As you may expect from my examinations of the lives of Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, George Zucco, and others, I do have a certain fondness for the old hams. Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre--there's something about a good scenery-chew that puts me in the right mood. Of course, these six are relatively well-known, especially if you're familiar with their work in the Universal horror franchises. Not every great horror standby is a Universal veteran, however. I was introduced to Michael Gough (like most) when he was Alfred in the '80s and '90s Batman movies, but I also know him as the Celestial Toymaker from the First Doctor's era of Doctor Who. When I learned he played the villain in one of those killer zoo movies that I learned to enjoy after the fun of Murders in the Zoo, I couldn't resist checking this out. Suffice it to say that Black Zoo is one of the most entertaining blind watches I've had in a long time, full of camp, grotesquery, and genuine scares alike.
Michael Conrad (Michael Gough) is the operator of Conrad's Animal Kingdom, and he's very kindly, too. He explains to his guests that kindness is the secret to training wild animals like lions and gorillas, not force. This is what we call "foreshadowing"--as if there wasn't enough "foreshadowing" from the opening scene of a girl being mauled to death by a seemingly-escaped big cat. As it happens, Michael Conrad is not kindly at all. He is fucking evil. In private he espouses an often-religious reverence for animals, prioritizing them totally and absolutely over humans; consequently he vigorously abuses all of his employees, especially his mute handyman Carl and his wife Edna, who has been reduced to alcoholism by his verbal and physical beatings. Mixed into this is a strange belief that what he calls the "so-called humans" are just other animals in need of training--never mind that he trains his actual animals with sincere kindness, and his human-animals with bitter cruelty. Over the course of the movie Conrad works his way through a crooked realtor intent on forcing him to sell his land, a disfigured, disloyal, rage-crazed cage cleaner played by Elisha Cook, and finally the "shocking," not-telegraphed-at-all revelations about the relationship between Conrad and his handyman. This film does have one truly shocking revelation in it, and it's that revelation which launched Black Zoo out of the rabble and straight into solid-gold A-List territory.
The twist is that Conrad is actually part of an animal-worshipping cult called "the True Believers"! What astounds me about this out-of-nowhere story-jerk is that it's not as out-of-nowhere as it seems; I mean, Conrad hosts funerals for his animals in a goddamn fog-shrouded cemetery, for fuck's sake. Plus, he does have a propensity for playing the organ, rather like a minister. So the True Believers are a group of folk who apparently all share Conrad's crazy "animals are good, therefore humans must live in misery" ideology. Rather like the cults from future A-List review subjects The Devil's Hand and Shriek of the Mutilated, this cult has sort of a racist element to it, in that it is--gasp!--made up of a lot of foreigners. I think in all three cases this is meant to show that the cult has prominence around the world, but each movie usually features a group of racial stereotypes rather than, y'know, ordinary people whose origins are given through exposition. In any case, the sight of the high priest of the True Believers wearing his tiger-skin cowl will leave you in tears. This movie's relatively happy ending still has a dour note to it when you realize there's still a murderous animal-cult somewhere out in the world. Probably one which will try to avenge itself on those who killed one of its members...
As you may well imagine, this is a movie which does not run quiet. On top of the True Believers and Elisha Cook roaring, "I had to kill him!" eight times in two minutes, we also have Jerry Stengel, the John Waters stache-bearing realtor who becomes increasingly violent towards Conrad over selling his land. When Conrad was being abusive to Carl and Edna I was comparing his mean-spiritedness to Trump, but Stengel's swiftness to resorting to crooked tricks to get Conrad's land I think is much more deserving of such comparison. It doesn't help that when Conrad pretends to agree to Stengel's deal, the tickled Stengel offers to take Conrad to a striptease joint (pronounced "strip-TEASE" because '60s) after they sign the contract, which this lesbian read as more than a little gay. (Again, the John Waters stache! Why are you sexually stimulating your business partner unless you're looking for a partner of another kind?) What I like about the exchanges with Stengel is that you end up actually worrying for Conrad, even though there's every indication at this point that he's a total asshole. For all that Conrad does, a closed zoo in the early '60s would have been bad news for all the animals in its keeping, with the possibility of their ending up in the hands of abusive private collectors being very much on the table.
Intriguingly (at least because Michael Gough is involved), this film's climax, where Carl finally gets his against Conrad, rather mirrors the vicious wrestling match between the Doctor and the Master in the last serial of the original Doctor Who series, Survival. "If we like animals...we'll die like animals!" Indeed! It seems that even when the movie isn't made in Britain, the British Filmic Incest Virus strikes again. If you follow British movies and TV, it shouldn't be at all surprising that a movie starring a Doctor Who actor taps into the same vein as one of the later Doctor Who stories. It's not just that it's easy to joke that Britain has a whole five actors, because you always seem to see the same people over and over when watching British film or TV, but it's that you start to notice other parallels as well the harder you gaze into the abyss...but that's a story for another day.
Black Zoo is now the third killer zoo movie I've seen (after the PCP-powered adventures of Wild Beasts) and I'm pleased to say I've enjoyed all three entries from the micro-genre thus far. Michael Gough gives a great performance, even managing to make lines like, "YOU BLOCKHEAD!" legitimately intimidating. I'll be tracking down more of his movies as time goes on, because he fits almost perfectly into the sort of acting aesthetic that I love. Wonderful.
P.S. Yes, there is a man in a gorilla suit in this movie, and yes, he does look conspicuously out of place in the company of the real animals. And yes, he is played by George Barrows, gorilla-suit master extraordinaire, who perhaps most infamously donned at least part of a gorilla suit for the part of Ro-Man in Robot Monster. Truly we're in the hands of celebrities, people.
If you want to help make reviews like this possible, you can support the A-List on Patreon. Plus, you can like our page on Facebook to get updates!
No comments:
Post a Comment