Acquanetta pretty much just stands around, looking like a zombie, recites a few lines then stares back into space again. This follow-up to "Captive Wild Woman" has her as a transformed ape who falls in love with hero Milburne Stone, hating his fiancée Evelyn Ankers, aka "the scream queen" and obviously out to kill her. Shadowy photography is more interesting than Acquanetta's lack of a performance, added onto with a mentally retarded man who appears to be imitating Lon Chaney Jr's brilliant performance in "Of Mice and Men". There really aren't any chills because it all seems so phony, told in flashback and poorly written. Even attempts to give it a psychological background comes up empty. This is one that ranks among the worst of the dogs of cinema and nothing other than two robots and an unseen man making wisecracks while it is playing could make this any more watchable.

Jungle Woman is the follow up Captive Wild Woman.Acquanetta returns as Paula the Ape Girl. This time scientist De Carl Fletcher played by J Carroll Nash has revived her as Cheela the Gorilla at his sanatorium but she morphs back into Paula without any surgical assistance.The doctor has a lovely daughter Joan >Lois Collier< who is his secretary. She is engaged to a nice looking young fellow Bob Whitney >Richard David<. When Paula meets the young man she finds her voice. She also sees the doctors daughter as a romantic rival who must be eliminated.Paula finding her voice is when this film is really torpedoed. Acquanetta made it through the first film because all that was required of her was to flash a threatening glare and occasionally show anger. Delivering dialog was definitely not her strong suit.The fact the the script is laughably bad certainly doesn't help. SPOILER: The film is show in flashback as Dr Fletcher is on trial for murder. Much of the action is from Captive Wild Woman. At first Fletcher will not reveal why he injected Paula with a drug to kill he. However, his supporters which include Fred Mason >Milburn Stone< and Beth Mason >Evelyn Ankers along with his daughter Joan and Bob reveal to the court Paula's to animistic nature. The prosecutor >Douglass Dumbrille< is dubious but when the judge >Samuel S Hinds< orders a re examination Paula's body the court finds that Paula has reverted to her half ape/half girl state. Dr Fletcher is vindicated and goes free.One of the worst of Universals WWII horror flicks, Jungle Woman is only to be watched as part of the Paula the Ape Girl series.

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.

Considering this is from Universal Studios in the 1940's, I expected a bit more from this film. Not much going for it, even if it was one of those campy monster films. I admit that I liked the interiors of the hospital--what a hallway--that thing was a wide as highway!! And I liked the staircase also--lol. This film is not scary or anything, so I can't figure out why they even made it in the first place.