Captive Wild Woman!

Acquanetta is the star of Captive Wild Woman and this weirdo Universal horror flick which focuses most of its attention on a pipsqueak circus and the wannabe lion tamer (brave and stout) who is eager to make his bones and is not squeamish about making use of a lovely woman who casts a spell on the savage critters but never speaks a word. Milburn Stone plays the lion tamer and the always enchanting Evelyn Ankers is his main squeeze. That causes some problems when Acquanetta's character gets jealous, because she's not what she seems. She's a gorilla.

John Carradine steals this movie in my mind as one of the maddest scientists yet, a man willing to kill any number of women to see that his theories about glands and such is proven. He takes a stolen gorilla, uses the gland secretions of a living woman,  and the brain of a dead one to fabricate his "Gorilla Girl" played by the alluring Acquanetta. The small-time Dr. Moreau is as callous as he's ever been (and that's saying some since Carradine's played some real baddies) and does what he wants, the lives of others be damned.

The movie is loaded with a lot of lion and tiger action, so if that stuff ain't your bag give this one a dodge. Clyde Beatty is really doing the dangerous work that Stone is pretending to do and it looks harrowing enough without throwing a pugnacious gorilla-girl into the mix. In the final analysis I got the sense this movie was about men using women to get what they want and that ain't always what they should have.

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