Bill’s Bizarre Bijou

William D. Carl

This Week’s Feature Presentation:

BLACK ZOO (1963)

Welcome to Bill’s Bizarre Bijou, where you’ll discover the strangest films ever made.  If there are alien women with too much eye-shadow and miniskirts, if papier-mâché monsters are involved, if your local drive-in insisted this be the last show in their dusk-till-dawn extravaganza, or if it’s just plain unclassifiable—then I’ve seen it and probably loved it.   Now, I’m here to share these little gems with you so you too can stare in disbelief at your television with your mouth dangling open.  Trust me, with these flicks, you won’t believe your eyes.

In the annals of film history, there have been many Hollywood pairings that worked wonders time and again, when the producer/director and the actor operated as a team.  Working separately, they created great art.  Working together, they were even better.  John Ford and John Wayne; Michael Curtiz and Errol Flynn; George Cukor and Katherine Hepburn; Martin Scorsese and Robert Deniro; Herman Cohen and Michael Gough.  What, you ask, who the hell are Herman Cohen and Michael Gough? 

Herman Cohen could really churn the cheapies out, and he spent several years at AIP producing such gems as I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF (1957), I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN (also 1957), and, my favorite make-up man on a rampage movie ever, HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER (1958).  In 1959, Cohen travelled to England, where he teamed up with Michael Gough for the first time in a grisly little flick called HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (you know, the one where the binoculars had little spears that went into your eyes).  The two got along very well, and a silver screen team for the ages was born.

Michael Gough was a hammy British actor who starred in a stream of whacked-out low-budget movies for Cohen.  In 1961, he grew a giant chimpanzee and was carried away in doll-form in KONGA.  In 1967, he was Joan Crawford’s partner in a cursed circus in the wildly campy BERSERK.  In 1963, Gough portrayed Michael Conrad in BLACK ZOO, a movie nobody other than Herman Cohen could produce.

Let’s talk about that one!

Our picture starts with a beautiful young woman walking in lovely Technicolor streets on her way home.  Suddenly, a huge tiger leaps over a fence and attacks her (actually, her rather burly male stunt double) and mauls her on the sidewalk.  It’s a violent scene that lingers on the violence and the incredible animal slashing at the bloody girl.  Soon, we are taking a tour at Michael Conrad’s  zoo.  There’s a tiger named Baron, a leopard, two cheetahs, a lion called Caesar, a lioness, a gorilla, and a show featuring trained chimps and Conrad’s wife who is played by Jeanne Cooper (THE INTRUDER – 1962, THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS from 1973 till today, and the mother of Corbin Bernson).  Well, Mrs. Conrad isn’t such a nice lady after all.  Not only does she tipple more than a little (“Since when is a fifth of bourbon a little nip?”), she also makes her chimps smoke cigarettes during their act.  The horror!  There’s also a lion tamer named Joe, played by the great Elisha Cook Jr. (THE MALTESE FALCON – 1941, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL -1959 and ROSEMARY’S BABY – 1968).  Raking leaves and sweeping in the background is a young mute man, Carl, taken in and mentally abused by Conrad.  He’s dark and good looking and very, very familiar.  Why, it’s Rod Lauren, the star of the classic astronaut-limb-on-the-loose non-epic THE CRAWLING HAND from 1963!  And the pretty art student who flirts shamelessly with him is played by Marianna Hill, star of MEDIUM COOL (1969) and BLOOD BEACH (1980)!  What a cast!

Conrad gets a visit from Jerry Stengel, a coarse man who wants to buy his zoo, all sixty acres, to put up tract housing.  Michael does what any reasonable zookeeper would do when confronted with a crooked lawyer, he brings all the big cats into his living room, where they lounge around on sofas and couches, and he plays a concert for them on his giant organ.   Now, I am all for surreal scenes in movies, but watching these huge animals relaxing in a plush home while Gough preaches at them about the evils of men – it’s beyond surreal.  It’s just freaking weird.  And rather hilarious.  Later, after the rant, he and Carl set the lion loose in Jerry Stengel’s house, where it’s lawyers for lunch.  Rare.

And it only gets more bizarre from here.

One day, when feeding Baron, the tiger, Joe is attacked.  To be fair, he was being a jerk and teasing the animal.  The tamer pulls out a pistol and shoots the poor creature, killing it instantly.  Well, this does not sit well with Conrad.

Joe: It was him or me.

Conrad: Then, it should have been you.  You know what a tiger’s worth, even in lousy dollars and cents?  And do you know what this bum’s life is worth?

Conrad convinces Carl to muscle Joe into Caesar’s cage, where the lion rips Elisha Cook Jr. apart.  The camera lingers on the mauling, and it’s an effective and terrifying scene.  Afterwards, in a thick English fog, they bury Caesar in an animal graveyard, complete with a grave-side service by Conrad and attended by all of the other big cats.  They all sit around the casket (the cheetahs sit on top of grave markers) and bow their heads in prayer, and we are once again in that weird Herman Cohen alternate universe where things like this are common.  Weird, weird, weird.

But, yes friends, it gets weirder.

After the funeral, Conrad attends a religious service of animal worshippers which takes place in what looks like a Knights of Columbus hall, decked out with tiki torches and bongo drums.  The priest, wearing a tiger skin complete with toothy head as a hat, transfers Baron’s soul into a young tiger and presents it to Conrad, who takes the cub back to his zoo.

Meanwhile, Conrad performs more organ concerts, while his wife Edna is tempted to return to the circus by her old friend and agent, played with great sarcastic wit by Virginia Grey (THE NAKED KISS – 1964, AIRPORT – 1970).  Well, her hubbie isn’t about to let her or the chimp act go, so he sets his gorilla on Grey, who gets her skull smashed in.  The police begin to suspect that maybe all these animal attacks are somehow related, and Mrs. Conrad starts to put the pieces together, and Carl starts to remember his past and rebels against Conrad’s tyranny.

All through the movie, Michael Gough screams and shrieks and overacts so much you keep expecting someone to salt and pepper the scenery before his entrances.  Spittle must have covered the furniture.  He owns this role, roaring as loudly as his cats.  He is the very personification of an out-of-control madman.  He seems to be trying to give Vincent Price a run for his money in the hammy acting department, but what’s interesting is that all through the Herman Cohen movies, Gough overacts horrendously (making these flicks even more fun than they deserve to be – take a look at TROG – 1970 – if you don’t believe me), but soon, he became a very respected British actor, appearing in many great roles in many great movies.  A few examples –

-Delamere in OUT OF AFRICA (1985)

-Schoonbacher in THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW (1988)

-Alfred the butler in BATMAN (1989)

-Henry van der Luyden in THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993)

Sadly, Gough died in March of this year, leaving behind more than 175 performances, from the garish to the stylish.  He will be missed.

Meanwhile, Herman Cohen, his early partner in crime, produced his last movie in 1977, WATCH ME WHEN I KILL, a rather tedious giallo filmed in Italy.  He died in 2002.

But, the two of them teamed up for a series of twisted films that reached their loony heights in BLACK ZOO.  Competently made, but almost David Lynchian in its freakiness, it nevertheless entertains in a grand manner.

BLACK ZOO has been restored gloriously by Warner Brothers and is available in their Warner Archive Collection.

I give BLACK ZOO 3 giant organs out of 4.

© Copyright 2011 by William D. Carl

This entry was posted on November 24, 2011 at 6:41 am and is filed under 1960s Horror, 2011, Animals Attack, Bill's Bizarre Bijou, British Horror, Just Plain Weird, Surrealism, William Carl Articles with tags 60s Horror, Black Zoo, Elisha Cook Jr., Herman Cohen, Michael Gough, Virginia Grey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.