Timid and distracted Dr. Carl Fletcher (J. Carrol Naish) is accused of murdering a woman, and an inquest is called. Fletcher, animal trainer Fred Mason (Milburn Stone), and his wife Dorothy (Martha Vickers) testify that Cheela the gorilla survived the bullet wound and has been kept by Fletcher. After a time Cheela disappeared and Paula (Acquanetta) appeared. Fletcher’s daughter, Joan (Lois Collier) visits her father at the sanitarium, with her finance, Bob (Richard Davis). Paula because possessive of Bob and Joan becomes catty and soon there is murder.
Captive Wild Woman wasn’t a big hit, but it was cheap, so Universal made this sequel, with the flashbacks allowing the use of footage from the previous film, including scenes of lions and tigers originally shot for The Big Cage (1933). Oddly the footage of animals looks worse here then in Captive Wild Woman; my guess is that they didn’t go back to the original negative, but took it from a print of Captive Wild Woman.
Most of the connecting tissue is irrelevant. There’s no reason for Fred or Dorothy to be in the film except to use up some run time. And there few new lines are odd. Fred now says that African natives talked of scientists combining humans and animals and that Cheela was the result. That gives us two origin stories. Then there is Dorothy, who apparently never told anyone that Dr. Walters, in an attempt to bring back Paula, had threatened to kill her and that Dorothy released the gorilla so that it would kill him. Seems like something that would have come up previously.
What’s new is overly simple and dull. Fletcher is a placid protagonist, and Bob and Joan are exactly the type of white-bread young couple that plagued poorly written films. Actor Richard Davis made two films, both in 1944, and no more. That was probably for the best.
Which leaves the Ape Woman and Acquanetta as the draws. Unfortunately, this time we only get the were-ape makeup when she’s laying on a slab. And Acquanetta has none of the charisma that she oozed in the first film. I suspect that is due to direction, as she walks around in a trance and speaks in a monotone (yes, she speaks in this film). I doubt it helped that Director Reginald LeBorg thought the project was terrible and only made the film because he felt he had no choice. Acquanetta believed the studio was not selling the movie, but was selling her, so she left Universal.
One or two nicely constructed scenes (such as the canoe being tipped over by a swimming were-ape) are not enough to make this an enjoyable viewing experience, but it sold enough tickets for Universal to produce yet another sequel (The Jungle Captive), though with a new actress as the Ape Woman.