One of the earliest films of cult Italian filmmaker
Marco Ferreri (La Grande Bouffe; Tales of Ordinary Madness), 1964's The Ape Woman is a precursor to David Lynch's
The Elephant Man
with a similar true story.
The Ape Woman tells the tale of 19th-century carnival performer Julia Pastrana, whose entire body was
covered in hair.
The Cannes Film Festival found Ferreri's original cut too "challenging",
forcing him to deliver a happy ending. Now Ferreri's original cut has been
newly restored in 4K, with the movie making its global blu-ray debut
courtesy of Cult Films on October 11th, when it will also be available on
digital download.
The disc comes with an exclusive 90-minute documentary on Ferreri featuring
his collaborators Gerard Depardieu, Philippe Noiret, Christopher Lambert and
Ornella Muti.
Check out Cult Films' trailer below.
The official synopsis reads:
The Ape Woman is based on the true story of 19th-century carnival performer Julia Pastrana. In Ferreri’s film, an extraordinary Annie Girardot delivers an elegant and devastating performance as Maria ‘the ape woman’, a covent scullery maid whose body is covered in hair, from head to toe. Her life is uprooted when an unscrupulous hustler (Ugo Tognazzi), discovers and marries her in order to get her on the freak show circuit and cash in on her distinctive appearance.
