Gorillas and Apes in Weird Tales seems like a common occurrence but in 279 issues it only happened a handful to times. That handful gave us some of WT‘s most memorable tales featuring Conan the Cimmerian and the French occult detective, Jules de Grandin. The idea of a killer ape goes right back to Edgar Allan Poe and his “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Graham’s Magazine, April 1841) where an orangutan is the culprit. After Poe, Argosy gave us two classics with apes, Tarzan of the Apes (October 1912) with a young Tarzan facing off against the Bolgani.
Also in that magazine, The Citadel of Fear (September 14-October 26, 1918) by Francis Stevens with its mysterious ape attacker.
The idea of a lurking man-ape goes next to Arthur Conan Doyle and his late Sherlock Holmes tale, “The Creeping Man” (The Strand, March 1923). Here a doctor injecting himself with monkey glands goes ape. The classic scene of Professor Presbury at the window sets a trope that will appear again and again.
Finally, H. R. Haggard gave us Henrika the Baboon Woman in “Allan’s Wife” (1889) and inspired Robert E. Howard with Heu Heu, or the Monster (1924). By the time Weird Tales started in 1923, the tradition of killer apes was pretty much a set deal.
1920s
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (June 1923) by Edgar Allan Poe was a reprint of the classic tale. Two women are murdered in a locked room. C. Auguste Dupin solves the case and sets the mold for Sherlock Holmes and everybody else who followed. Edwin Baird, the editor before Farnsworth Wright, wanted to show readers and writers the magazine’s main inspiration, Edgar Allan Poe. It didn’t hurt that the story was in the public domain and could be used for free.
“The Gorilla” (September 1923) by Horatio Vernon Ellis has a man, Hapesworth Chadwick, who captures animals for the zoo. He kills a baby ape by accident in front of its mother. The she-ape escapes but ends up in a circus in America. The mother comes for her revenge. Good set up but too predictable.
“The White Ape” (aka “Arthur Jermyn”) (April 1924) by H. P. Lovecraft is one of the first human-ape hybrid stories. HPL has his hero, Arthur Jermyn, an incredibly ugly man, worrying about his lineage. When a coffin comes from African, the verdict is in. Artie’s got monkeys in his family trees. Lovecraft was miffed that the story’s title had been changed, telegraphing the big reveal.
“The Horror On the Links” (October 1925) by Seabury Quinn was the very first Jules de Grandin tale. It features an ape creature ironically named Manly. Some mysterious creature is attacking pretty girls. Jules de Grandin and Dr. Trowbridge to the rescue. Read all about it here.
“Back to the Beast” (November 1927) was Manly Wade Wellman’s debut with a tale of a scientist who devolves himself back into an ape. Unfortunately, his new ape self is not able to reverse the process. Things don’t go well when the cops show up.
“Red Shadows” (August 1928) by Robert E. Howard was a proto-Sword & Sorcery tale about the English Puritan, Solomon Kane. A terrible murder in France sends him on a journey to Africa where he meets up with the killer as well as a gorilla. Read about it here.
“The White Wizard” (September 1929) by Sophie Wenzel Ellis has two men staying in the home of a mad man who elevates an ape to man-like status. Too bad a love triangle happens with his daughter. Plenty of elements from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. ( I have to wonder if Sophie is related by marriage to Horatio Vernon Ellis?)The Cult
1930s
Things could not help but change on April 7, 1933, the day King Kong hit movie screens. Here was the ultimate beauty-and-the-beast tale. Weird Tales writers like Robert E. Howard were fans.
“The Cult of the White Ape” (February 1933) by Hugh B. Cave is a tale of Africa. Varicks is the factor in a jungle village. When Matthew Betts and his beautiful wife, Lucilia, come, the trouble begins. Betts beats a local shaman, Kodagi, when the drunk trips over him. Betts also takes over a sacred clearing where a tower sits. This ancient shrine to Astarte is now used by the Bakazenzi, a cannibal cult of were-beasts, to worship the white apes. Betts slowly becomes a naked beast himself, beating his wife, and running through the jungle. He kidnaps Varicks and his wife for sacrifice. Only the tables turn and Betts is the victim. (Jayem Wilcox shows him running away from an unseen horde of were-animals. Varicks and Lucilia are saved by an ape who is probably Kodagi, who always liked the factor. The couple leave the jungle together.
Cave has a scene where giant white apes pour out of the tower, reminding me a little of Michael Crichton’s Congo (1980).
“Rogues in the House” (January 1934) by Robert E. Howard was the first Conan tale to feature an ape-like creature. Thak is a guardian of the house of the wizard Nabonidus. Read about it here. Hugh Rankin preferred to illustrate another guardian, a sprite-like being.
Frank Frazetta in 1967 made no such mistake, painting this iconic cover with Conan and Thak.
“Queen of the Black Coast” (May 1934) by Robert E. Howard features a winged ape, a most evil creature. Margaret Brundage made him look human on the cover, but Hugh Rankin does a better job with the illustration. Read about it here.
“The Thief of Forte” (July 1937) by Clifford Ball is a Sword & Sorcery tale with plenty of daring-do that Virgil Finlay could have used. Instead, being the little devil he was, he addressed a wrong. Read more on this here.
“Suicide Chapel” (June 1938) by Seabury Quinn takes us full circle with another gorilla beast attacking young women. Similar to de Grandin’s first adventure, the gorilla monster is trained by a human agent to take females.
“The Maze of Maal Dweb” (October 1938) by Clark Ashton Smith was actually a reprint from The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies (1933). This tale of a thief named Tiglari has him entering the arcane labyrinth of the sorcerer, Maal Dweb. This virtually immortal and all-powerful being turns the invader into an ape. (Thanks, Rick.)
Conclusion
When Dorothy McIlwraith took over Weird Tales in 1940, she did not publish any gorilla stories. Was the idea over-worked by then? Perhaps. Or was it simply moving from the Pulps into the comic books? Julius Schwartz took his love of gorillas to DC Comics. In 1944, Schwartz became an editor at DC and made sure Superman and the Flash had plenty of gorillas to worry about.
I am sure I haven’t got every ape monster in old WT. If you can recall any send me an email.
Supposedly, whenever a pulp ran an ape/gorilla on the cover that was somehow humanoid or showed the ablity to speak, as in a caged zoo gorilla holding up a printed paper indicating it was actually a human somehow trapped in an ape body, circulation would soar.
Very good piece.
The only thing that comes to mind that you’re missing is “The Maze of Maal Dweb” by Clark Ashton Smith from October 1938.
I included it alongside “Red Shadows” and “Cult of the Ape” in my anthology THE APES OF WRATH.