Too many fans seem to be blown away

Purely Joyful Movie!

hyped garbage

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

first off I really don't think that the producers, or director ever meant this movie to be funny,, I loved the old house and the set pieces,, the ape was fun too , because you never really know if he is gonna escape or not,, I love the hairy hand creeping in from behind the headboard you never really get quite a handle on who the killer really is till near the end of the movie,, yes the movie was not scary, but like I said I really don't imagine that they intended it to be that way, this movie however is full of laughs, and it sure kept me guessing thru most of the movie. I just love these old 1930's horror flicks something about them just makes you wish that Hollywood would go back to making some original stories full of black and white.

I have an original Mexican lobbycard of this oldie-but-not-goldie dark house thriller with a terrific illustration (not seen in American publicity materials as far as I am aware) of a very scary giant (King Kong-size!) ape, but, alas, no such monster appears in the movie. The on screen credits are superimposed over an illustration of a gorilla carrying a damsel-in-distress, but, alas, no such scene is in the movie either! There is only a chimpanzee locked up in a basement cage. The opening scenes when a potential heiress is awaited in a mansion where a will is to be read seemed somewhat promising with one or two nicely lit compositions and the actress playing the housemaid was a welcome presence. Yet it turned out that, 95 percent of the movie's brief running time (one hour), until a meaningless but mildly exploitative climax, consisted of people talking standing or sitting in rooms or moving in between rooms where they will talk sitting or standing!.. It would have helped if the "ape" in the basement cage was a man-in-gorilla-costume and not a chimpanzee. I have a feeling that at some stage, the original screenplay entailed something more than it was filmed. Who was the housemaid referring to when she told her son to lock up all the doors and windows against? To whom did the hairy hand belong? Not the killer as it is revealed.. It should also be noted that there is a pretty racist portrayal of a black driver as a foolish and timid folk, made worse by a pun where he acknowledges that he is related to apes. Worth looking only for those studying racism in American cinema, falls flat on all other departments, so boring that not even so-bad-so-good.

Sorry for my bad English :(This movie wants to be some many things at the time, and fails in every aspect, tries to be as Dracula or Frankenstein, tries to be a detective movie, a Gothic tale, a suspenseful movie ad scary, but none of this ones works, first the plot is ridiculous, a group of people stay in a old dark house to read the will of a relative and then strange things began to happen they all think is the ape of the dead relative, in the end the ape is controlled by three of the people to kill the others and stay with the money, which is ridiculous, so the story doesn't work and is rejected by major studios, but they still want to make the movie, so they make it independent, plus the develop of the script also has some plot holes and things that just don't make sense like the part the fiancée of the leading girl starts asking questions like a detective to a guy just because he found his cigarette, or the leading girl that screams the whole movie to take her out of the house, but they don't even try to get out, after all what just happened, or again the leading girl, screaming because she found a corpse in her bed, and just minutes later she sleeps in the same place the body was found, come on all this is ridiculous and i am not telling everything.From that we get the second point, the low-budget, you can see the movie is obviously cheap, because of the special effects, the setting and the actors, the killer hand of the monkey doesn't even look like the real monkey, it makes no sense, the setting tries to be Gothic and creepy but it is not, and the acting is laughable, the leading girl is always hysterical and in tow seconds she is smiling or laughing, Hans tries to be creepy, but it ends being laughable, and its a little bit racist, the only black character in the movie is the one with no intelligence. In the end its a bad low-budget movie that tries to be like Dracula or Frankenstain, this movie is just too simple, if you want to see a real Gothic old dark house movie go watch The Old Dark House, the 1932 version, directed by James Whale.5.1/10

The owner dies and leaves his fortune to his daughter (Vera Reynolds), but the brother (Sheldon Lewis) wants it for himself and the son (Oscar nominee Mischa Auer) he is hiding. He plans to have the son eliminate everyone so he can grab the riches.The plan goes awry when the son kills his mother (Martha Mattox) by mistake. He turns on his father and tries to kill the daughter.It was a weird little film, just out of the silent era, and there was more talking than anything.Of course, they have the stereotypical black chauffeur (Willie Best, who was listed in the credits as Sleep 'n' Eat). I kid you not! I last remember Best from High Sierra. He has a long career with numerous roles, probably many of them doing that stereotypical frightened black man.Not very scary for a haunted house.