General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Night of the Bloody Apes

Night of the Bloody Apes (Spanish: La horripilante bestia humana, literally 'The Horrible Man-Beast') is a Mexican horror picture from 1969, helmed by René Cardona on a script he wrote together with his son René Cardona Jr., telling of a surgeon who gives his dying son a gorilla's heart and thereby transforms him into a murderous hybrid creature.¹⁰ It was released in Mexico on February 6, 1969, and reached the United States in 1972 under its English title in a recut, dubbed version.¹

Key fact	Detail
Original title	La horripilante bestia humana ('The Horrible Man-Beast')¹⁰
Release	February 6, 1969 (Mexico); 1972 in the United States, recut and dubbed¹
Running time	81 minutes (Mexico); 83 minutes (US dubbed version)¹
Director and writers	René Cardona; screenplay and story by René Cardona and René Cardona Jr.¹¹
Production	Cinematográfica Calderón S.A.; produced by Guillermo Calderón and Alfredo Salazar¹
Lead cast	José Elías Moreno (Dr. Krallman), Carlos López Moctezuma (Goyo), Armando Silvestre (Lt. Arturo Martínez), Norma Lazareno (Lucy Osorio), Agustín Martínez Solares (Julio Krallman), Gerardo Zepeda (the monster)²
Relationship to earlier work	A remake of Cardona's own 1962 film Doctor of Doom (Las Luchadoras contra el medico asesino)¹¹

Spoilers

Plot

Dr. Krallman, a prominent surgeon, has a son, Julio, who is dying of a severe heart infection; one review describes the illness as leukemia.³^•⁴ Krallman and his deformed assistant Goyo steal a gorilla from the zoo and transplant its heart into Julio.⁴ The operation succeeds, but the young man transforms into an ape-like hybrid creature that escapes the laboratory and goes on a rampage through the city at night, attacking and killing women.³^•⁴ Krallman attempts a second operation to remedy his mistake, but it comes too late, and Lieutenant Arturo Martínez is assigned to stop the creature.³

Content and style

The film mixes genres and footage types. It opens with a women's wrestling match in which the wrestler Lucy Osorio injures her opponent, a subplot the reviewer describes as largely abandoned afterward; it also splices footage of actual open-heart surgery into the transplant scenes, alongside nudity and gore.⁵^•⁸ The monster is played by Gerardo Zepeda, who is credited as "Monstruo".² The Moria review observes that the plot, in which a scientist places a gorilla's heart into his son's body and produces an ape creature that kills women, had changed little in sophistication or science from Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) thirty-seven years earlier.⁴

Production and release

The film was produced by Cinematográfica Calderón S.A., shot in color by cinematographer Raúl Martínez Solares, edited by Jorge Bustos, and scored by Antonio Díaz Conde.¹ Azteca Films Inc. distributed it theatrically in Mexico in 1969.¹

The American version. Jerand Film Distributors Inc. released the film in the United States in 1972 as Night of the Bloody Apes, recut with added footage and dubbed into English; Iver Film Services handled a UK theatrical release.¹ A reviewer of the dubbed version describes its editing as notably ragged, and notes that American distributors were known for roughly editing foreign-language films, while Cardona himself was known as an uneven filmmaker.⁵ A Spanish-language film database records that the original 81-minute Mexican version was initially distributed cut of its gore and nudity scenes, and credits Jerald Intrator as director of the US version.⁶

The film circulated under several other titles, including Gomar: The Human Gorilla and Horror y sexo (a racier version) in Mexico, and Korang, la terrificante bestia umana in Italy.¹^•⁷

Place in Mexican horror cinema

The British Film Institute's survey of Mexican macabre cinema cites La Horripilante bestia humana alongside El vampiro (1957) and Más negro que las noche (1975) as examples of how distinct the periods of Mexican horror film history are, with each period carrying specific and often quite different styles; the three films, it notes, have very little in common other than their country of origin.⁹ Cardona (1905–1988) was a prolific Mexican director of some 145 films, many in exploitation categories, and a leading figure in the masked-wrestler genre.⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026