The Ape: Boris Karloff, Maris Wrixon, Gertrude Hoffman (1940 Horror Movie)

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The Ape is a 1940 American horror film made for Monogram Pictures, co-written by Curt Siodmak and starring Boris Karloff.

Dr. Bernard Adrian is a kindly mad scientist who seeks to cure a young woman's polio. He needs spinal fluid from a human to complete the formula for his experimental serum. Meanwhile, a vicious circus ape has broken out of its cage, and is terrorizing the townspeople.

The Ape eventually breaks into Dr. Adrian's lab. The Doctor manages to kill it before any harm can come to himself. However, the spinal fluids he requires to perform his experiments have all been destroyed during the struggle between him and the Ape.

Doctor Adrian then concocts an idea: he will tear off the ape's flesh and use its skin to disguise himself as the escaped circus animal and murder townspeople in order to extract their spinal fluid. Thus the murders will be blamed on the Ape and he, himself, will manage to avoid any suspicion.

However, one of his attacks towards the film's end is unsuccessful; he is fatally knifed and the Ape's "true identity" is revealed.

Cast Boris Karloff - Dr. Bernard Adrian Maris Wrixon - Miss Frances Clifford Gene O'Donnell - Danny Foster Dorothy Vaughan - Mother Clifford Gertrude Hoffman - Jane, Adrian's Housekeeper (as Gertrude W. Hoffman) Henry Hall - Sheriff Jeff Halliday Selmer Jackson - Dr. McNulty

Boris Karloff (23 November 1887 -- 2 February 1969), whose real name was William Henry Pratt, was an English actor.

Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). His popularity following Frankenstein was such that for a brief time he was billed simply as "Karloff" or "Karloff the Uncanny". His best-known non-horror role is as the Grinch in the television special of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas!.

Maris Wrixon (December 28, 1916 -- October 6, 1999) was an American film and television actress. She appeared in over 50 films between 1939 and 1951.

Between 1940 and 1942, Wrixon appeared in 29 films at Warner Brothers, alternating between uncredited parts (in films including High Sierra and Dark Victory) and supporting roles.

Wrixon worked primarily in B-movies and, in addition to her Warners films, in films produced by Poverty Row studios such as Monogram Pictures. Monogram released the film in which The New York Times says "horror fans remember her best", The Ape, which starred Boris Karloff.

Wrixon was married to Oscar-nominated film editor Rudi Fehr. She died in Santa Monica, California of heart failure.

Gertrude "Trude" Hoffmann (born May 17, 1878, Heidelberg, Germany — died October 21, 1966) was a German-born American character actress. Her surname is sometimes spelled Hoffman.

Hoffmann began her film career in Germany in 1918, aged 40, but made her American film debut in 1933. She worked steadily and made quite a few films over the next 20 years, though many of her parts were unbilled. She played Mrs. Odets on Gale Storm's My Little Margie.

She appeared in such films as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, which was nominated for Best Picture Oscar in 1941, as well as The File on Thelma Jordon (1950), Caged (1950), and The War of the Worlds (1953).

The wife of songwriter Max Hoffmann; she and her husband had a son, Max Hoffmann, Jr.

Gertrude W. Hoffmann died from a heart attack in 1966, aged 88.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ape

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