Night of the Bloody Apes earns its reputation as a classic of Mexploitation cinema — and then some. Director René Cardona plundered his own film, 1963’s Doctor of Doom, to build a better monster, adding el grande tres: color, guts, nudity.

Dr. Krallman (José Elías Moreno, who played the title role in Cardona’s Santa Claus) has a problem: His son’s leukemia has progressed to where the young man’s days are numbered. Dr. Krallman also has a two-pronged solution: First, kidnap a gorilla from the zoo. Then, transplant the gorilla’s heart into his son, Julio (Agustín Martínez Solares, Santo & Blue Demon vs. Dracula & the Wolfman). For this second step, Cardona splices in lunch-losing footage of an actual open-heart surgery.

It works! And yet it also doesn’t, because Julio’s head transforms into that of an ape. He doesn’t look simian so much as his face has been dipped in chocolate pudding, which since has dried. Primate Julio runs around town, wanting to rape women, but he cannot figure out how to remove his infernal, high-waisted pajama pants.

So the doc performs another organ swap, this time giving Julio the ticker of a woman who suffered a skull fracture. It works! And yet it also doesn’t, because Julio continues ripping clothes off the ladies and, to their boyfriends, squeezing out marshmallow-like eyeballs, tearing off flesh and other acts that earn the title its penultimate word.

It says a lot about the movie that I haven’t even mentioned the good-guy cop (Armando Silvestre, The Scalphunters) and his girlfriend (Norma Lazareno, Cardona’s Survive!), who wrestles professionally in a red-leather catwoman mask. Cardona’s story is so weird on its own, it doesn’t even need them, yet the two are major players.

Cardona works in a palette of unbelievably bright colors for a story so willfully embroiled in the sleazy side of things; the juxtaposition works to Night of the Bloody Apes‘ advantage, lending a downright quaint and wholesome vibe to its gleeful presentation of gore and gazongas. Plus, it’s easy to love a film rife with such absurd dialogue played straight-faced: “It’s too early to declare a victory. We have to wait and trust in God. Come, help me drag the cadaver of the gorilla over to the incinerator.” —Rod Lott

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Part two of the Philippines-lensed Blood Island franchise begins with a gimmicky prologue exhorting audience members to take the oath to join the Order of the Green Blood. William Castle would be mighty proud of this tacked-on bit, but he would detest the reliance on bare breasts that follows. That’s okay; Mad Doctor of Blood Island was made for us, not for him, and we find it delightful in its good-time depravity.

Government pathologist Bill Foster (John Ashley, Beach Blanket Bingo) heads for the titular site via boat, which also carries the buxom Sheila (Angelique Pettyjohn, Takin’ It Off), who hasn’t seen her isle-bound father since she was 12, and Carlos (veteran Filipino actor Ronaldo Valdez), who’s come to remove his mother from “this wretched island.” What makes the slice o’ paradise so wretched? Dr. Lorca (Ronald Remy, Blood Is the Color of Night), the limping scientist whose experiments toward eternal youth yield green-skinned men with crusty faces, like a progenitor to Swamp Thing.

Whenever director Eddie Romero (The Twilight People) aims his camera at these homicidal freaks of nature, the lens quickly zooms and in and out — not for a few seconds, but for the entire scene, in such a frenzy as to literally induce nausea. Gore is present via butcher-shop scraps placed atop cast members’ torsos. The entire affair is full of screaming mimis and hula dancers and sacrificed goats.

Oh, and bad acting, particularly with its ostensible hero. As wooden as Pettyjohn is pillowy, Ashley puts as much as pizzazz into a dramatic line like, “And these people you’ve caged and mutilated?” as he does a throwaway one such as, “I think your father could use some soup, Sheila.” The only time he seems to be fully charged and in the present moment is in his long-awaited fireside love scene, in which he goes Method to slowly grab a big, honking handful of leading lady. —Rod Lott

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