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Night of the Bloody Apes

Night of the Bloody Apes is a 1969 film from Mexico, directed by René Cardona, running 81 minutes. reelscum files it under splatter and luchador.

Poster for Night of the Bloody Apes
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Year
1969 · 1960s films
Country
Mexico
Runtime
81 min
Director
René Cardona
Updated
10 Aug 2026
Obscurity
cult (47/100)
Also known as
Gomar: The Human Gorilla
Banned in
UK

Defined in the glossary: Splatter, Luchador

⊘ Banned in UK

A prosecuted DPP video nasty; the Mexican luchador-horror hybrid spliced in real open-heart-surgery footage.

Mexican horror at the gore end: a gorilla-heart transplant, real surgery footage, and a masked lady wrestler.

Mexican horror in the canon has been all silver masks and gothic cobwebs, so here is the other tradition, the one that actually bleeds. A surgeon transplants a gorilla's heart into his dying son, produces a rampaging ape-man, and somewhere alongside it a masked luchadora works a subplot with almost no bearing on anything. René Cardona splices in genuine open-heart surgery footage for texture, which is as tasteless as it sounds and entirely of a piece with the rest.

It is a gorier remake of Cardona's own tamer wrestling picture, dialled up until distributors abroad could sell it as a shocker.

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  • Nastiest of the nasties

    The tapes the DPP put on its seize-on-sight list. Prosecuting them in a country with ferries to France was the best advertising any of them ever got.

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