"Well, Moloch, all this only proves half the theory. Insofar we have brought life back to this... hybrid. If she could be transformed into a woman, then I'd have brought back life to a human."
—Mr. Stendahl
Jungle Captive is a Universal Horror B-Movie that marks the end of the Ape Woman trilogy. Filming began on August 31, 1944 and the premiere followed on June 29, 1945. In 1952, Realart reissued the film under the alternative title Wild Jungle Captive. As an Immediate Sequel to 1944's Jungle Woman, Jungle Captive overcomes the Ape Woman's death through an experimental resurrection technique on her relatively fresh corpse, a plot detail that takes inspiration from the real-life experiments performed by Robert Cornish. While one of the Ape Woman films, the story is as much about her as it is a vehicle for Universal's then-upcoming horror star, Rondo Hatton, who plays a variant of the Creeper. Jungle Captive is therefore a singular entry in Universal's Monster Mash efforts of the 1940s.
Jungle Captive was announced in the June 14, 1944 edition of The Exhibitor and other trades at that time, noting that it would once more star Acquanetta. Her contract with Universal expired on July 16, 1944 and was not renewed, either because Acquanetta herself was unhappy being barred from A-movie roles or because Universal learned that she was African-American. Acquanetta's departure led to the casting of Vicky Lane as the Ape Woman Paula Dupree. Another change of actor occured in regards to the role of Ann Forrester. Originally, Betty Bryant was to play her, but due to scheduling and health conflicts she was replaced by Amelita Ward some days after filming started. Some of the cast lists at the time of the film's premiere still mentioned Bryant.
The research project Mr. Stendahl (Otto Kruger) at present devotes himself to is a procedure to return life to corpses by means of a generous blood donation and electricity. With the help of his assistants, Ann Forrester (Amelita Ward) and Donald Young (Phil Brown), he succeeds in resurrecting a rabbit. To take his research to the next stage, Stendahl has his henchman Moloch (Rondo Hatton; Dale Van Sickel as stunt-double) steal the body of the Ape Woman (Vicky Lane) from the morgue so that he can experiment on what is only legally not a human. Stendahl himself lures Ann to his clandestine laboratory to drain her blood for the procedure. The Ape Woman is successfully resurrected, but no longer has access to the human form Stendahl requires. Since Ann survived the procedure, Stendahl uses more of her blood and prepares to transplant her cerebrum to recreate the experiment that originally turned Cheela into Paula Dupree. By this time, Donald comes snooping in search of Ann. Though he is captured, he convinces Moloch, who fancies Ann, to save her. Moloch is shot dead by Stendahl, who is therefore too preoccupied to notice when Paula escapes her binds. She murders him and prepares to slaughter a defenseless Ann, but the Ape Woman is once more brought to an end by a police bullet when Detective Harrigan (Jerome Cowan) arrives while investigating Stendahl's shady activities.
The Ape Woman trilogy as a whole owes its designation to Jungle Captive, which is the film that introduces the term "Ape Woman" to describe its main attraction. Previous terms were utilized solely in the marketing material, while "Ape Woman" is regularly used in the actual story. It is somewhat incongruous, then, that Jungle Captive also is the only film of the three in which the Ape Woman's gorilla form has no part whatsoever. The only acknowledgement of Cheela is a note by Dr. Walters that requires knowledge of 1943's Captive Wild Woman to be understood.
Jungle Captive features Vicky Lane's only billed role after her performance in Inflation. Because the Ape Woman series ended with this film, Lane's role as Paula took her no further and she left her Hollywood career behind in favor of other media. Hatton's part in the film is an effort to bridge the time until Universal could start production on the Creeper series. The delay of a year meant that Hatton would make those films but not live to see them, Jungle Captive being his last prehumously released film. Jack Pierce, who would be let go by Universal within two years, updated the makeup used for the Ape Woman's transitional state for this film and made it more reliant on latex. The director for the last Ape Woman film was Harold Young.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: Mr. Stendahl is an ambitious man whose sense of morality is squarely focussed on what benefits him, but that all has no bearing on his mild-mannered nature. Thus, he is always polite, patient, and gracious, even when it comes to killing people or having them killed.
- All in the Eyes: All posters for Jungle Captive depict Paula Dupree with a light beam falling over her eyes to make her look intimidating.
- Artistic License – Biology: Stendahl can revive corpses with blood donations and electricity to get the heart going. The only condition suggested is that the corpse is intact, so death by poison should always be eligible for undoing regardles of the tissue damage it actually causes. There's also only one chance to get the procedure right. If the heart doesn't continue pumping when the electric stimulation is removed, the corpse can no longer be revived. No explanation is given as to why there are no retries nor is it addressed if the procedure won't work a second time either if it worked the first time but the patient died due to another reason.
- Beneath Suspicion: Mr. Stendahl both is and isn't too meek to draw suspicion. On one hand, his assistants Ann and Don do not for a second consider he might have something to do with the Ape Woman's disappearance despite their knowledge that the clues lead back to their laboratory and their confidence in each other's innocence. The same seems to be true for Detective Harrigan, who targets Don as his main suspect and never even questions Stendahl. It isn't until Don's involvement becomes unlikely that Harrigan's attention turns to Stendahl and by that point he continues to act like he doesn't suspect him to gain the upper hand.
- Blood Transfusion Plot: Stendahl has developed a method to resurrect intact dead bodies by filling the veins with fresh donor blood and applying an electric current to the heart. The amount of blood needed is such that if one donor is used for one corpse, odds are the donor perishes. Still, the procedure is promising if it can be proven to work for humans. To this end, Stendahl has the corpse of the Ape Woman stolen from the morgue and personally abducts Ann to drain her blood to resurrect the Ape Woman. The experiment is a success and Stendahl even manages to keep Ann alive. This proves in his best interest soon after, because, though alive, the Ape Woman is stuck in her transitional state because her human tissue's been damaged. Ann, therefore, gets to play blood donor a second time in a recreation of Dr. Walters's experiment that turned Cheela into Paula in the first place. Ann survives this too, but very barely.
- Bridal Carry: In the immediate aftermath of her second donation of blood, Ann is physically incapacitated. When an opportunity to escape arises when Stendahl has to recapture the Ape Woman, Don picks her up bridal style and carries her out of the house. The gate is locked, however, and they're easily recaptured.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Mr. Stendahl follow in the footsteps of Dr. Walters and Dr. Fletcher. Dr. Walters is the man who turned Cheela into Paula and all throughout was openly sadistic about everything he needed to do to make his experiment a success. Dr. Fletcher was not actually an antagonist, but presented as such in the opening scenes as the man who openly admitted to causing the death of Paula. In truth, he was a gentle soul who wanted to help Cheela and Paula but in doing so unwittingly allowed her to terrorize the sanatorium. Mr. Stendahl, who unlike the other two ostensibly is not a doctor, mixes Walters' goal-oriented lack of moral compass with Fletcher's meek personality. He stays an effective villain by having a henchman, the powerful and deformed Moloch, to do the dirty work for him.
- Conveniently Placed Sharp Thing: Don gets tied up to a chair in Stendahl's laboratory where he keeps a lot of thick glass jars filled with chemicals. The moment he's not being watched anymore, Don knocks over a jar and lets himself fall to the ground so he can cut himself free on the shards. Despite the chemical causing a steady stream of smoke for the entire time Don works on freeing himself, it is apparently harmless to be in contact with.
- Chekhov's Gun: Don gifts Anne his Chi-Delta-Chi fraternity pin as a substitute for an engagement ring. Ann wears it dutifully, but its stolen from her by Moloch some time into her captivity at 413 Old Orchard Road. Moloch wears it himself from then on, presumably as a reminder of Ann, on whom he has developed a crush. And with the fraternity pin on, he walks into Stendahl's office to ask Don about his whereabouts. Don notices the pin and realizes that the man before him knows where Ann is and that Stendahl is involved in her disappearance.
- Cross-Referenced Titles: The first film is called Captive Wild Woman. The second film is called Jungle Woman. And the third film ties it all together by being called (Wild) Jungle Captive.
- Cute Mute: Due to her human cerebrum and glands having lost their humanizing effect on Paula after all she's been through, Paula is stuck in her transitional form. Stendahl brings back her human appearance by filling her veins with Ann's blood, but without a proper cerebrum Paula is back to being a pretty woman who cannot speak and regularly zones out.
- Demoted to Extra: The series' central character, the Ape Woman, is reduced to a plot device and barely gets anything to do. She's dead or unconscious for most of her onscreen presence and the danger she normally poses is provided by Moloch the Brute instead.
- Destroy the Evidence: Moloch drives the hearse with the Ape Woman's corpse inside to his own car hidden nearby a steep cliff. He moves the body to his own car and drives the hearse over the cliff so it goes up in flames. The problem with this plan, in the end, is that the hearse and its contents don't burn completely and remain identifiable. And this means that when Harrigan learns that Stendahl owns the house at 413 Old Orchard Road, he knows to look there for the Ape Woman because it's close to where the hearse was found.
- The Dog Bites Back: Stendahl manages to incur the wrath of both of the film's monsters. He regularly insults and demeans Moloch, who is too simple-minded to stand up against his boss. The breaking point comes when Stendahl promises the smitten Moloch that he won't hurt Ann anymore and prepares to use her in an operation that will kill her anyway. Moloch attacks Stendahl, but is shot dead. Yet the ruckus distracts Stendahl from Paula's situation. She is waking up and reverting to her more aggressive transitional state. Considering her bad history with doctors, the fact he's kept her imprisoned, and the fact he's whipped her when she wouldn't obey, the moment she spots Stendahl with his back turned towards her she goes in for the kill.
- Establishing Character Moment: Stendahl explains to Ann that he had to obtain the Ape Woman's corpse because he very well can't experiment on an actual human. Ann counters that he committed a murder to get the corpse anyway. His reply is "Oh, yes," establishing how messed up his moral compass and reasoning are and that, despite his soft-spoken demeanor, he is a dangerous man.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: Moloch drives the hearse of a cliff to cover his tracks. It explodes and goes up in flames after the first tumble.
- Eyedscreen: As Ann reads the newspaper article on the theft of the corpse of the Ape Woman, two transparent dark bars cover the screen except for the line "The only evidence police have to go on is a white surgical smock found near the burned [ambulance]." This clues Ann in on the fact that the detective that came by with a smock earlier and asked Donald to try it on suspects him of the theft.
- First Law of Resurrection: Paula died from a tranquilizer overdose in Jungle Woman. In Jungle Captive, Stendahl oh-so-fortunately perfects his resurrection procedure mere days after Paula's death. Her corpse makes for the perfect approximation of a human test subject for Stendahl to demonstrate the applicability of the procedure with.
- Gave Up Too Soon: An agent of the homicide squad shadows Don when at first he seems a reasonable suspect for the theft of the Ape Woman's corpse and the murder on the morgue clerk. In doing so, they discover that Don is innocent and divert their efforts elsewhere shortly before Don realizes that Stendahl is up to no good and stalks his henchman to their hideout where the Ape Woman is kept.
- Grave Robbing: On Stendahl's orders, Moloch goes to the morgue to acquire the Ape Woman's corpse. The basic plan is non-violent, with him pretending to get the corpse for the city medical college for a planned autopsy. However, for security reasons the clerk has to make a call to double-check, so Moloch kills him to prevent intervention. He hides the clerk's body in drawer 87 after taking the Ape Woman's corpse from it and orders a hearse. Upon its arrival, he ambushes and locks up the drivers, loads the Ape Woman's corpse into the hearse, and drives off.
- Happily Ever After: After everything they've gone through, Ann and Don prepone their marriage even though there's still no money for a proper ring or, for that matter, a honeymoon. Detective Harrigan surprises them with a paid-for honeymoon at Niagara Falls.
- Hard-Work Montage: There are two operation montages, the first covering the resurrection of the Ape Woman and the second covering the Ape Woman's redo-operation to bring back Paula. The first consists of choice moments of the procedure fading from one into the other and ending on a clock striking 3:00. The second is much the same, but now throughout the montage a moving clock is visible that starts at 9:00 and ends past 3:00.
- I Have Many Names: The central monster of the Ape Woman trilogy goes by three different names tied to her three different forms. Cheela is the name of the gorilla. Paula Dupree is the name of the human. And the transitional form between them is the Ape Woman proper.
- Idiot Ball: Stendahl and Moloch intercept the Ape Woman when she makes her first escape attempt by climbing out of her room on the first floor and killing a dog. Do they lock her up somewhere else after that? No. Do they board up the window? No. Do they take any measures whatsoever to prevent her from climbing out of her room and walking off a second time? No. Does Paula escape 413 Old Orchard Road by climbing out of her room and walking off? Yes.
- The Igor: Moloch is a simple-minded man with a deformed face. He works for Stendahl as a henchman and takes care of all the dirty work his boss can't attend to. Their relationship is amicable on the surface, but Stendahl insults him regularly and Moloch doesn't have the capacity to stand up for himself. One particular cruel moment is when Ann is being prepared to donate her blood to Paula. Moloch has developed a crush on Ann and inquires if she'll live. Stendahl replies that it's none of his concern because Ann is way out of his league and if he seeks female company, the Ape Woman is a more suitable pick. In the end, it's when Stendahl breaks his promise not to hurt Ann anymore that Moloch finally retaliates, only to be shot dead by his boss without a second thought.
- Jungle Princess: The Ape Woman started life as an exceptionally intelligent gorilla, Cheela, from the Belgian Congo. Brought over to the United States, she is turned into a human, Paula Dupree, by means of human hormone and cerebrum transplants. She died from a lethal dose of tranquilizer, but is brought back to life with science and soon after given a new hormone donation to bring back her human self Paula Dupree. However, as a human she's not all there anymore due to damage to her human cerebrum. She's killed before she receives a new one (or her old one heals).
- Killer Gorilla: Following her death and resurrection, the Ape Woman no longer has access to her human form Paula Dupree due to damage to her human hormones and cerebrum. Rather than fully reverting to her gorilla self Cheela, she is stuck in-between the two forms. Stendahl, who brought her back to life, gives her new hormones and prepares to get her a new cerebrum, but at this point the Ape Woman just wants to no longer be a scientist's plaything and kills both Stendahl and one of his guard dogs to achieve freedom. She does, however, also prepare to kill her would-be donor Ann, for which she's gunned down.
- Lured into a Trap: In light of Don being off on another job, Stendahl asks Ann to come with him to assist with an emergency request by Dr. Kellogg. There isn't any such request. It is an excuse to abduct either Don or Ann to Stendahl's clandestine laboratory to serve as a blood donor in the experiment to return life to the Ape Woman's corpse. It isn't until Stendahl shows her the Ape Woman that Ann is given reason to be afraid of Stendahl, but by then there's no escape anymore.
- Mad Scientist: Stendahl is keen on vindicating himself and his technique to resurrect the dead after being mocked for it by the scientific community. His research starts out within reason, but once he reaches the point that he has to prove the effectiveness of his technique on a human being, all reason is thrown out as long as he achieves his goal. One man is killed to obtain the Ape Woman's corpse and Stendahl uses his own assistant to obtain the blood necessary to restore life to the Ape Woman. Even when he succeeds there, he is unsatisfied until he can make the Ape Woman human again. For this, he has his henchman steal Dr. Walters' notes and in the process Dr. Fletcher is killed. Would Stendahl not have been killed himself, he would've murdered Ann for her cerebrum and Don for being a witness too.
- Mad Scientist Laboratory: Stendahl owns 413 Old Orchard Road, a house a few hours out of town with no immediate neighbors. It is here that he has set up a laboratory for scientific endeavors that he better keeps to himself. His henchman Moloch manages the property in Stendahl's absence.
- Monster Mash: During the 1940s, Universal brought various of its monsters together in one continuity for a total of four movies. The Ape Woman and the Creeper were not among the invitees, but Jungle Captive brings them together in their own mash. The Ape Woman is the same character from the previous movies, while the Creeper, here billed as Moloch the Brute, continues to dress and act the same as all other uses of the character without being the same character.
- Never One Murder: Stendahl wants the Ape Woman's corpse because it would be unethical and/or socially unacceptable to experiment on a true human. This does not change anything about the admissibility of murder to obtain the corpse or anything else relating to the experiment. The first death is the clerk at the morgue when he makes a security check. The second death is Dr. Fletcher, who happens to walk into his office while Moloch is looking for Dr. Walters' notes. Ann would've been the third death, because after surviving two involuntary blood donations, she's the easiest body for Stendahl to acquire a human cerebrum from to complete the Ape Woman's change into Paula. Stendahl dies before he can make the first cut, though, which also spares Don, who would've been a pesky witness to Stendahl's latest crime otherwise.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Having just been brought back from the dead after already having suffered a near-death experience once before, Paula is literally broken. Her human cerebrum and glands no longer work and she's stuck as the Ape Woman. After unwillingly being given a fresh batch of hormones, she becomes Paula again, but she has barely any mental capacity going for her. All of her actions at this point are aimed at escaping her predicament.
- The Nth Doctor: Vicky Lane replaces Acquanetta as the actress to portray Paula Dupree. The film explains the change in her appearance as being the result of her having a new blood donor for her human form.
- Our Werebeasts Are Different: The Ape Woman is a reverse were-gorilla: a gorilla turned into a human by science. It starts out with Cheela's permanent change to Paula due to a surgery, but as the transplanted human tissue settles she becomes able to change freely. There are three states between which she flows: the gorilla Cheela, the human Paula, and a transitional state, the Ape Woman proper, in which her silhouette is like a human but her appearance is like a gorilla.
- Partial Transformation: Technically, "Ape Woman" does not refer to the whole creature, but specifically the transitional state that is neither the gorilla Cheela nor the human Paula. She was never supposed to have this form as it is one that emerges when her body gets damaged and the human tissue of the initial surgery that turned her from Cheela to Paula loses its effectiveness. That said, for a time she is able to freely change between forms.
- Replaced with Replica: Moloch could've stolen the Ape Woman's corpse peacefully, but an unforeseen circumstance prompts him to murder the morgue clerk. With one corpse to take with him and another to hide, he stuffs the clerk's corpse in drawer 87 after he gets the Ape Woman's out of it.
- Retcon: Jungle Captive makes a lot of references to the events of the Captive Wild Woman, but the details are changed.
- In Captive Wild Woman, animals inherently fear Paula. Jungle Captive opens with this premise when the corpse of the Ape Woman makes a guard dog step back, but later in the film the guard dogs don't fear her at all.
- Jungle Captive establishes that blood from any (female) human contains enough hormones to change Cheela into Paula. However, in Captive Wild Woman, the donor, Dorothy Colman, had a glandular disorder that made her produce an excessive amount of hormones. Dr. Walters specifically got a cerebrum elsewhere because he couldn't afford to kill Dorothy due to her unique value as a blood donor.
- In Captive Wild Woman, Dr. Walters kept a journal of his Ape Woman experiments. This journal was curiously not brought up in Jungle Woman, despite Dr. Fletcher having obtained all of Dr. Walters' scientific possessions. In Jungle Captive, Dr. Fletcher is established to have Walters' notes in his possession all along. On top of that, the notes no longer are written in a journal, but are loose typed notes stored in a file cabinet.
- The Simple Gesture Wins: Don is a student and still has some years to go before he can claim his title. As such, he does not have the money to buy Anne an engagement ring even though their courtship is ready to become an engagement. The best Don therefore can do is gift Ann his Chi-Delta-Chi fraternity pin as a substitute for a proper ring. Ann is very happy with the gesture and accepts the engagement.
- Spinning Paper: There are two shots of a newspaper, each after a murder has been committed.
- The first occurs in response to the murder on the morgue clerk and shows the front page of The Star Dispatch with the headline "Ape Woman's Body Stolen From Morgue". The sub-headline reads "Attendant Found Murdered". It's placed amidst articles on various subjects: "Council to Vote on Park Plan", "Baby Mastodon's Bones Dug Up in Bloomfield Hills", "Board Head to Speak", "Conference on Current Problems", "Prepaid Taxes Reach Highest Point in History", "Trio Arrested, $200 Robbery", "Governor Returns", and "Record Set in Flight in Airship".
- The second occurs in response to the murder on Dr. Fletcher and shows the front page of The Daily Record Post with the headline "Dr. Carl Fletcher Murdered". The sub-headline reads "Medical Records Stolen". It's placed amidst articles on various subjects: "Ballot Awaited Today After Amendments", "Plane Lost a Year Ago in Andes Still Untraced", "Federal Reserve Reports Changes", "City Aide Nabbed As Tipsy Driver, Denies Accident", "Bill Aids Owner on Foreclosure", "Limited Farm Bill Favored", and "Racket Murder Defendants to Take the Stand".
- Stock Footage: Unlike the previous two films, Jungle Captive barely incorporates stock footage. It is used no more than twice: the shot of the Ape Woman's corpse at the morgue is reused from Jungle Woman and the transformation of her hands is reused from Captive Wild Woman.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Jungle Captive can't take place more than a few days after Jungle Woman, which happily ended with Dr. Carl Fletcher being exonerated at the conclusion of a coroner's inquest regarding the death of Paula Dupree. The happiness is stomped into the ground by Jungle Captive, because Moloch murders Dr. Fletcher when he searches his office for Dr. Walters' papers on Paula.
- Tap on the Head: To stop Don's struggling when he's tying him up, Moloch knocks him on the back of his head. Don goes unconscious for less than a minute, giving Moloch time to secure him while not taking away from Stendahl's opportunity to taunt him.
- They Called Me Mad!: Upon reviving the Ape Woman, Mr. Stendahl tellingly exclaims: "This is what I've dreamed of. Now let the doctors laugh at my theories. Here's the proof!" The part about "the doctors" stands out because Stendahl himself doesn't have a title, which undoubtedly fuels his ruthless pursuit of perfecting his resurrection procedure as a means to prove himself.
- Wakeup Makeup: The Ape Woman awakens as the human Paula Dupree after being given new donor hormones. Her as-is post-gorilla look consists of a fancy haircut, trimmed eyebrows, lipstick, and some rouge.
