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A word to the wise. If you are prone to criminal or manic behavior and have uncontrollable, if justified, jealousy, avoid exotic animals, their habitats and zoos. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Classic Movie Blog Association (CMBA) is hosting the Early Shadows & Pre-Code Horror Blog this week and I couldn’t resist this topic. So much so, in fact, that I randomly picked two classics I’d never seen before. This is the first. Director A. Edward Sutherland, starring a large cast including Lionel Atwill, Charlie Ruggles, Gail Patrick, Randolph Scott and Kathleen Burke. Murders in the zoo since 1933.
Let me preface this humble comment with a simple fact that invariably affects my reaction to horror images, I’m scared of everything. However, all my life I have been watching horror movies (with my fingers) and with them all kinds of monsters: the silent dead, the depraved, the deformed, the depraved and the depraved. In my experience, and the ones that affect me the most, are the perverts, with the mind of Dr. Moreau from the island where souls are lost. These are brilliant doctors, millionaires and celebrities who do harm for pleasure. There is something particularly heinous about the crimes committed by these people in the pre-teaching code. What we have here, inside Murders in the zooIt is not.
Let me start over as the promise of a nightmare appears on the screen. This is the opening and we see a man kneeling in the jungle. This man does the unimaginable to another man who is suffering beneath him. We get the point; One man sews another man’s mouth shut to prevent him from “kissing another man’s wife.” Holy Mother of Fear, what shall I do?
Eric Gorman (Atwill) is a wealthy big game hunter and zoologist who is also insanely jealous. After capturing exotic animals somewhere in the jungle, Gorman and his wife Evelyn (Burke) return to America, where Gorman plans to exhibit his new animals in his zoo. On the ship back home, Evelyn takes no time to overcome a man who has been eaten by tigers after being abandoned in the jungle with his mouth sewn shut. She is now deeply in love with Roger Hewitt (John Lodge), whom she plans to marry. Evelyn seems to periodically forget that she is already married – to Eric Gorman, who is extremely jealous and focused crazy. Yes, Evelyn is more than pre-code. She is a lovely young woman who does not lack the attention of the opposite sex and acts on it when the moment arises.
Anyway, they return to the zoo, where Evelyn’s love interest meets an untimely death thanks to the venomous bite of a black mamba snake. The death was perfectly planned during a lavish dinner at the zoo, except for Eric Gorman. Honestly, Evelyn and Roger are ridiculously obvious about cheating. Not that I’m judging, mind you, but be a little smarter about it, for crises. What does a man with access to a black mamba expect?
At the zoo, we meet press agent Peter Yates (Ruggles, who tries to bring some cheer to the proceedings), Dr. Jack Woodford (Scott), who is in charge of medical affairs at the zoo’s lab, and Jerry Evans (Gail Patrick), who helps out at the lab and is Woodford’s commanding officer. These are the players who experience a murderous maniac who escaped from the zoo. Events include dying by being eaten by an alligator, trying to bite another black mamba because – in case you didn’t know – you can cut your head off one of the snakes and they’ll still bite you, and unleashing the wild beasts of the Bible. I mean in the zoo. A lot of them, and they seem marked enough not to be credited in the film.
Murders in the zoo Never again does it live up to the sheer brutality of the first act in the jungle that opens the picture and is the stuff of nightmares. The censors agreed to this too when the film was released, but the sequence remained. The rest of Gorman’s actions seem milder than one kill compared to another. Gorman lacks the integrity of Laughton Moreau, and he lacks the pleasant sadism of Count Zaroff (played by Leslie Banks. The most dangerous game ’32), but Lionel Atwill doesn’t need much to be menacing, it’s fun to watch his level of sadness here, with the occasional smile to the camera that shows his delight in mischief and payback for marrying a woman who’d rather tango with everyone else but him. in total Murders in the zoo It pretty well delivers on man as the most brutal animal.
The now-familiar names of the supporting players are (mostly) lost in the zoo clutter, though no doubt much older ones are being brought in hoping to repeat the success. Isle of Lost Souls (1932). This is especially true of Kathleen Burke, who is little more than a pretty face worth killing for – until It is he who discovers the secret and becomes the hero of the story. That’s all I’ll say about it.
Murders in the zoo It was created quickly, released at the end of March 1933, and did not do well at the box office. Reviews were mixed. I think mine would be too, though overall I liked it. In hopes of not spoiling things, be aware that not all of the main players in these productions make it to the end credits. Plus – Eric Gorman’s necessary demise is satisfying. The shadows here have claws and fangs, and at least one large one is man-made. It is common – horror is the evil that men do.
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Important, unforgettable, menacing, historical early shadows and pre-coding horrors lurk in CMBA! Scream and cry all you want, but visit.
