks to it's appearance on the DPP's pig-ignorant 'Nasties' list.

To this day, the movie is only available in the UK (on both VHS and DVD) in a heavily edited format. An uncut DVD was released in Greece a while back, but suffered from appalling picture quality and a lack of extras. For an age it seemed this ludicrously plotted, dimly scripted Z-grade schlocker was never going to be given justice by the digital medium.

But, thanks to Something Weird ...!

Picture quality here is the best I've seen by far. Okay, it has scratches occassionally but what do you expect from a 30 year old B-movie?! Images are clear and impressively sharp, while colours are rich and deep. In fact, all things considered, the full-frame picture is pretty spectacular.

Sound is mono and is very serviceable - hiss-free and consistently clear.

Extras are plentiful and - in a Something Weird first - are kinda relevant to the main feature!

First up is the film FEAST OF FLESH (aka THE DEADLY ORGAN). Yes, that's right - the full 70 min feature! This 1967 feature is presented uncut, in it's original 1.66:1 aspect (it's even 16:9 enhanced!). Directed by Emilio Vieyra (THE CURIOUS DOCTOR HUMPP), it looks very good for it's age despite some vertical lines visible on-screen ... but was pretty dull entertainment-wise on these eyes.

Still, it's great to see the film included here as it played as part of a double-bill with BLOODY APES at the Grindhouse theatres in the 70's.

There's also 3 minutes of bloody outtakes from BLOODY APES, featuring extended footage of the first gory murder (would the BBFC go for this full-on blood-on-breasts footage?!) and some alternative shoots of throat ripping and eye poking. This silent footage is soundtracked with some hilariously inappropriate old gramophone music and is consequently the most interesting outtake footage I've seen in aeons.

The original trailer for BLOODY APES is taken from it's Drive-In stint as part of a double-bill with FEAST OF FLESH and is a wonderfully sleazy attempt to make the film look as depraved and gory as possible. It succeeds. The other trailers featured are taken from similar (Schlock Around The Clock) festival double bills (most notably BLOOD SPATTERED BRIDE / I DISMEMBER MAMA).

Elsewhere, you'll find 2 TV spots for each film (the BLOODY APES ones are best - surprisingly gory, if they ever played on US TV). There's also four short films (in the grand SW tradition) that while being shit at least have a consistency of theme with the main attraction - gorilla madness and female wrestling.

Finally, be sure to check out the wonderful array of 50s horror comic artwork that while not entirely related to the two films housed on this disc, is essential viewing. Wonderful artwork, all set to the invigorating thump of two tracks from Surf horror-punks The Dead Elvi (including a bizarre over of I CAN'T HELP FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOU, no less!). It's a great curiosity piece that lasts a little over 7 minutes.

Each film has 12 chapters, which is very satisfactory as they're both reasonably short!

Lovers of the old video nasties will no doubt whoop with delight at the treatment the under-rated gem that is BLOODY APES has finally been given. Okay, okay, I know it's technical merits are null and void - but this is one film I fell in love with for all the wrong reasons in the mid-80s, as I'm sure many more did also.

And here it is totally uncut, looking and sounding it's best, finely packaged in a keepcase with inner liner notes by Travis Crawford.

And with those extras (FEAST OF FLESH will have it's fans somewhere for sure, but I can't raise the energy to call it any more than a pretty significant extra!) Something Weird are spoiling us fans of "cockamamie cult faves" too much!!!

Gore, chuckles, female wresting - and some pretty impressive extras. Something Weird have released the best version of NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES we're ever going to see! An exceptional release.

Review by Stuart Willis