#9 - Black Zoo (1963)
(dir. Robert Gordon)
Michael Gough stars as Michael Conrad, the owner of a small private zoo in Los Angeles, where he runs things with an iron fist. He lives with his drunken and generally miserable wife Edna and a mute teenager named Carl, who spend most of the movie acting kind of pathetic while Michael is a huge jerk to them. Conrad has a very close bond with his animals, and anyone who threatens his authority tends to meet a grizzly end... You might ask, "How many threats does a zoo really face?". Well, the answer is four. Actually, three, since I don't think the first victim actually did anything wrong. The opening scene where she is killed works as a nod to similar scenes in Jacques Tourneur's Cat People and The Leopard Man, but otherwise has nothing to do with the plot.
There are a lot of things like that in this film. Early in the film, there is a scene where a pretty art student, who is visiting the zoo to draw sketches of the tigers (another Cat People reference), starts to flirt with Carl. They seem to make a connection, but after Conrad interrupts and tells her to get out, this potential romantic subplot is completely dropped. Conrad is also a member of an animal worshiping cult, which you'd think would be a major plot point, but other than a scene where some dude wearing a tiger-skin rug for a hat and a bunch of bored looking couples do some chanting, it really doesn't come up much. Despite this supernatural connection, he doesn't kill his victims using dark magic, or animal mind-control, or anything cool like that - he just drives up in a van, lets them out for a little mauling, and then drives them home again.
Despite the huge number of plot holes, inconsistencies, and general silliness, I did actually enjoy this one, mostly because of Michael Gough's performance as the over-the-top evil zookeeper. Gough was a veteran of many Hammer and Amicus productions, but is probably best known by modern audiences as Alfred from the 90's Batman movies. Seeing him maniacally playing the pipe organ while surrounded by heavily sedated lions and tigers is worth the price of admission alone. Also, did I mention that this movie also features a cigarette-smoking chimp?
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