Watched the Wild Woman trilogy. I've had the set in my cart for years and finally pulled the trigger on the final "Universal Classic Monster" barring The Creature (the 2nd one, from a lagoon) in the 50s. The 1st 2 staring Aquanetta, a stunning beauty and the only African American UCM. Believe it or not her casting was because of her exotic looks/features as her light skin tone (along with background fabrications) allowed her to fool everybody into thinking she was non-white and non-black. Or perhaps the 1st film was built as a vehicle around her-- I haven't listened to the commentaries yet.
Captive Wild Woman - Really enjoyed this film for what it is. Interesting, original story. Some exciting and well done lion tamer sequences. Apparently this film was built around those sequences from another film, and it is really well done. Great makeup by Jack Pierce (I'd buy a NECA figure of "Paula"--like that will happen) similar to his Wolf Man work. John Carridine really shines as a more obsessed than "mad" doctor. I had seen her previously in an Inner Sanctum film and was not impressed with Aquanetta's acting (being very kind here), but she really stood out in the looks department. Thankfully, this film doesn't ask too much of her verbally, and she does some great pantomime. Also, kudos to her for actually donning the makeup and being fearless where most starlets would never dare to go. This film IMO was a lot better than most of the UCM sequels. The one negative is that the Horror is quite sparce and body count really low, but the characters are so good you are kept involved. Had they not F'd up the series we could've gotten some great stuff from this series--which bring me to...
Jungle Woman - Here's a tip: If you make a sequel, don't frontload your film with 25% of your total runtime showing clips from the previous film interspersed with tribunal scenes. This film centers around a sanitarium and I mistook one of the inmates as staff member thinking I was watching the worst acting I've seen in some considerable time. This film is the least cohesive of the three. There's some unnecessary explanation of Cheela, the ape from the 1st film, that actually dumbs down the lore (and we're not starting off with Shakespeare to begin with). 1st half stinks, 2nd half is actually decent. Again, they smartly avoid giving Aquanetta acting beyond her means with where her character is at mentally here. There is a great offscreen kill in this one. J Carrol Nash plays a great sympathetic doctor.
Jungle Captive - This film has a more solid story than the previous film, but Paula, now played by the non-exotic but still quite gorgeous Vicky Lane, is sidelined in her own film. Lane only had a handful of roles and is nowhere near as convincing as her predecessor. Where Aqua was mostly menacingly silent and used her eyes and body language to great effect, Vicky's snarls and grunts are really over the top and her dead eyes make you almost wish Aqua finished the series herself. This film is centered on the doctor character and Otto Kruger finished the doctor trio of the films to the same high standard as Carridine and Nash. Interestingly, all 3 are very different characterizations which adds to the spice of the series. It's okay, but you really miss that Paula isn't involved in the story much. For most fans, this film is most notable having Rondo "The Brute" Hatton in a very verbal role (for him) with a lot of screentime.
For all the faults of the sequels I really believe we should've gotten these films in the UCM Blu-Ray/4k box sets in place of the enjoyable enough, but completely out of place 1943 Phantom of the Opera ( if they were to include a Phantom it should have been the fantastic 1925 film, but I get why they wouldn't include that one). A shame there was no documentary on the films or Aquanetta herself on this set like there was for Hatton on a previous set. Only a handful of kills in the entire series and I can't recommend the sequels, but if you like Horror films of the time you could do much worse with the famous monsters sequels than with seeing Captive Wild Woman.
Bonus:
Also included in this set was The Monster and the Girl. This was a fun little Science Fiction/Crime film with Horror elements. Not as cheesy as it sounds even if the plot is completely ridiculous. I like whenever George Zucco appears in a film as he's so charismatic and entertaining. This and CWW made this set worth the purchase for me.
