During a coroner’s inquest into the death of Paula Dupree (Acquanetta), Dr. Carl Fletcher (J. Carrol Naish) fully admits to killing her. When asked to explain the circumstances around Paula and her death Fletcher recalls back to being at the circus and seeing a gorilla named Cheela (Ray Corrigan). During the lion act things when wrong and the lions and tigers escaped. The lion tamer, Fred Mason (Milburn Stone) was in danger of being attacked when Cheela went into the cage and removed him. Unfortunately someone thought Cheela was going to hurt Mason and shot the gorilla.
Fletcher was amazed by this human act of kindness and so managed to get the body of the gorilla for examination. Fletcher found that the gorilla was not dead. He managed to nurse it back to health. Fletcher then purchases the mental hospital that was owned by Dr. Walters. Walters had done the experiments on the gorilla and kept notes on his experiments. Fletcher studies those notes. Cheela then escapes from his cage.
A search is made but Cheela is not found. One of the residents of the hospital, Willie (Eddie Hyans), finds a young woman wandering around the hospital grounds. At first she doesn’t speak but when Dr. Fletcher’s daughter Joan (Lois Collier) shows up with her fiancé Bob Whitney (Richard Davis) the young woman begins to speak to Bob. She says her name is Paula. Paula becomes attracted to Bob and jealous of Joan.
Strange things begin to happen at the hospital. A cage containing chickens is broken into and the chickens are all crushed. The grounds man’s dog is killed. Then Willie’s dead body is found. He had also been crushed by someone extremely strong. Dr. Fletcher had the fingerprints on the chicken coop lock and a bottle of perfume from Paula’s room analyzed. The result is that they belong to the same person but the prints on the lock are much larger. Dr. Fletcher is now worried that Paula may actually be Cheela and is a danger to both Bob and Joan.
“Jungle Woman” was released in 1944 and was directed by Reginald LeBorg. It is one of Universal’s low budget “B” movies and is a horror film. It is the second in the Paula Dupree trilogy and is a sequel to “Captive Wild Woman” 1943. The third film in the trilogy is “Jungle Captive” 1945.
The movie is told in flashback. The first part of the film is stock footage from “Captive Wild Woman” and includes some other stock footage of Clyde Beatty doing his lion and tiger taming routine. The Clyde Beatty footage as well as other snippets came from “The Big Cage” 1933.
Paula Dupree is played by Acquanetta in the first two movies. In “Jungle Captive” she is played by Vicky Lane. She actually gets to talk in this movie and has a bigger part than in the first film.
I suppose you could watch the trilogy any way you want but it makes more sense if you watch them in order. Debate rages on which of the three films is the worst. It doesn’t really matter. They are all average “B” movies tossed out to fill Universal’s quota so they can make some money. I don’t fault them for that. I don’t have an opinion on how they rank. I was Ok with all of them. They are average movies and entertaining in their own way but none of them really shines.