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Really Surprised!

Just what I expected

As Good As It Gets

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This is an interesting film where they took a film noir plot and transplanted it (pun intended) into a monster movie. So a nice guy from a small town goes looking for his sister who has been tricked into a 'white slavery' ring (They never do outright say, "Prostitution" because Hayes Board and stuff) and ends up getting framed for the murder of a gangster by rival gangsters. The hilarity begins when Mad Scientist George Zucco transplants the nice guy's brain into the body of a gorilla, because that never goes badly in these kinds of movies. The movie then proceeds as the gangster's henchmen are slowly picked off by the Gorilla, which has mysteriously acquired stealth ninja skills in addition to being, you know, a gorilla. Kudos to the guy in the monkey suit, as he pulls off his scenes with a bit of pathos, like when he encounters his old dog who knows its him. This movie has a lot of really nice touches like that, but it's mostly just fun cheese. I also think it is interesting as a snapshot of how society was back then, not being able to talk frankly about sex but lots of smoking scenes.

Back in its salad days Paramount was a studio that did not go in much for the horror genre. So this film The Monster And The Girl is something of an anomaly for them. I'm sure Cecil B. DeMille, Preston Sturges, or Mitchell Leisen never had this script on their desks.Philip Terry gets framed by Paul Lukas and his mob for murder and despite the earnest pleas of girl friend Ellen Drew gets sentenced to die. Dr. George Zucco in one of his patented mad scientist roles asks Terry for the use of his brain after he's deceased and Terry agrees to it.After Dr. Zucco transplants Terry's brain, strange things are happening. Like the gorilla with the Terry brain inside and that brain has some scores to settle. Settle them the Terry gorilla does and in a most gruesome manner.Perhaps had Universal done this one it might rate as a classic as they knew how to serve these up. Still despite some mediocre production values The Monster And The Girl should satisfy the die-hard fans of the horror genre.

I learned about this movie from a sidebar to an article on "horror noir" in Films in Review, where it was highly recommended.It does mix horror and film noir in its own peculiar fashion. It starts off more noir than horror. A woman addresses the camera, surrounded by smoke or fog, to tell us a tale. We're taken to a courtroom, where a stoic man is being tried for murder. The woman from the introduction enters the court as a spectator, and a couple of the other spectators call attention to her.The man on trial doesn't say much in his defense, speaking in a monotone. The woman jumps up to insist on speaking. She seems like a tough dame, and it turns out she's the man's sister. What she says doesn't help much, and she isn't a credible witness; it's implied she's a prostitute.Through a flashback to better days, we see the siblings when they were much more animated and happy. She wanted to leave their small town, but when she goes to the city she finds it hard to get work. She meets a man she falls in love with, and gets married, but when she wakes up after a party on her wedding night, he's disappeared. A strange man is in her bedroom informing her how much she owes for the room and party, and offers her work in a cabaret entertaining men...The brother goes to the city to find the missing husband, and gets framed for murder by a criminal conspiracy by the men his sister now works for. Back in the courtroom, he's convicted, vows revenge, and is executed, but not before he agrees to donate his brain to science.Post-mortem, his brain is implanted into an ape. It's not clear what the scientist hopes to accomplish by that. Something about evolution, perhaps seeing what the ape's potential is if its brain is upgraded. For some reason, the scientist seems to expect an intelligent ape, rather than a man's mind in an ape's body. It isn't clear to what extent the executed man's brain retains its personality or memories, but the ape does carry out his vow of revenge, and his own dog seems to recognize him.There were several other primate horror movies Universal made, among them the three titles in the Paula the Ape Woman series: Captive Wild Woman (1943), Jungle Woman (1944/I), Jungle Captive, The (1945), and then the Bela Lugosi film Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). It's a funny thing about primates and horror, they go back pretty far. The Doctor's Experiment, The Professor's Secret, and The Monkey Man (all 1908) are three of the earliest ones, the latter one even involving a brain transplant!

There are some good things in this film. No, it's not a masterpiece, but director Stuart Heisler worked wonders with the story, which I found strangely emotional and tragic rather than horrific; overall, an offbeat and quite satisfactory way to do a horror movie.