The Apes of Wrath

by Richard Klaw

  Djalioh opened his pale lips and gave a forced laugh that was as cold and terrible as that of a specter. He ran back to the house, went upstairs, entered the dining room, turned the key in the keyhole and put it in his pocket. He repeated the same gestures with the corridor door, went to the chamber of curiosities and threw the keys out of a window into the street below. Finally he entered the salon, quietly, on tiptoe, and once inside he closed the lock with a double turn. Only a dim light fingered through the fully drawn shutters.

  Djalioh paused. He heard the rustle of the pages Adele turned with her white hand as she reclined limply on a red-velvet sofa, and the chirping of birds in the aviary on the terrace, a sound that seeped through the green blinds along with the flapping of wings on the iron lattice.

  In a corner of the room, next to the fireplace, there stood a mahogany planter filled with fragrant flowers: pink, white, blue, tall or thick, green foliage with glossy stems, reflected from behind in a large mirror. He approached the young woman and sat down beside her. She shuddered and her blue eyes briskly fell on him, confused. Her robe was of a vaporous white muslin, open down the front, and the fine fabric limned the shape of her thighs.

  All around her floated an intoxicating perfume. Her white gloves, thrown onto the chair alongside her belt, handkerchief and head-cloth, released so delicate and sophisticated a fragrance that Djalioh’s large nostrils flared to suck in all the scent.

  Oh! Next to the woman whom one loves lingers a scented, inebriating aura.

  “What do you want?” she said, frightened.

  And there followed a long silence. He said nothing and stared at her with devouring eyes. Then, approaching, he took her waist between his hands and placed a kiss on her neck, a kiss that burned Adele like a snake’s bite. He saw her flesh palpitate and blush.

  “Oh! I’ll call for help,” she cried with horror. “Help! Help! Oh! The monster!”

  Djalioh did not answer. He only stammered and struck her head angrily. What! Not able to say a word to her! Unable to expound his torments and pain, having nothing to offer but an animal’s tears and a monster’s sighs! And then to be rejected like a reptile! To be hated for what you love and to be unable to respond! To be cursed and to be unable to curse!

  “Leave me, please! Leave me! Don’t you see that you fill me with horror and disgust? I’ll call Paul. He will kill you.”

  Djalioh showed her the key he held in his hand and she stopped. The clock struck eight, and the birds twittered in the aviary. A cart passed with a rumble. She drew away from him.

  “Well, will you leave? Leave me, for Heaven’s sake!”

  And she tried to rise, but Djalioh held her by the skirt of her dress, and it tore under his fingernails.

  “I need to get out. I must...I must see my child! Let me see my child!”

  A terrible thought made her tremble in every limb. She turned pale and said: “Yes, my son! I must see him, and immediately, now!” She turned and saw in front of her the grinning face of a demon. Djalioh laughed so strongly, without stopping, that Adele, petrified with horror, fell at his feet, on her knees.

  Djalioh crouched, then he seized her, made her forcibly sit on his knee, and with both hands he tore her clothes; he tore to pieces the veils that covered her, and when he saw her trembling like a leaf, half-undressed and crossing her arms over her breasts, crying, red cheeks and blue lips, he felt the weight of a strange oppression and then he grabbed the flowers, scattered them on the floor. He drew the pink silk curtains and took off his clothes.

  Adele, seeing him naked, shuddered in horror and looked away; Djalioh drew near and held her tight against his chest. Therefore she felt on her warm and silky skin the cold flesh of a hairy monster. He jumped on the couch, threw the cushions and balanced a long time on the back of the sofa, with a mechanical regularity and the agility of flexible vertebrae. He uttered from time to time a guttural cry and smiled through his teeth.

  What was left to be desired? He had a woman before him, flowers at his feet, the pink daylight on him, the sound of music from the aviary under the pale sunbeams!

  He ceased his balancing, pounced on Adele, dug his claws into her flesh and pulled her to him, tearing off her cotton shift.

  Glimpsing herself naked in the mirror, in Djalioh’s arms, she screamed in horror and prayed to God. She wanted to call for help, but could not utter a single word.

  Djalioh in turn, at the sight of her naked and with hair flowing down her shoulders, stood motionless with amazement, like the first man who ever saw a woman. He respected her for some time, simply tearing off her blond hair, putting the strands in his mouth, biting them, kissing them, and then he rolled down on the flowers, among the cushions, over Adele’s clothes, happy, mad, drunk with love. Adele cried, a trail of blood running down her alabaster breasts. And then his fierce brutality knew no limits. He sprang on her, spread her hands, spread her on the floor and made her roll, disheveled...He uttered several ferocious cries and extended both arms. Stupid and motionless, he groaned with pleasure, like a man who is dying.

  All of a sudden Adele convulsed under him, her muscles stiffening like iron. She screamed and gave sighs that were smothered by kisses. Then he felt her become cold. Her eyelids closed. She rolled over and her mouth slackened.

  When he had long felt her still and cold, he rose, turned her body over, kissed her feet, her hands, her mouth, and then he ran about the place, bounding on the walls. For a long time he ran, until he darted headlong into the marble mantelpiece and fell bloodied and still on Adele’s body.

  X

  When one came to find Adele, she had broad and deep furrows clawed all over her body. As for Djalioh, his skull was horribly smashed. Everyone believed that the young woman, defending her honor, had killed him with a knife.

  All these details appeared in the newspapers, and you bet there was enough for more than a week’s worth of “Ahs!” and “Ohs!”

  They buried the dead the next day. The procession was superb: two coffins, the mother and the child, and everything decorated with black plumes, candles, singing priests, the crowd pressing and men in black with white gloves.

  XI

  A few days later, “It’s horrible!” cried a patriarchal family of grocers gathered around a huge haunch with an enticing aroma.

  “Poor child!” the wife said to the grocer. “Go and kill a child! What had it done to him?”

  “Indeed!” said the grocer, in his indignant righteousness, for he was an eminently moral man, decorated with the cross of honor for good performance in the National Guard and a subscriber to the Constitutionnel! “Indeed! Go an’ kill ’at poor lil’ wife! It’s outrageous!”

  “I think it was passion,” said a fat, chubby boy, the son of the house, who had just completed his eighth grade in seventeen years, because his father felt one should give education to the youth.

  “Oh! People have little restraint,” said the grocer, asking for his third serving of beans.

  One rang in the shop, and he went to sell candles for two sous.

  XII

  You absolutely want an ending, do you not? And you think I am being slow in delivering it; so be it!

  For Adele, she was buried, but after two years she had lost much of her beauty: when they unearthed her to put her remains in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, she stank so fiercely that a gravedigger fainted.

  And Djalioh?

  Oh! He is now splendid, polished, sealed, neat, magnificent. Because you know that a zoology exhibit took hold of his body and made a beautiful skeleton of him.

  And Mr. Paul? Well, I forgot to tell you! He remarried. Sometimes I see him in the Bois de Boulogne, and tonight you will meet at the Italiens.1

  October 8, 1837

  _________________

  1 Translator’s Note: Several companies of Italian actors, staging Commedia dell’Arte plays and later on operas comiques, performed in Paris since the first troupe was invited to France by Regent Philippe d’Orleans, after Louis X
IV’s death in 1715.

  GORILLA OF YOUR DREAMS:

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF SIMIAN CINEMA

  Rick Klaw

  Similar to their prose cousins, films starring apes abound. Not surprising since simians work well as a proxy for the worst of humanity: a cracked mirror of things we’d rather not confront. In the movies apes usually portray buffoons or the terrifying monster. Through the best films we can safely explore and challenge the darker side of humanity. Racism, violence, greed, sexism, elitism, and cruelty are all present throughout the history of simian cinema. Thanks to their similarities to humans, these creatures fascinate us. While apes have appeared in movies since almost the beginning of film, it wasn’t until the 1930s that a movie starring a simian captured the public’s attention.

  One of the greatest giant-creature movies ever made and the first giant gorilla movie, the original King Kong (1933), revolutionized filmmaking, introduced the template for all future monster films, and established the ape as a major player in motion pictures. Developed from an idea by crime writer Edgar Wallace and producer Merian C. Cooper, King Kong essentially retold “Beauty & the Beast.” The groundbreaking stop-motion effects developed by Willis O’Brien remained the industry standard until the 1980s with the emergence of computer-generated effects. Thanks largely to O’Brien’s camera work, an entertaining script, and the stirring Max Steiner soundtrack, King Kong quickly entered the cultural zeitgeist. The 1950s re-release inspired another popular monster, Godzilla, and launched that decade’s giant monster movie craze.

  Due to the enormous success of their picture, O’Brien, Cooper, and Ernest B. Schoedsack (the original’s co-director) teamed up once again on the tepid but humorous sequel Son of Kong (1933). Produced for half the budget and in half the time, the project proved critically disappointing. Thankfully, the group’s third foray into a giant ape film more than made up for it.

  Mighty Joe Young (1949) delivered a classic story of friendship and devotion between a young woman and her oversized gorilla companion. A more subtle parallel occurs between this ape and his more famous forefather. Kong, a tragic monster, and Joe Young, a lovable and playful character, both suffer exploitation in service of the dollar. But by the latter film’s end, Joe emerges as a hero granted a happy ending. For his efforts, O’Brien won an Oscar for visual effects. Unfortunately, Mighty Joe Young was a financial disaster and its failure essentially ended O’Brien’s career.

  Disney Studios and director Ron Underwood remade Mighty Joe Young (1998) with Charlize Theron as the big ape’s friend. Underwood and screenwriters Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner successfully modernized the story for contemporary audiences. This version’s exceptional Joe Young visuals were created by Oscar-winning special effects artist Rick Baker.

  Kong himself experienced a remake in 1976 under the inept guidance of Dino De Laurentiis. The atrocious film, set in the modern era, lacks any of the charm and elegance found in the original. Rather than using the more convincing stop-motion techniques, the movie relied on a man in a gorilla suit for most of the scenes. Twelve years later, an even more disastrous sequel King Kong Lives (1986), starring Linda Hamilton, appeared.

  In 2005, Peter Jackson directed an endearing interpretation of the seminal film. While not quite as compelling as the original, this King Kong hits most of the right notes. Andy Serkis excels as the sympathetic Kong, heartbroken and hunted. The special effects sizzle, expertly re-creating a 1930s New York City and a far more terrifying Skull Island, littered with cannibals, dinosaurs, and other nasties.

  The Japanese seem fascinated with King Kong. In 1933, legendary filmmaker Torajiro Saito directed Wasei Kingu Kongu (aka The Japanese King Kong), a silent movie based on the Cooper film. Featuring special effects by Fuminori Ôhashi, who later helped develop the first Godzilla suit, the 1934 production King Kong Appears in Edo (Kingu Kongu Edo ni arawareta) was among the first kaiju (giant monster) films. Both films were unlicensed and are presumed lost. Arguments persist about whether a third movie Kingu Kongu Zenkouhen (1938), which supposedly included a Kong-versus-samurai fight, was ever actually produced.

  In 1962, Kong finally met his spiritual progeny in King Kong vs. Godzilla (Kingu Kongu Tai Gojira), this time with the permission of the character’s license holders. Contrary to the urban legend that two versions of the movie were shot—a different monster wins depending on where the film was shown—only one ending ever existed. Kong wins. The Japanese flirtation with this giant ape ended in 1967 with King Kong Escapes (Kingu Kongu No Gyakushû).

  The classic Kong tale has spawned numerous knockoffs and rip-offs including Konga (1961), Tarzan and King Kong (1965), Queen Kong (1976), A*P*E* (also released as Super Kong, The New King Kong, and Attack of the Giant Horny Gorilla, 1976), and The Mighty Kong (a 1998 animated musical direct-to-video release starring Dudley Moore).

  The earliest known simian appearance in film, the largely forgotten short The Escape of the Ape (1908), predated Kong by a quarter of a century. A gorilla, played by an unknown actor in reportedly convincing makeup and costume, escapes from the zoo, steals a car, interrupts a poker game, and frightens a couple. Only the unusual protagonist differentiated the film from the abundance of “chase” stories that dominated early–twentieth-century cinema. No copies are known to survive.

  The oldest extant gorilla movie is Willis O’Brien’s animated stop-motion short “The Dinosaur and The Missing Link” (1915). The effects guru created the film to showcase his new techniques, which he later perfected for The Lost World (1925) and of course King Kong.

  Tarzan of the Apes, the first film version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ popular ape man tale and the first feature-length project to feature apes, starred Elmo Lincoln as the adult Tarzan and Enid Markey as Jane. It was the second highest grossing picture of 1918, right beyond Mickey, which bore the unfortunate tagline “The Picture You Will Never Forget.” Through 1929, Tarzan appeared in eight silent films.

  Ushering in the talkies, Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller portrayed the character alongside the lovely Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane in the seminal Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). The film introduced two concepts not from the original tales but closely associated with the character: the comedic chimpanzee sidekick Cheeta, who appeared in nearly every Tarzan film and TV show through 1968, and the “Me Tarzan, you Jane” persona. Within the Burroughs books, the very intelligent and articulate Tarzan speaks several languages fluently and even adopts his family title as the Lord Greystoke. Yet today, the dumb savage persona persists.

  Despite the fact that many others have played the role, Weissmuller remains the iconic Tarzan. He starred in twelve movies, some of the very best to ever feature Tarzan, including Ape Man, Tarzan and His Mate (1934), and Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942).

  Similar to the original in name only, director John Derek’s Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981) featured his wife Bo Derek as Jane and Miles O’Keeffe as the ape man. Purportedly telling the original story from Jane’s point of view, the essentially soft-core porn film was just an excuse for the then-popular Bo to bounce around naked in a beautiful locale.

  With a screenplay co-written by Oscar-winner Robert Towne and helmed by Chariots of Fire director Hugh Hudson, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) attempted a more faithful adaptation of the original Burroughs. Despite its noble intentions, the overly long (143 minutes) film stumbled largely due to the casting of the wooden Christopher Lambert in the title role, the need to dub Jane’s (Andie MacDowell) voice with Glenn Close, and the movie’s glacial pace.

  Disney created one of the best interpretations of the character with Tarzan (1999). The animated film contains enough original Burroughsian elements (far more than many of the live-action attempts) to overcome the ridiculous Oscar-winning soundtrack by Phil Collins. The near perfect, frenetic, yet controlled action introduced the ape man to a new generation.

  The Tarzan films have spawned numerous imitators including The King of the Kongo (1929), Darkest Africa (1936)
, the Bomba serials (beginning in 1949), and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (two television series [1955, 2000] and a feature film [1984]). Through 2005, at least one movie or TV show featuring Tarzan has been produced in every decade since his big screen introduction, making the Jungle Lord one of the most identifiable characters in the world.

  The first known use of an ape suit occurred in the 1918 Tarzan of the Apes. This revolutionary concept dominated nearly every simian film that followed with the O’Brien films as notable exceptions. In Go and Get It (1920), wrestler Bull Montana was the first person credited for portraying an ape.

  George Barrows, Emil Van Horne, Charlie Gemora, Ray “Crash” Corrigan, and Bob Burns were some of the most famous of the small fraternity of “gorilla men.” These actors wore suits of their own designs and enjoyed long, successful careers playing apes in films like Tarzan the Tiger (1929), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932, starring the famed Bela Lugosi), Queen of the Jungle (1935), The Ape (1940, with the legendary Boris Karloff), and many others. (For more on the gorilla men see Mark Finn’s “The Men in the Monkey Suit”)

  The other big ape movie of the 1930s, the controversial Ingagi (1930) promoted itself as a documentary of African life. At the Los Angeles premiere, several actors recognized one of the scantily clad gorilla-kidnapped natives as a frequent movie extra. It turned out the director used African footage from a 1917 documentary interspersed with grainy, poorly lit scenes of beautiful women and Charlie Gemora in a gorilla suit. All of the salacious attention made the film the third largest moneymaker of the year. Ingagi’s success paved the way for King Kong and spawned several imitators including Son of Ingagi (1940). Written by Spencer Williams, who would later play Andy on the 1950s television show The Amos ’N Andy Show, the project offered no connection with its predecessor, but it was the first horror film with an all African-American cast.