GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Tony Schlongini This film has something for everyone, comedy, gore, and big breasted girls. The director of this film should have been nominated for an Oscar, along with the ape. Shot in a grainy 8 mm format, this film is a prime example that great films can be made on a low budget, or even no budget. The scene where the ape has sex with the big breasted girl is hilarious and beautifully shot. All the actors are extremely talented playing more than one part. The carnival scenes are great. This film was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" Mr Poe would like this film and be very proud how it is interpreted on film. I would like to see this film director at the next Hampton s International Film Festival. This would definitely be a crowd pleaser. ************

Andy If I could have picked 0 out of ten or a negative out of ten I would have. I have seen a lot of movies and a lot of bad movies but this is the worst movie I have ever seen. The director spoke before the movie and said that he wasn't trying to make a bad movie and I agree because if he had been trying it would have been better. The acting was horrible, the camera-work was horrible, the script was horrible, the effects were horrible, and the sound was horrible. Don't waste even a second of your time with this movie. Get a root canal instead. Calling this movie a grindhouse movie is an insult to grindhouse movies. If you can't make a movie up to at least a watchable standard, you shouldn't even try.

Scarecrow-88 Director Keith J Crocker's loving ode to trash cinema has a carnival ape "escaping" from Lampini(..the ape's trainer), murdering people who caused his master emotional distress. But, along the way other innocent people find themselves victims of the deranged ape's bloody rampage. A despicable, repulsive, racist detective targets a black man as his suspect despite suggestive reasons he might not be the one behind the murders. Will the black suspect be able to clear his name? Or, will the obsessive racism of the detective, whose blind hate blurs his abilities to perform his duty, cause this poor guy unneeded duress? Shot on Super 8, Crocker spent a great while putting his little exploitation flick together. I think that I personally would've preferred Crocker just shot The Bloody Ape as a silent film because there would be sequences of dialogue between the two detectives where the audio would distort as if the sound recording was put on a flawed cassette tape. I thought Crocker's murder sequences, as an example, were effective because he chose to shoot them essentially without dialogue you could hear, playing some sort schlocky score which punctuates the outrageous gratuitous carnage. There's a loud, very unrestrained vocal message, I thought, in the dialogue which is not the least bit subtle, regarding a racial disconnect between various people in this distinctive location in Long Island. Crocker doesn't hold anything back in regards to his characters' repellent natures.Plenty of gore and an abundance of nudity, mostly shot in silent, with the music overlapping as the ape attacks naked women, scalping one victim after slicing her throat, viciously assaulting one in the shower, and raping a third before opening up her stomach, removing her guts among other organs. One victim is run over, another decapitated(..with Crocker showing blood squirting from the neck wound), with a head squished under a car tire! And, one could not forget the castration! I felt like, above all, Crocker's movie resembles a HGL production, and I'm sure he'd take that as a compliment. The film's minuscule budget shows and that might work against most, but the Super 8 film used by Crocker, I felt actually gave The Bloody Ape a unique look and feel. I think Crocker is very akin to another no-budget New York filmmaker, Nathan Schiff(The Long Island Cannibal Massacre). If you are looking for a film with polish and style, I suggest looking elsewhere, because The Bloody Ape doesn't even attempt gloss or beauty, it's ugly and harsh, which means it succeeds in capturing exactly what it set out to do..The cast, under ridiculous costumes which aren't the least bit realistic(..such as Reis detective, under as fake a wig and beard you'd ever see, and Crocker as a Hasidic Jew), have a field day in their roles, going as far in bad taste as the material will let them.

Woodyanders Representing good'n'gross nickel'n'dime exploitation horror sludge at its most feverishly enthusiastic and righteously offensive, Keith Crocker's deliciously scurrilous indie effort "The Bloody Ape" stands out as a terrifically trashy serving of top-rate tacky fun that's loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe's seminal short story "Murders in the Rue Morgue." Eccentric vengeful carnival barker Lampini (a delightfully hammy performance by Paul Richichi) trains his 7-foot, 300 lb sideshow gorilla Gorto to kill all his enemies. Gorto gets loose and proceeds to wreak some major league mondo disgusto blood-spilling, gut-slinging, head-crushing, limb-rending, heavy on the puke-inducing splatter havoc: a hippie hitchhiker gets brutally castrated in a simply smashing scene that pays lovely homage to the infamous Bigfoot gore gem "Night of the Demon," a naked chick taking a shower gets mangled, the ape rapes two nude women, a jerky cop has his head torn off, the savage simian beats a lady up and steals her car (you'll hit the floor with hysterics when you see the ape recklessly driving the freshly stolen automobile down the street), and generally behaves in a highly vicious, psychotic and anti-social manner that's more befitting of your average garden variety sociopathic serial killer. And, just to spice things up a wee bit more, despicable racist slime homicide detective Lieutenant LoBianco (robustly played to the hateful hilt by George Reis, who also portrays Gorto) blames the killings on a luckless innocent black man (the affable Chris Hoskins).Although a bit slow and talky during its first 10-odd minutes and further marred by one of those annoyingly inconclusive "it ain't over yet!"-style sequel set-up endings, "The Bloody Ape" overall still does a splendidly scuzzy job of paying tribute to all those gleefully obnoxious fright flick gruefests of yore by delivering a tasty truckload of all the right seedy schlock movie stuff: we've got gratuitous female nudity galore, plenty of witty, knowing 70's movie and TV show references sprinkled in the often furiously raw and profane dialogue, a rich rogues' gallery of superbly scummy supporting characters, a very agreeable no-nonsense, let's get right down to business attitude that's thankfully bereft of the smugly ironic, "I know more than you know" arrogant sensibility which undermines most fanboy affairs, grainy, rough-around-the-edges, but still quite polished and mobile cinematography (besides some choice cheesy solarization, we also get some decent tracking shots and a little nifty hand-held camera-work towards the end of the flick), a veritable sea of messy, juicy, lowdown repulsive gore, a cockeyed view of the world which depicts humans as largely base, evil, horrible folks who enjoy doing crummy things to each other and subsequently gives the rampaging gorilla the oddly sympathetic aura of a mixed-up anti-hero, and, most importantly, an ever-present sense of very dedicated, eager and aiming to please affection for cheerfully lowbrow grindhouse cinema which proves to be quite engaging and extremely entertaining in equal measure. Directed with infectious gonzo zeal by Keith Crocker, who collaborated with George Reis on the script, photography, producing and editing (the film took five whole years to complete), "The Bloody Ape" rates as a gloriously grody testament to fiercely self-reliant Do-It-Yourself underground cinema at its most beautifully bent, batty and berserk. By the way, I'm featured in the retrospective "making of" documentary that's a nifty extra on the excellent special edition DVD as a "trash film historian" under my real name of Joe Wawrzyniak; just do your best to ignore my wildly gesticulating hands at the bottom of the frame as I happily discuss both this movie and the other flicks that influenced it.