Mad-scientist Mr. Stendahl (Otto Kruger), with the help of two excessively dim, young assistants, and the film’s love interests, Don (Phil Brown) & Anne (Amelita Ward), has brought a rabbit back to life, and now wants to try and something more complex: Paula/The Ape Woman (Vicky Lane). His hulking henchman Moloch (Rondo Hatton) steals the body, and soon Paula is back thanks to some of Anne’s blood. With dead bodies stacking up, Detective W.L. Harrigan (Jerome Cowan) is on Stendahl’s trail.
The third and final film in the Jungle Woman series is better than the second, but is also odd. For a film about a were-ape, the creature is hardly in the film, and could have been replaced by any MacGoffin. That’s not how you add a new monster to your roster. Stendahl and Moloch are the villains, and the main characters.
Luckily, those two are entertaining. They are evil with a capital E, and also funny, even if it is dark humor. The picture works off of the two of them chatting. The dialog here is by far the best in the series, which is helpful as the story isn’t much. But it’s a step up from the second entry in that it has a story. Kruger is an actor I always enjoy. He brings that bit extra, a twinkle in his eye as he is very calmly doing terrible things. Hatton (probably best remembered as the Creeper in Sherlock Holmes and The Pearl of Death) suffered from agromegaly, which gave him gigantism, making him an obvious choice for any producer looking for a brute. I’m not sure if Hatton was a good actor, or if his gentle personality just show through, but either way, he is an asset here.
For a change, the detective is good at his job, and I have a real soft spot for Jerome Cowan. He makes me smile.
As for the rest of the cast, they do their job. No attempt was made to find an actress who looked anything like Acquanetta for Paula, and while Lane might be more beautiful, she lacks those eye that pulled me in. But then this Paula is in a trance for the few moments she’s active in the film, so it doesn’t matter much who’s playing her. The two young lovers are there just because most low budget films had such characters, but these two bother me less than many others. Trivia: Phil Brown would finally become famous 32 years later as Uncle Owen in Star Wars.
The Jungle Captive doesn’t feel like a Universal Monster movie, but like a Poverty Row quicky, but a better than average Poverty Row quickey, for what that’s worth.
The previous films were Captive Wild Woman (1943) and Jungle Woman (1944)