PROMO FOR
THE BLOODY APE

Promo for THE BLOODY APE (1993)

"The Bloody Ape" was, thankfully, never produced. It was intended to be a modernized version of Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and it would have been dead-on if Poe had intended his story to be about an escaped circus gorilla who carjacks people and paws naked strippers in their showers. It's been a while since I read the story and my memory is a bit fuzzy, so let's just assume they got it exactly right.

Independent filmmakers will sometimes produce certain scenes of a movie they'd like to make and package it for exhibition to prospective investors. The hope is that the investors will see a money-making opportunity and agree to fund the completion of the film. The only way this videotape promo for "The Bloody Ape" would elicit money from anyone is if they thought it was a ransom note.

Shot on Super-8 film (the kind your dad used to take home movies with,) every frame of this thing looks like a "last known photograph." If "snuff" films don't really exist, then this is the closest thing to it, as the "actors" and "actresses" all look like they were paid in bottom shelf alcohol and a place to sleep for the night.

What follows the promo is a videotaped "Making Of" piece that runs longer than the actual promo, mainly due to the absence of editing. In fact, it only covers the "making of" one particular scene in which the Gorilla attacks a naked actress who looks like they just pulled her off a barstool down the street. Ugh.