La Horripilante Bestia Humana

What do you get if you take a leukemia patient, a couple of female Mexican masked wrestlers, a police detective, an unscrupulous chief surgeon, and an ape that isn’t a guy in a gorilla suit, honest, and put them in a movie full of stock heart transplant footage and naked screamers?

A very, very long time ago I saw a 60s era Argentinian import with the improbable (and certainly not plot-relevant) title of Feast of Flesh. Long enough ago that it was the very first thing I reviewed here. The reason this is relevant is that the disc had a second movie on it, which leaves me to wonder if Netflix has a list of the discs that have been out the longest. (This one was a year and a half, apparently.)

In fact, yes, I have finally watched Night of the Bloody Apes, the movie that dares to ask the question, ‘What do you get if you take a leukemia patient, etc.?’ The answer, then? You get a surgeon whose son’s imminent death prompts him to first kidnap a gorilla from the zoo via the well-thought-out plan of entering the zoo, shooting it with a dart, and then leaving with it, and then transplant the gorilla’s blood into his son’s body to defeat the leukemia. This plan would have worked earlier, but now the son is too weak, so the heart must also be transplanted. This all, obviously, because the beast’s more powerful blood will be able to defeat the disease. You also get a masked wrestler chick who is ready to retire now that she’s accidentally dropped her coworker/friend out of the ring and into a coma, but who also has time to argue with her cop boyfriend about how he values his job more than dinners out with her.

Inevitably, though, the now-healed leukemia patient sporadically transforms partially into a gorilla-headed beast whose goal seems to be assaulting random women by ripping their shirts off and then killing them. Sometimes men get killed as well, but without the shirt-ripping and only because they’re in the way. Soon, all of these characters (including the coma girl) collide in a spectacular… amazing… semi-adequate? climax of blood, angst, and bad driving. Seriously, though? A little bit funny. I’d watch it again with other people, if I knew people who were reliably available and willing. (I actually know a few willing people. I really do.)

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