Night of the Bloody Apes

bloodyapes2Night of the Bloody Apes is an el cheapo Mexican flick that features a nearly irresistible combination of luchador wrestling, mad science and nudity. It’s also bloody. And there are apes.

A female masked wrestler Lucy, launches her copyright-infringing Catwoman-attired opponent, out of a wrestling ring – but that’s just the beginning.

There’s also a more intriguing plot involving the diabolical Dr Krallman, who’s treating his son for leukemia by doing an’ape-to-human’ heart transplant’. This is one for the medical licensing board to take a look at, as leukemia is a bone-marrow disease. This this would certainly not bode well for Mexico as a medical tourism destination.

Interestingly, the New York Times reported that in 1984, a 15-day-old girl received a baboon’s heart in a procedure done at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California. Four earlier efforts to use ape hearts dating back to 1964, five years before the release of Night of the Bloody Apes – all failed; we don’t know if they were particularly bloody.

Regardless, Dr Krallman’s unorthodox cure results in an unfortunate er, side effect: the creation of a murderous, angry and it should be said, quiet cheap looking ape-like creature out of his son. The ape then runs amok, giving the film its not entirely accurate name: you see, it’s the people that the ape kills that are actually bloody, but we digress.

No apes were harmed in the making of the film, nor were they turned over to unscrupulous research facilities or taught to sign obscene gestures to passing zoo goers.

** (out of 5)

Get Even

The Google search engine confounding Geteven is also known as Road to Revenge and Champagne and Bullets. It’s also known colloquially by native English speakers as Get Even.

One of the great good-bad movies – maybe of all time – this one stars a California trial lawyer-cum action superhero and martial artist John de Hart, who looks like a grinder from the early 80s Philadelphia Flyers (and even sports a vaguely Canadian accent).

The film came out in early 90s but boasts an aesthetic that somehow conjures up Rockford Files and The A-Team – and will have you missing the heartfelt realism of the latter.

The plot involves an ex-cop Rick Bode, played by de Hart, who faces off against a corrupt police officer/judge, then takes down a sinister cult, the details of which are casually revealed to him by a paramour lounging on a backyard swing!:

“We sacrificed a human baby, so I had to leave LA.”

So, tell me about your day?

And there’s even a trusty sidekick – none other than the great Wings Hauser of Magnum PI and Airwolf fame, playing Huck Finney (yes, Huckleberry Finn, a treat thanks to the film’s dilettantish auteur director de Hart). He plays a wastrel ex-cop who seems coked out of his skull and acts like he stumbled into the wrong film.  A call to his agent would confirm that he was. His thespian chops and commitment to the role alone make him a stand out.

They duo does battle with the judge, all the while facing off with his goons who populate a local watering hole that looks like the rec room basement of a youth drop-in centre. The bar also features a crack band – as luck would have it – that’s fronted by the hero (!) who’s practically begged by a coterie of what passed for good looking women in the 90s, to get up stage on perform. The result below, a barely on-key Elvis past-his-kingly years “Shimmy Slide”:

Get_Even_2To this cinema gumbo garbage, there’s a pinch of nudity (in the same bar – a one-stop shop as it’s both a peeler and a honky-tonk), a soupcon of of silly moralizing (“I need to report public nudity!”), and truly unnecessary sex scenes.

There’s also a touch of amateur fisticuffs that wouldn’t’ pass muster at a backyard wrestling 5th grade battle royale, editing that frequently cuts off dialogue and the cherry on top: a fists-first protagonist who’s partial to The Bard!

(At one point, a barfly demands, yes demands, that our hero Rick Bode recite “that thing Hamlet wrote” – he’s promptly corrected by Bode, who earlier graces us with the famous soliloquy – on that same backyard swing).

Watch it on Amazon and be sure and thank us – but more importantly Mr. de Hart for starring writing and directing this wacky gem.

**** (out of 5)

LISTEN TO OUR GET EVEN / ROAD TO REVENGE PODCAST!