Very well executed

It is a performances centric movie

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

***SPOILERS*** Second of the Paula the "Jungle or Ape Women" trio has Paula ,Acquanetta, fall in love with wild animal trainer the handsome Fred Mason,Milburn Stone, who's life she saved when the lions and tigers he was handling under the big top turned on him almost mauling Fred to death. That's when Paula was in her other incarnation as Cheela the friendly lady gorilla sprung to his rescue. After Cheela's death Dr. Carl Fletcher, J. Carroll Nash,who witness this amazing event had the lady ape's body brought back to life in human form christening her Paula Dupree. As we all saw at the beginning of the flick Dr. Fletcher killed in self defense Paula when she attacked him trying to prevent him form putting her to sleep with a strong animal sedative.Now on trial for murder Dr. Fletcher is to tell the court the reason for his actions that in fact had to do with a love triangle between Paula the ape woman and her former trainer Mason as well as his wife Beth, Evelyn Anker, that a love sick Pula had it in for and tried to murder. There's also Paula secret lover the mentally challenged sanitarium orderly Willie,Eddie Hyans, who tried to make it with her by giving her extra ham and cheese sandwiches, that he stole from the commissary, who ended up getting his neck broken by Paula's super human gorilla strength.***SPOILERS*** Second of the three "Paula the Lady Gorilla or Ape Woman" movies that has Paula killed in the end where she's discovered after death to be an ape not human being! Thus exonerating the guilt ridden Dr. Fletcher of murdering her or it. But in it also being just too good of a thing-A sexy lady ape-to let go. Paula was to be reincarnated and return for a third time at bat in 1945's "Jungle Captive" with Vicky Lane not the exotic and sexy looking Acquanetta in the leading role.

Universal Pictures must have had some contract commitments they were trying to fill or the budget was real tight. What I can't believe is that there was much of a demand for a sequel to Captive Wild Women which introduced us to Paula the Ape woman who went from beautiful Acquanetta to a guy in a gorilla suit.We thought she was done for at the end of Captive Wild Women, but she's back now and living at J. Carrol Naish's asylum. She doesn't revert to being an ape any more, but Acquanetta is still a Jungle Woman and reverts to animal behavior when someone poaches on what she stakes out.A lot of the same cast members of the previous film testify at a coroner's inquest presided over by a most embarrassed Samuel S. Hinds and Douglass Dumbrille. Now Acquanetta sets her jealous eyes once all the flashbacks are over which account for about half the film on poor Lois Collier who has a man the Jungle Woman wants. Thank God Universal didn't inflict a third film on the movie-going public.

A sequel can sometimes be either a virtual remake of the original film, it can devote some of the running-time to re-telling the first film's plot in compressed form (via scenes lifted directly from that one) and, other times, the second entry could cheat by borrowing action scenes from the preceding effort and pass them off as its own. However, this is the only case I know of where a film is all three at once (though, technically, the animal footage here is part of the flashback framework, they were still ripped off from an earlier non-related picture)! Universal's three-movie "Ape Woman" franchise is surely among the most maligned to emerge during the vintage horror era (even by hardened buffs) but, maybe because I was in a receptive frame-of-mind, I recall enjoying CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943; directed by, of all people, Edward Dmytryk!) back when I had watched it and certainly did not mind catching up with the two sequels now i.e. the film under review and THE JUNGLE CAPTIVE (1945), which followed on the very next day! To get to the matter at hand: this, then, follows the pattern of THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1942), Universal's third movie in the Egyptology stakes but actually the second 'episode' in their "Kharis" saga. Anyway, the film has a complex structure in that we begin with the titular figure's demise, of whose murder the 'mad doctor' (who is not really) of this one, J. Carroll Naish, is accused, then we go into a flashback to learn how we got there but, corroborating his evidence, as it were, are the hero and heroine of the first film who relate their own experiences by recounting the events of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN! Amusingly, Universal 'scream queen' Evelyn Ankers receives top billing here but she only appears during these basically expository scenes and, of course, the 'stock footage' though not in JUNGLE WOMAN's narrative proper (that is to say, Naish's recollections)! Incidentally, I wonder what John Carradine, star of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1943), made of the fact that, unofficially, he also had this on his resume'! When I said that this was more a remake than a sequel was due to its having the 'monster' (once again played by Acquanetta but, unwisely taking a leaf from BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN {1935}, she is made to speak – except that we are never told in this instance just who taught her – and, boy, is she wooden!) once more instantly fall for the doctor's daughter's fiancé and grows insanely jealous of the girl. By the way, in a reversal of "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde", here the monster turns human without the use of drugs, so that the girl is found prowling the grounds of Naish's sanatorium by a simple-minded patient (who, subsequently doting excessively on Acquanetta, unsurprisingly becomes one of her victims). At one point, the Ape Woman swims underwater and capsizes the lovers' canoe, an act which is actually blamed on the oafish orderly who is currently missing – even if the former makes no secret of her impulsive affections for the impossibly bland leading man (unfortunately, a constant thorn in the side of the Golden Age of Horror!).Curiously, the film naively (since the original film had already established the transformation as a fact!) attempts to follow the psychological Val Lewton route by never showing the monster (except once amidst the flashback footage and again in the very last shot – even her death is played out in the shadows, though the images of a female figure leaping on the doctor only to be injected with an overdose belies the animal noises on the soundtrack!) but, for all that, the film remains mildly enjoyable – certainly eminently watchable – along its trim 60-minute duration, largely owing to Naish's grey-haired presence (though he is not quite running on full cylinders here, as in the same year's THE MONSTER MAKER) and the unmistakable Universal Studios atmosphere.

Sequel to CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN is often said to be one of Universal's worst horror films, and with some good reason. For one thing the first 15 or 20 minutes agonizingly drone on and on with flashback sequences from the first movie, and has to be seen to be believed (it actually feels like you're watching 3 different films at times). Acquanetta returns as Paula the Ape Woman and it's hilarious to watch her terrible acting performance, especially the robotic way in which she delivers her lines! At least the original had her mute throughout; this one gives her a lot of dialogue she can't handle. Along with the unintended laughs to make things survivable, at least this one features the competent J. Carrol Naish as the latest scientist trying to experiment with Paula, and to its very slight credit director Reginald LeBorg directs a couple of scenes in a Val Lewtonesque manner (such as Paula's creepy attack on a row boat and her eerily stalking her victim through the woods). I've never understood why these films didn't take more advantage of using more of their Ape Woman woman in full makeup to keep things more lively. ** out of ****