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6 Degrees Entertainment

Night of the Bloody Apes w/ Doctor of Doom
(José Elías Moreno, Carlos López Moctezuma, Armando Silvestre, et al / Blu-ray + DVD / NR / 2021 / VCI Entertainment - MVD Visual)

Overview: Night of the Bloody Apes is a remake of Cardona’s Doctor of Doom (1962), spiced with women, medical footage, women wrestling, and cheap gore shots!

Female masked wrestler Lucy (who looks like the devil) beats the stuffing out of an opponent - a wrestling lady with a red costume like Catwoman.

Lucy finally hurls her opponent from the squared circle and knocks her out cold. Although Lucy’s cop boyfriend tries to convince her that it’s all part of the show, Lucy can no longer handle the stress of wrestling.

Meanwhile, a mad scientist (Dr. Krellman) attempts to cure his son’s leukemia by doing the first ape-to-human heart transplant. He decides to put a gorilla’s heart into the lad and orders his flunky to prepare the gorilla!

Oh, and there is actual footage of a graphic open-heart surgery inserted in the ape operation scenes! This of course causes the boy to turn into a big stinky man-ape.

He becomes deformed and mutated, as he sprouts excessive facial hair and takes on the characteristics of the organ’s donor, who immediately goes on a bloody rampage, tearing clothes off women and faces off men!

Blu-ray Verdict: The Mexican Ed Wood, Rene Cardona, struck again, and how in Night of the Bloody Apes, a Mexploitation classic!

But from the off, let us get a few things straight first. There is only yhr one bloody ape, not several and he is not even an ape! He is a half-ape suffering from incurable leukemia!

The son (Agustín Martínez Solares) of a surgeon, he is close to death when Dad (Armando Silvestre) decides to kidnap a local ape and replace his brain and blood with that of the apes.

Of course, things don’t work out as planned, so Mr. Half Ape goes on a modest rampage where he rapes and kills! After he is caught by Dad and Goyo, a Mexican version of Dr. Frankenstein’s Igor, the son returns to his former state while Dad figures out what to do next.

OK, sure, the film is totally incompetent, stuffed with ludicrous dialog, unbelievable situations and graphic, amateurishly shot violence, but wow, what a beautiful, so-called at the time video nasty it sure is!

As noted, there is some real surgery footage included, some copious and gratuitous nudity, a wrestling sidebar, a scalping that Lustig’s Maniac later mimicked, eye gouging that Fulci would have been proud of, and a crazy, overused wipe between scenes!

To give you an idea of what you are in for, the Bloody Ape mumbles and has protruding fangs and in one scene he chases a female wrestler/detective’s girlfriend in his pajamas!

In another, he takes pity on a little girl and carries her to the edge of a building. The music is repetitive, set to Hysterical mode most of the time, and the performances waver between awful and barely believable, and yet you just cannot take your eyes of this film!

Thus, and in closing, the entertainment factor is high, for the film is never less than amusing, is never slow paced, and has a certain innocence and warmth about it. Experience it for yourself, please, I urge you, especially now that it is here on Blu-ray via a wondrous 4K Uncut Version from MVD Visual (which also contains the DVD of the original Doctor Doom!] This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.78:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs that comes with the Special Features of:

Commentary Track by Travis Crawford Contributing Writer, Filmmaker, Film Comment, The Calvert Journal
Video Essay on Night of the Bloody Apes and Doctor of Doom by Dr. David Wilt, Systems Librarian, University Libraries, University of Maryland and Professorial Lecturer in Film Studies and The George Washington University Original Theatrical Trailers
Extensive Photo & Poster Gallery
Liner Notes by Dr. David Wilt and Doctor of Doom by Dr. David Wilt, Systems Librarian, University Libraries, University of Maryland and Professorial Lecturer in Film Studies, The George Washington University
2-Sided Coverwrap - one traditional and one that is a Video Nasty!

www.VCIentertainment.com

www.MVDvisual.com





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