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Black Zoo (1963)
Topic Started: Mar 10 2012, 10:12 AM (467 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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Michael Gough runs a small private zoo/circus in Southern California, and defends his territory from would-be usurpers by training his cats and apes to kill, kill, kill.

Random thoughts on the film:

Oddball horror with a weird cast. Gough's wife is described as "young and beautiful" and she's neither (Jeanne Cooper, of Young and the Restless fame - she's been on that show for 40 years now! - was supposedly 35 when this was filmed, but she looks about 50); Virginia Grey and Elisha Cook Jr drop in just long enough to get eaten; Rod Lauren is the second male lead and has no dialog; Edward Platt pretty much plays the Chief from Get Smart here, too. Weird. Some blood and claw marks across some bare skin but how this got a reputation as "gory" I do not know. All the animals are real save for the gorilla, good ol' George "Robot Monster" Barrows. A chimp smoking a cigarette is the most horrifying thing in the movie, actually. The sequence in How to Make a Monster in which the Teenage Frankenstein kills a guy in his car garage is redone shot for shot here only with an ape (Herman Cohen ripping himself off). Nice color, widescreen print from the Warner Archives, but a trailer would've been equally nice. Scenes in which Michael Gough plays a giant church organ in his living room while his lions and tigers recline on his sofas and listen are so bizarre that one wonders why anybody thought the audience wouldn't just laugh at them. 1963, what a goofy-ass year.

Short subjects from FNF included two fine cartoons, the hilarious Zoom and Bored with Roadrunner & Coyote and a typical Herman (sans Katnip, whom I don't think had come to Hollywood yet) cartoon, Saved by the Bell (1950); the Duncan Sisters (two old ladies who look like Betty White, dress like Baby Jane, and play college students) in Surprise! (which I liked, but I'm not sure anyone else did, the gang being rather horrified when one of the sisters dons blackface and plays a singing, dancing, joke-telling Topsy); Who's Right?, a painfully depressing 1954 marriage-counselling video; and episode 5 of Terry and the Pirates, the chapter with the missing soundtrack and the dubbed-in dialog, which added to the fun immensely. No show next week, I'm at a film event.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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andarius
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I've got a comic of Black Zoo with b&w photos and balloons coming out of the character's cake-holes with dialog like a comic; the pic, as my Dad was always saying, "has nothing to do with the case"!
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Sgt King
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I saw Black Zoo in 1963 with a buddy and remember it being very talky, slow with very little in the way of chills or thrills.
A very similar feeling about Konga also with Michael Gough. I wanted to see Black Zoo because of the build up Famous Monsters magazine gave it.
By the way - I still have the first 13 or so issues of Famous Monsters down in the basement.
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andarius
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Sgt King
Mar 11 2012, 07:30 PM
I saw Black Zoo in 1963 with a buddy and remember it being very talky, slow with very little in the way of chills or thrills.
A very similar feeling about Konga also with Michael Gough. I wanted to see Black Zoo because of the build up Famous Monsters magazine gave it.
By the way - I still have the first 13 or so issues of Famous Monsters down in the basement.
LOL, yes I've still got the 'Black Zoo' mag and one 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' and a few others - they're packed with oodles of info!

When I started COBOL programming back in '76 they had loads of girlie mags in the office. One day I brought in a monster magazine I'd just bought and this guy said, "I'm getting worried about you!", lol.

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There's so bloody many I can't find mine but this is purty!
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