History Film / CaptiveWildWoman

For some final credits of note, editing, which includes the merging of the ''The Big Cage'' footage with the new footage, was done by Milton Carruth. The film's director is Edward Dmytryk, for whom ''Captive Wild Woman'' was the last time he did horror. On the other end, ''Captive Wild Woman'' marks the first time John Carradine has a key role in a horror movie. Make-up artist Jack Pierce was responsible for the Ape Woman's look, which is reminiscent of his work on the Wolf Man's appearance.

* {{Corpsing}}:
** Several times during Paula's tantrum in her dressing room, Acquanetta has to suppress a smile. Two are well visible because she faces the camera and at least two more side-shots also show that the corner of her mouth isn't turned downwards.
** Martha's Dorothy fails to conceal a smile when Dr. Walters runs up from behind and forcibly ends her phone call.

* KillerGorilla: Cheela is an exceptionally intelligent gorilla, which draws the attention of Dr. Walters. He steals her to be the subject of his next grand experiment: to turn an animal into a human by means of human hormones backed up by a human cerebrum for stability. It all goes according to plan and Walters gives the gorilla-turned-human the name Paula Dupree. The new form's big weakness is that strong emotions and, presumably, the ape hormones released with them, wreak havoc on the human brain tissue. This causes Paula to become Cheela again and the only way for Paula to return is for another cerebrum transplantation. Through the course of events, Cheela ends up strangling and crushing the necks of three people: her abusers Gruen and Walters as well as one innocent woman when Cheela attempts to kill her romantic rival. Ultimately not evil, just an animal, Cheela dies while saving the life of Fred Mason, a man she was close with as gorilla and became infatuated with as woman.

* LoveTriangle: Fred and Beth are the main couple, but they like to tease each other. During his expedition, Fred acquires and forms a close bond with the gorilla Cheela. When he returns home, he jokingly introduces Cheela to Beth as if he's brought home a new fiancée. Not to be outdone, Beth teases him with Walters, her sister's charming doctor with whom Beth's already been on a few dates. Walters' interest in Beth is left ambiguous, as he's a man of science foremost. For his latest experiment, he steals Cheela and turns her into the woman Paula. Paula has feelings for Fred that make her protective of him and murderously jealous of Beth, although in the end they find a common enemy in Walters.
* MadDoctor: Dr. Walters is a brilliant endocrinologist who has improved the lives of many by ridding them of their deformities. His know-how, however, is the result of much animal suffering and that's only because animals are more readily available than humans. Once in the later stages of his research, human material becomes essential and he has zero qualms about whatever he must do to get it.

* MakerOfMonsters: Dr. Walters ultimately wants to perfect human life, but until he has that ability he experiments with hormones to create whatever outcome to the life form he wants changed. His ultimate masterpiece is Paula Dupree, a woman he created by inserting human sex hormones and a human cerebrum into a gorilla.
* MortonsFork: After a disastrous lion taming practice run that almost resulted in Fred's death, Whipple refuses to let him continue. Fred argues that with Paula, who saved him and has an odd power over animals, as his assistant the act is safe. Whipple is even more reluctant to risk a young woman getting mauled. Then Fred forces his hand by declaring that he will hire Paula as his assistant and that he will be a lion tamer and if it won't be at the Whipple Circus, then there are still plenty of others to choose from. Whipple unhappily gives in to Fred's demands.
* MurderTheHypotenuse: Paula realizes that Fred's romantic feelings are wholly and solely for Beth and her mental breakdown over this causes her to revert to her gorilla self, though not before leaving her stuck in a transitional state for about a day. During this time, she stalks Beth and tries to kill her in her room at a boarding house, but Beth wakes before the Ape Woman strikes. The gorilla girl flees and no other opportunity presents itself before she owes Beth a favor, which she repays by sparing her and Beth's sister.

* NeverTrustATitle: "''Captive Wild Woman''" is a shamelessly lurid title for a film in which the female characters are written pretty respectfully and affect the plot more than all but one of the male characters. Cheela is not a woman and her alter ego Paula is the very opposite of wild. Even if one would accept "wild woman" to be synonymous with "gorilla", then still the gorilla isn't locked up a whole lot.
* NonMaliciousMonster: Being a gorilla, Paula does not act on malice, but on immediate emotions. As events unfold, she kills three people, two of which tormented her while the third startled her when her actual goal was to eliminate her romantic rival. Even so, she is a particularly affectionate gorilla and ultimately dies saving Fred.
* OccultDetective: Beth vaguely recognizes Paula when the Ape Woman attempts to murder her. From there, she notices the similarities between the causes of death of her fellow boarding house guest, murdered by Beth's would-be killer and Gruen, murdered by Cheela. As astounding as it is, she alone deduces that the gorilla Cheela and the woman Paula are the same entity. Shortly after, a desperate phone call from Dorothy moves her into action.

* PluckyComicRelief: There's not much comedy in ''Captive Wild Woman'', but what there is occurs around 90% courtesy of John Whipple and around 10% courtesy of Curley; the latter having far less screentime than the former. They're both good-natured and well-intentioned men, but a bit klutzy and clumsy.

* ScreamDiscretionShot: Dr. Walters pushes Gruen into Cheela's reach when he's served his purpose. Gruen has never done anything but antagonize her, so she makes short work of him by strangling him with such power that his spinal cord gets severed. None of this is shown. Rather, the camera focuses on Walters's unhinged glee as he watches Gruen beg for mercy. The moment Gruen's corpse drops to the floor, Walter's countenance calms as his gaze follows.

* StaringDownCthulhu: This seems to be the case with Paula to everyone who works at the circus when she effortlessly makes lions and tigers cower under her intense gaze. In truth, Paula is a gorilla and the other animals fear her either because a gorilla is dangerous or because her unnatural existence in human form unnerves them.
* StockFootage: Over fifteen minutes of the sixty minutes ''Captive Wild Woman'' lasts is footage recycled from the 1933 film ''The Big Cage''. It's likely Milburn Stone was cast as the male lead primarily because of his physical similarity to Clyde Beatty, who is the lion timer in the old footage.
* SuperStrength: Paula Dupree is a gorilla in human form and at least in her transitional form is as strong as her gorilla self. The sequel ''Jungle Woman'' confirms that her human form also holds the strength of a gorilla.
* WakeupMakeup: The Ape Woman awakens as the human Paula Dupree after being given donor hormones. Her natural post-gorilla look consists of a simple but combed haircut and nude makeup.

* HerrDoktor: Dr. Sigmund Walters does not have any of the quirky traits of the typical Herr Doktor, but his first name hints at a Germanic origin, his published research concerns racial improvement, and his more hidden research's aim is to create a race of super men. Given that ''Captive Wild Woman'' premiered during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Dr. Walters is to be understood as a Nazi scientist.

* JunglePrincess: Paula Dupree is a gorilla-turned-woman with an eerie control over animals, whom she can cause to cower with her mere gaze. As a gorilla with no human past or education, she is incapable of human speech, but she does understand it. Her love interest is the American Fred Mason, for whose safety she ends up sacrificing herself.

''Captive Wild Woman'' is a Franchise/UniversalHorror BMovie about a MadScientist whose research into designing life reaches the point where he remodels a [[KillerGorilla gorilla]] into a [[JunglePrincess woman]]. Filming began on December 10, 1942 and the premiere followed on June 4, 1943. Although the Ape Woman has predecessors in the Film/BrideOfFrankenstein, Film/DraculasDaughter, and [[Film/TheInvisibleWoman1940 The Invisible Woman]] in terms of Universal's female monster offering, she is the first one not to [[DistaffCounterpart rely on a preceding male monster's fame]] and the only one to have a film series to her name, even if the overall quality is low to lacking. The sequels to ''Captive Wild Woman'' are ''[[Film/JungleWoman1944 Jungle Woman]]'' in 1944 and ''Film/JungleCaptive'' in 1945.

On June 29, 1941, Universal placed a teaser ad for ''Captive Wild Woman'' in ''The Hollywood Reporter''. The ad is silent on both the film's genre and any peculiarities regarding the "The Wild Woman", which makes it a distinct possibility that the original plans weren't for a horror movie. George Waggner was to be the director and November 7, 1941 was the intended release date, neither of which came to pass. Whatever the reasons behind the delay, three horror films released between the teaser and the actual film are assumed to have influenced the final direction of ''Captive Wild Woman'': Universal's own ''[[Film/TheWolfMan1941 The Wolf Man]]'', which revived the studio's reputation of quality horror, Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios's ''Dr. Renault's Secret'', an adaptation of ''Balaoo'' in which science rather than nurture turns a gorilla into a human, and Creator/RKOPictures's ''Film/CatPeople''. ''Cat People'' is the [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent werecat]] answer to ''The Wolf Man'' and was a huge success, but also premiered mere days before filming started for ''Captive Wild Woman''. Therefore, its influence lies mostly in the editing and marketing.

The story commences with the return of Fred Mason (Milburn Stone) to America with new animals for the Whipple Circus. Among them is the intelligent gorilla Cheela (Ray Corrigan), whom Fred and John Whipple (Lloyd Corrigan) have high hopes for. Fred is welcomed home by his fiancée Beth Colman (Evelyn Ankers), whose sister Dorothy (Martha Vickers) has been recently checked in at Crestview Sanatorium to be treated by Dr. Sigmund Walters (Creator/JohnCarradine). Walters visits the Whipple Circus and sets his sights on Cheela as the subject of his next experiment: to turn an animal into a human. For that, he needs Cheela, whom he steals, hormones, which Dorothy produces aplenty, and human brain tissue, for which he murders his assistant Miss Strand (Fay Helm). He gives the gorilla-turned-woman the name Paula Dupree (Acquanetta) and takes her to the Whipple Circus, where it's discovered she's good at staring down animals when she saves Fred from a lion. Fred hires her to assist him in his lion taming act, which Paula devotedly does until she learns that Fred's affection is for Beth. Her raging emotions restore her gorilla form and after a failed attempt to kill Beth, she returns to Walters. Beth too goes to Crestview Sanatorium to save Dorothy after a worrying phone call and Dr. Walters decides to take Beth's brain tissue to recreate Paula. Beth makes a guess that Cheela is done with Walters' painful treatments and frees her. Cheela, indeed, kills the doctor and spares Beth, opting instead to rush to the Whipple Circus where Fred performs his lion taming act without her protection. She is just in time to save him once more, but is gunned down by the police.

The B-plot concerning Fred and his wish to become a lion tamer is the film's big cost-saving measure. The pre-movie credits praise "Mr. Clyde Beatty for his cooperation and inimitable talent in staging the thrilling animal sequences in this picture." How this is to be understood is that over 15 minutes of footage has been lifted from the 1933 film ''The Big Cage'' and inserted into ''Captive Wild Woman'', which effectively renders Beatty into Mason's stunt double. It also means the animal cruelty on screen is real. ''Captive Wild Woman'' even includes footage of the infamous tiger-lion fight that ended in the tiger's death.

For some final credits of note, editing was done by Milton Carruth. The film's director is Edward Dmytryk, for whom ''Captive Wild Woman'' was the last time he did horror. On the other end, ''Captive Wild Woman'' marks the first time John Carradine has a key role in a horror movie. Make-up artist Jack Pierce was responsible for the Ape Woman's transitional look, which is reminiscent of his work on the Wolf Man's appearance.

* AboveGoodAndEvil: Dr. Sigmund Walters considers himself above moral considerations as long as his research into designable life continues and produces results. His assistant calls him out on his egocentric pursuit, noting that he wasn't like this when they started out thirteen years ago. Dr. Walters hears none of it but for one throwaway remark that highlights a flaw in his current experiment that he immediately takes care of.

* AnthropomorphicTransformation: The gorilla Cheela is changed into the woman Paula Dupree by means of one woman's hormones and another woman's brain tissue. The brain tissue is merely a component to assure mental stability and does not affect Cheela-Paula's personality or intelligence, as she already was intelligent as a gorilla.
* ApocalypticLog: Dr. Walters keeps a journal of his research and the crimes he commits for it. He sits down to write in two scenes, which also show that he keeps the journal locked in his desk.
* ArtifactTitle: ''Captive Wild Woman'' was announced one-and-a-half years before its production and two years before its release. Nothing about the announcement suggests it's a horror title or that "The Wild Woman" is a gorilla either, making it likely the original idea for the film was something different. As is, the title reflects little of and nothing of importance to the film.
* ArtificialAnimalPeople: The gorilla Cheela is changed into the woman Paula Dupree by means of one woman's hormones to facilitate the transformation and another woman's brain tissue to stabilize the new form. Cheela was intelligent to begin with, but the brain tissue keeps her instinctual behavior in check. This is necessary because strong emotions, and presumably the hormones that come with them, return her to her gorilla self. Another way Paula's humanity is limited is that, while she understands human language, she appears incapable of speaking herself.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: An article about Dr. Sigmund Walters states that he discovered Vitamin E2 and that E2 "determines the physical characteristics of all forms of animal ife, the 48 chromosomes which pattern heridatry, and numerous hormones." In 1943, the Vitamin E family was only known to be necessary for successful pregnancies, so that is a very liberal interpretation of the uses for E2.
* AsYouKnow: After Cheela murders the woman, the scene skips to when the police have arrived and the coroner sums up his initial findings. This prompts the commissioner to ask Beth for what else she knows and, knowing nothing else, Beth repeats what she's already told him during the skip.
* BaddieFlattery: Dr. Walters speaks with respect and a hint of admiration to both Miss Strand and Beth when he informs them they have good cerebrums to be harvested to stabilize Cheela-Paula's human form, which for the time being is the pinnacle of his years worth of research.
* BenevolentBoss: John Whipple cares for every animal and employee of the Whipple Circus. This is why he does not want to give Fred the lion taming act, because he knows that Fred is too inexperienced and will at best get hurt. It's only because Fred keeps insisting and the other lion tamer walks out on the circus that Whipple with equal amounts of hope and reluctance gives him a chance. In fact, the only employee to dislike Whipple is Gruen, who gets fired after repeatedly showing up drunk and harassing Cheela.
* BrainTransplant: Human sex hormones are enough to turn a gorilla into a human, but as Miss Strand points out, the resulting creature will still have the mental simplicity of an animal. Dr. Walters solves that issue by killing Strand for her cerebrum and grafting it into Cheela's skull. The brain tissue only stabilizes Cheela and does not affect her self. When she experiences intense emotions over Fred's love for Beth, she burns through the hormones and cerebrum and reverts to her gorilla self. Walters plans to take Beth's brain to redo the operation, but Cheela kills him before it gets to that.

* CoversAlwaysLie: The posters for ''Captive Wild Woman'' takes design cues from those for ''Cat People''', but fail to duplicate the latters' synchronicity of animal and woman. Instead, the posters for ''Captive Wild Woman'' go for the generic pose of the villain holding the helpless woman, which incorrectly makes it seem that, for one, Cheela and Paula are different beings and that, for two, Cheela is male.

* DistressedDude: Fred badly wants to be a lion tamer and while he has the bravery and skill to handle one beast at a time, he only has the bravery to deal with a group. This does not stop him and the first time it goes wrong, he's lucky Paula is present to save him. He hires her as his assistant on the spot and it's only because of her that no further dangerous incidents happen. When Paula can't make it to his first real performance, inevitably the performance goes awry. She returns just in time to save him once more.

* EnterStageWindow: Paula realizes that as long as Beth's around, Fred won't return her feelings. So the logical thing is to kill Beth. To this end, she goes to the boarding house Beth stays at, climbs up to the first floor, and enters Beth's room through the open window. Still, the noise wakes Beth and she screams upon seeing Paula half-reverted to her gorilla self. The scream draws another boarder's attention, which startles Paula. She kills her, then makes a run for it back through the window without laying a finger on Beth.

* EvilutionaryBiologist: Dr. Walters' end goal with his glandular research is to create a race of super men, part of the definition of "super men" implicitly being "white".

* {{Flashback}}: In the cab ride from the harbor to the Whipple Circus, Beth tells Fred about Dororthy's bad health, their visit to Crestview Sanatorium, their meeting with Dr. Walters, Dororthy's current stay at the sanatorium, and her good acquaintance with the doctor. All of this occurs in the one single flashback the film contains.

* HeelFaceTurn: Cheela wants Beth dead because she wants Beth's fiance Fred for herself. To this end, she sneaks into her room one night, but Beth wakes up and screams. This alerts another tenant of the boarding house to Beth's room and Cheela kills the unfortunate woman on instinct, but has to flee before she can deal with Beth. Despite this experience, Beth opts to free Cheela from her cage when the both of them are trapped in Walters' laboratory, hoping that the gorilla's hatred for the endocrinologist outweighs her hatred for Beth. The gamble pays off: Cheela kills Walters and after a moment of contemplation leaves Beth alone.

* HopeSpot: Miss Strand holds a grand speech imploring Dr. Walters to cease his experiments before they lead to the death of Dorothy like all the animals he extracted glands from prior did. One of her final arguments is that even if he succeeds and turns the gorilla into a human physically, it will still have the erratic behavior of an animal. Hearing this, Dr. Walters tells her that she's right. However, he's not talking about the ethics of his experiment. Rather, he acknowledges the behavioral issue, to which he adds that this can be dealt with by grafting human brain tissue onto the gorilla's brain. And by his reckoning, Miss Strand will make for an excellent donor to be dearly remembered.

* PartialTransformation: Aside from her gorilla and human forms, Paula has a transitional form that evokes the human-ape missing link imagery of the era. In this form, her silhouette is like a human but her appearance is like a gorilla. She falls into this form after her rage over Fred's preference for Beth damages the hormone and cerebrum transplants. It is like this that she tries and fails to kill Beth, after which she returns to Crestview Sanatorium and becomes a full gorilla again. It is because Beth sees the transitional form that she works out that Paula and Cheela are the same being.

''Captive Wild Woman'' is a Franchise/UniversalHorror BMovie about a MadScientist whose research into designing life reaches the point where he remodels a [[KillerGorilla gorilla]] into a [[JunglePrincess woman]]. Filming began on December 10, 1942 and the premiere followed on June 4, 1943. Although the eponymous Wild Woman aka Gorilla Girl has predecessors in the Film/BrideOfFrankenstein, Film/DraculasDaughter, and [[Film/TheInvisibleWoman1940 The Invisible Woman]] in terms of Universal's female monster offering, she is the first one not to [[DistaffCounterpart rely on a preceding male monster's fame]] and the only one to have a film series to her name, even if the overall quality is low to lacking. The sequels to ''Captive Wild Woman'' are ''[[Film/JungleWoman1944 Jungle Woman]]'' in 1944 and ''Jungle Captive'' in 1945.

For some final credits of note, editing was done by Milton Carruth. The film's director is Edward Dmytryk, for whom ''Captive Wild Woman'' was the last time he did horror. On the other end, ''Captive Wild Woman'' marks the first time John Carradine has a key role in a horror movie. Make-up artist Jack P. Pierce was responsible for Paula-Cheela's transitional look, which is reminiscent of his work on the Wolf Man's appearance.

As one of Universal's lesser known movies, ''Captive Wild Woman'' has not much of a legacy. Nonetheless, it's been theorized that Paula-Cheela is the inspiration behind Giganta, one of [[Characters/WonderWomanVillains Wonder Woman's primary villains]]. She debuted in June of 1944 and too is a gorilla-turned-woman.

* DistressedDude: Fred badly wants to be a lion tamer and while he has the bravery and skill to handle one beast at a time, he only has the bravery to deal with a group. This does not stop him and the first time it goes wrong, he's lucky Paula is present to save him. He hires her as his assistant on the spot and it's only because of her that no further dangerous incidents happen. When she can't make it to his first real performance, inevitably the performance goes awry. Paula-Cheela returns just in time to save him once more.

* MurderTheHypotenuse: Paula realizes that Fred's romantic feelings are wholly and solely for Beth and her mental breakdown over this causes her to revert to her gorilla self, though not before leaving her stuck in a transitional state for about a day. During this time, she stalks Beth and tries to kill her in her room at a boarding house, but Beth wakes before Paula-Cheela strikes. The gorilla girl flees and no other opportunity presents itself before she owes Beth a favor, which she repays by sparing her and Beth's sister.

* OccultDetective: Beth vaguely recognizes Paula-Cheela when the gorilla girl attempts to murder her. From there, she notices the similarities between the causes of death of her fellow boarding house guest, murdered by Beth's would-be killer and Gruen, murdered by Cheela. As astounding as it is, she alone deduces that the gorilla Cheela and the woman Paula are the same entity. Shortly after, a desperate phone call from Dorothy moves her into action.

* RedemptionEqualsDeath: Paula-Cheela has only one real injustice to answer for: the attempted murder of Beth that ended in the real murder of another woman in the boarding house. She is effectively forgiven when she is gunned down giving it her last to save Fred.

[[caption-width-right:350:]]

''Captive Wild Woman'' is a Franchise/UniversalHorror BMovie about a MadScientist whose research into designing life reaches the point where he remodels a [[KillerGorilla gorilla]] into a [[JunglePrincess woman]]. Filming began on December 10, 1942 and the premiere followed on June 4, 1943. Although the eponymous Wild Woman aka Gorilla Girl has predecessors in the Film/BrideOfFrankenstein, Film/DraculasDaughter, and [[Film/TheInvisibleWoman1940 The Invisible Woman]] in terms of Universal's female monster offering, she is the first one not to [[DistaffCounterpart rely on a preceding male monster's fame]] and the only one to have a film series to her name, even if the overall quality is low to lacking. The sequels to ''Captive Wild Woman'' are ''Jungle Woman'' in 1944 and ''Jungle Captive'' in 1945.

On June 29, 1941, Universal placed a teaser ad for for ''Captive Wild Woman'' in ''The Hollywood Reporter''. The ad is silent on both the film's genre and any peculiarities regarding the "The Wild Woman", which makes it a distinct possibility that the original plans weren't for a horror movie. George Waggner was to be the director and November 7, 1941 was the intended release date, neither of which came to pass. Whatever the reasons behind the delay, three horror films released between the teaser and the actual film are assumed to have influenced the final direction of ''Captive Wild Woman'': Universal's own ''[[Film/TheWolfMan1941 The Wolf Man]]'', which revived the studio's reputation of quality horror, Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios's ''Dr. Renault's Secret'', an adaptation of ''Balaoo'' in which science rather than nurture turns a gorilla into a human, and Creator/RKOPictures's ''Film/CatPeople''. ''Cat People'' is the [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent werecat]] answer to ''The Wolf Man'' and was a huge success, but also premiered mere days before filming started for ''Captive Wild Woman''. Therefore, its influence lies mostly in the editing and marketing.

''Captive Wild Woman'' is a Franchise/UniversalHorror BMovie about a MadScientist whose research into designing life reaches the point where he remodels a [[KillerGorilla gorilla]] into a [[JunglePrincess woman]]. Production commenced on December 10, 1942 and the film premiered on June 4, 1943. Although the eponymous Wild Woman aka Gorilla Girl has predecessors in the Film/BrideOfFrankenstein, Film/DraculasDaughter, and [[Film/TheInvisibleWoman1940 The Invisible Woman]] in terms of Universal's female monster offering, she is the first one not to [[DistaffCounterpart rely on a preceding male monster's fame]] and the only one to have a film series to her name, even if the overall quality is low to lacking. The sequels to ''Captive Wild Woman'' are ''Jungle Woman'' in 1944 and ''Jungle Captive'' in 1945.

Plans for ''Captive Wild Woman'' predate June 29, 1941, when Universal placed a teaser ad in ''The Hollywood Reporter''. The ad is silent on both the film's genre and any peculiarities regarding the "The Wild Woman", which makes it a distinct possibility that the original plans weren't for a horror movie. George Waggner was to be the director and November 7, 1941 was the intended release date, neither of which came to pass. Whatever the reasons behind the delay, three horror films released between the teaser and the actual film are assumed to have influenced the final direction of ''Captive Wild Woman'': Universal's own ''[[Film/TheWolfMan1941 The Wolf Man]]'', which revived the studio's reputation of quality horror, Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios's ''Dr. Renault's Secret'', an adaptation of ''Balaoo'' in which science rather than nurture turns a gorilla into a human, and Creator/RKOPictures's ''Film/CatPeople''. ''Cat People'' is the [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent werecat]] answer to ''The Wolf Man'' and was a huge success, but also premiered mere days before filming started for ''Captive Wild Woman''. Therefore, its influence lies mostly in the editing and marketing.

%%* BrainTransplant:

%%* TheSvengali:

* BenevolentBoss: John Whipple cares for every animal and employee of the Whipple Circus. This is why he does not want to give Fred the lion taming act, because he knows that Fred is too inexperienced and will at best get hurt. It's only because Fred keeps insisting and the other lion tamer walks out on the circus that Whipple with equal amounts of hope and reluctance gives him a chance. In fact, the only employee to dislike Whipple is Gruen, who gets fired after repeatedly showing up drunk and harrassing Cheela.

%%* JunglePrincess:

%%* MadDoctor:

%%* RedemptionEqualsDeath:

%%* TheSvengali:

%%* AboveGoodAndEvil:

* CoversAlwaysLie: The posters for ''Captive Wild Woman'' takes design cues from those for ''Cat People''', but fail to duplicate the latters' synchronicity of animal and woman. Instead, the posters for ''Captive Wild Woman'' go for the generic pose of the villain holding the helpless woman, which incorrectly makes it seem that, for one, Cheela and Paula are different beings and that, for two, Cheela is male.

%%* EvilutionaryBiologist

%%* KillerGorilla:

The story commences with the return of Fred Mason (Milburn Stone) to America with new animals for the Whipple Circus. Among them is the intelligent gorilla Cheela (Ray Corrigan), whom Fred and John Whipple (Lloyd Corrigan) have high hopes for. Fred is welcomed home by his fiancée Beth Colman (Evelyn Ankers), whose sister Dorothy (Martha Vickers) has been recently checked in at Crestview Sanatorium to be treated by Dr. Sigmund Walters (Creator/JohnCarradine). Walters visits the Whipple Circus and sets his sights on Cheela as the subject of his next experiment: to turn an animal into a human. For that, he needs Cheela, whom he steals, hormones, which Dorothy produces aplenty, and human brain tissue, for which he murders his assistant Miss Strand (Fay Helm). He gives the gorilla-turned-woman the name Paula Dupree (Acquanetta) and takes her to the Whipple Circus, where it's discovered she's good at staring down animals when she saves Fred from a lion. Fred hires her to assist him in his lion taming act, which Paula devotedly does until she learns that Fred's affection is for Beth. Her raging emotions restore her gorilla form and after a failed attempt to kill Beth, she returns to Walters. Beth too goes to Crestview Sanatorium to save Dorothy after a worrying phone call and Dr. Walters decides to take Beth's brain tissue to recreate Paula. Beth makes a guess that Cheela is done with Walters' painful treatments and frees her. Cheela, indeed, kills the doctor and spares Beth, opting instead to rush to the Whipple Circus where Fred performs his lion taming act without her protection. She is just in time to save him once more, but is gunned down by one of the handlers.

%%* ChekhovsGun:

* {{Corpsing}}: Several times during Paula's tantrum in her dressing room, Acquanetta has to suppress a smile. Two are well visible because she faces the camera and at least two more side-shots also show that the corner of her mouth isn't turned downwards.

%%* DramaticThunder:
%%* EscapedAnimalRampage:

%%* LightningReveal:

* DistressedDude: Fred badly wants to be a lion tamer and while he has the bravery and skill to handle one beast at a time, he only has the bravery to deal with a group. This does not stop him and the first time it goes wrong, he's lucky Paula is present to save him. He hires her as his assistant on the spot and it's only because of her no further dangerous incidents happen. When she can't make it to his first real performance, inevitably the performance goes awry. Paula-Cheela returns just in time to save him once more.

* HopeSpot: Miss Strand holds a grand speech imploring Dr. Walters to cease his experiments before they lead to the death of Dorothy like all the animals he extracted glands from prior did. One of her final arguments is that even if he succeeds and turns the gorilla into a human physically, it will still have the erratic behavior of an animal. Hearing this, Dr. Walters tells her that she's right. However, he's not talking about the ethics of his experiment. Rather, he acknowledges the behavioral issue, to which he adds that that can be dealt with by grafting human brain tissue onto the gorilla's brain. And by his reckoning, Miss Strand will make for an excellent donor to be dearly remembered.

* PluckyComicRelief: There's not much comedy in ''Captive Wild Woman'', but what there is is around 90% courtesy of John Whipple and around 10% courtesy of Curley; the latter having far less screentime than the former. They're both good-natured and well-intentioned men, but a bit klutzy and clumsy.
* ScreamDiscretionShot: Dr. Walters pushes Gruen into Cheela's reach when he's served his purpose. Gruen has never done anything but antagonize her, so she makes short work of him by strangling him with such power that his spinal cord gets severed. None of this is shown. Rather, the camera focusses on Walters's unhinged glee as he watches Gruen beg for mercy. The moment Gruen's corpse drops to the floor, Walter's countenance calms as his gaze follows.

%%* DistressedDude:
%%* DoubleTake:

Plans for ''Captive Wild Woman'' predate June 29, 1941, when Universal placed a teaser ad in ''The Hollywood Reporter''. The ad is silent on both the film's genre and any peculiarities regarding the "The Wild Woman", which makes it a distinct possibility that the original plans weren't for a horror movie. George Waggner was to be the director and November 7, 1941 was the intended release date, neither of which came to pass. Whatever the reasons behind the delay, three horror films released between the teaser and the actual film are assumed to have influenced the final direction of ''Captive Wild Woman'': Universal's own ''[[Film/TheWolfMan1941 The Wolf Man]]'', which revived the studio's quality horror reputation, Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios's ''Dr. Renault's Secret'', an adaptation of ''Balaoo'' in which science rather than nurture turns a gorilla into a human, and Creator/RKOPictures's ''Film/CatPeople''. ''Cat People'' is the [[OurWerebeastsAreDifferent werecat]] answer to ''The Wolf Man'' and was a huge success, but also premiered mere days before filming started for ''Captive Wild Woman''. Therefore, its influence lies mostly in the editing and marketing.

%%* LovelyAssistant:

%%* SecretRoom:
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Plans for ''Captive Wild Woman'' predate June 29, 1941, when Universal placed a teaser ad in ''The Hollywood Reporter''. The ad is silent on both the film's genre and any peculiarities regarding the "The Wild Woman", which makes it a distinct possibility that the original plans weren't for a horror movie. George Waggner was to be the director and November 7, 1941 was the intended release date, neither of which came to pass. Whatever the reasons behind the delay, three horror films released between the teaser and the actual film are assumed to have influenced the final direction of ''Captive Wild Woman'': Universal's own ''[[Film/TheWolfMan1941 The Wolf Man]]'', Creator/TwentiethCenturyStudios's ''Dr. Renault's Secret'', and Creator/RKOPictures's ''Film/CatPeople''.

The story commences with the return of Fred Mason (Milburn Stone) to America with new animals for the Whipple Circus. Among them is the intelligent gorilla Cheela (Ray Corrigan), whom Fred and John Whipple (Lloyd Corrigan) have high hopes for. Fred is welcomed home by his fiancée Beth Colman (Evelyn Ankers), whose sister Dorothy (Martha Vickers) has been recently checked in at Crestview Sanatorium to be treated by Dr. Sigmund Walters (Creator/JohnCarradine). Walters visits the Whipple Circus and sets his sights on Cheela as the subject of his next experiment: to turn an animal into a human. For that, he needs Cheela, whom he steals, hormones, which Dorothy produces aplenty, and human brain tissue, for which he murders his assistant Miss Strand (Fay Helm). He gives the gorilla-turned-woman the name Paula Dupree (Acquanetta) and takes her to the Whipple Circus, where it's discovered she's good at staring down animals when she saves Fred from a lion. Fred hires her to assist him in his lion taming act, which Paula gladly does until she learns that Fred's affection is for Beth. Her raging emotions restore her gorilla form and after a failed attempt to kill Beth, she returns to Walters. Beth too goes to Crestview Sanatorium to save Dorothy after a worrying phone call and Dr. Walters decides to take Beth's brain tissue to recreate Paula. Beth makes a guess that Cheela is done with Walters' painful treatments and frees her. Cheela, indeed, kills the doctor and spares Beth, opting instead to rush to the Whipple Circus where Fred performs his lion taming act without her protection. She is just in time to save him once more, but is shot down by one of the handlers.

The B-plot concerning Fred and his wish to become a lion tamer requires special mention for detrimental reasons. The pre-movie credits praise "Mr. Clyde Beatty for his cooperation and inimitable talent in staging the thrilling animal sequences in this picture." How this is to be understood is that over 15 minutes of footage has been lifted from the 1933 film ''The Big Cage'' and inserted into ''Captive Wild Woman'', which effectively renders Beatty into Mason's stunt double. Hilarious cost-cutting as this may be, it also means the animal cruelty on screen is real. ''Captive Wild Woman'' even includes footage of the infamous tiger-lion fight that ended in the tiger's death.

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* MadScientistLaboratory: Walters has an underground laboratory accessible only through a hidden elevator in his office. He uses his laboratory to experiment with gland transplantations between animals to further his knowledge on how to reshape life to his design. It is the place where Cheela is given her human form.
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