Lest you think that bad movies were invented in the 70s (and perfected in the 90s), let us journey backwards in time to one of the pioneering examples of cinematic refuse -- Monogram Studios' 1944 "classic," "The Return of the Ape Man." The first thing we can gripe about is the title, which suggests a sequel to Monogram's "The Ape Man," made the previous year and featuring the same star: the ubiquitous Bela Lugosi. In fact the two films are unrelated, thoroughly screwing over the two or three movie goers in the world who actually wanted a follow up to "The Ape Man," a serious piece of crap in its own right. Instead, we get "The Return of the Ape Man."

The next clue that we're in for trouble is the opening credits, which lists the stars as Lugosi, John Carradine, and George Zucco. This is a pretty impressive line-up for a film with so low a budget, except for the fact that George Zucco isn't even in the film! That's right, the third-billed star, listed prominently in all the print ads, never puts in an appearance. Incredibly, the stocky, bald, fifty-ish British thespian was to have played the titular Ape Man, until somebody who was actually paying attention realized how non-threatening and downright foolish he looked in a loincloth. I'm assuming since they used his name anyway, he got to keep the pay check. Now strap yourselves in for the plot, which is so lacking in any logical coherence that it might make a good double bill with Bunuel's "Un Chien Andalou." Lugosi plays a mad scientist who is doing experiments with cryogenics. It is usually noted by film historians that Lugosi always gave 100% in his performances, regardless of the quality of his pictures. While this is usually the case, in "The Return of the Ape Man" he phones in his performance, producing one of the few films in his career in which his character is actually boring. Maybe he was just pissed that Zucco got to walk away while he had to actually show up on the set. The evil Dr. Lugosi is first seen defrosting a frozen bum in his dark-n-cheap basement lab. The bum returns to consciousness and is informed that he has been frozen solid for an entire month but is completely ok. Lugosi apparently determines this by intuition, as he performs no medical tests of any sort and sends the man packing as soon as he's off the table, apparently unconcerned if the test subject drops dead in half an hour.

Assistant John Carradine (on a break from cranking out sons) is glad that the cryogenics experiment is successful, but Lugosi disdainfully brushes off his enthusiasm, maintaining that the experiment proved nothing. He now needs to do another experiment to really prove that he can freeze and thaw people without harm. How will he do that, you ask? Will he perform the same experiment over again under controlled conditions, with thorough medical tests before and after, with long term follow-up for possible complications? No? How about this: the only way Lugosi can really prove his theory is to find a frozen prehistoric ape man, bring it back to life, and transplant a modern man's brain into the skull. Was that your second guess? Didn't think so. That's because you're not a scientist.

Lugosi drags his poor sidekick off to the Arctic Circle to look for a frozen ape man. That there is actually one around somewhere is sort of taken as a given. The "scientific" search consists of randomly wandering around the Arctic for an entire year (!) and blowing up large chunks of ice with dynamite. (I wonder how many ape man cadavers were destroyed by the "excavations.") Finally, they just happen to stumble upon a suitable specimen in the several-odd thousand square miles of frozen waste land. What luck! Back to the basement lab. Lugosi "carefully" thaws out the ape man with a blow torch. The next step is to transplant a modern man's brain into the ape man so that it can talk (presumably to verbally assure the world that Lugosi's freezing/thawing process is a success), but he is interrupted by his wife, who forces him to take a break from his research to attend a dinner party. Once there, Lugosi tosses off the film's most often-quoted line. Noting all the insipid morons in attendance, he gripes that "some brains would never be missed!" -- perhaps he silently includes the film's screenwriter in the lot.

Back to the lab. The reanimated ape man is now kept in a convenient cage. Since the filmmakers had absolutely no money to work with, it's no surprise that he's not even remotely ape-like. The best the make-up department could come up with was a shaggy wig and bushy beard, making him look like a beefy version of the Unibomber in an animal hide dress. Lugosi cooks up an electronic paralyzer device on the spur of the moment (like most Hollywood "scientists," Lugosi is skilled in ALL branches of science). Although "paralyzed," Carradine can still talk. Lugosi informs him that his brain will be transplanted into the ape man. Why he had to invent an electronic paralyzer to trap the witless Carradine is anyone's guess. He could have just slipped him a mickey or something. But since he seems to have conceived and constructed the device in under five minutes, it doesn't much matter. The ape man (now with Carradine's brain) escapes by climbing out the window, affording all of us a good look at the BVD's he discreetly wears under the loincloth. Lugosi chases after him with a blow torch, all the while clad in the tuxedo he wore to the dinner party. The ape man returns to Carradine's house and kills his wife. He also plays the piano, just as Carradine had done earlier. After a lengthy (and slow) chase that goes nowhere, Lugosi and the ape man wind up back at the basement for the "climactic" finale.