Gorilla at Large *** (1954, Cameron Mitchell, Anne Bancroft, Lee J Cobb, Lee Marvin, Raymond Burr) – Classic Movie Review 5184

‘You’ve always been this alert, Shaughnessy?’ – Lee J Cobb playing Detective Sergeant Garrison.

‘Always on my toes!’- Lee Marvin as Policeman Shaughnessy.

‘Well, get off ’em. You’re a cop, not a ballet dancer.’ – Detective Sergeant Garrison.

Director Harmon Jones’s 1954 film noir crime mystery horror thriller stars a great team in Cameron Mitchell, Anne Bancroft, Lee J Cobb, Lee Marvin and Raymond Burr, and asks the fairly intriguing question of exactly who or what is bumping people off at a sinister carnival called The Garden of Evil.

Made by Panoramic Productions as a tacky B-movie with a posh A-list cast, this monkey business is notable for being one of the first 20th Century Fox films filmed in 3D, following Inferno (1953).

20th Century Fox’s lip-smacking Fifties 3D entertainment is shot by Lloyd Ahern in glorious Technicolor and features both a real gorilla and Cameron Mitchell as carnival barker Joey Matthews, the circus trapezist who does a turn in a gorilla suit with the owner/ boss Cy Miller (Raymond Burr)’s seductive wife Laverne Miller (Anne Bancroft).

There at The Garden of Evil, the main attraction is the world’s largest gorilla Goliath, who ‘cost the lives of 1,000 men before his capture’. And, when a man is found dead with a broken neck, Goliath the gorilla is apparently responsible, the number one suspect, but of course it could perhaps instead be a person in Joey’s gorilla suit – or somebody else’s at the circus. Investigating the case are Lee J Cobb playing Detective Sergeant Garrison, Lee Marvin as Policeman Shaughnessy, and Warren Stevens as Detective Joe. They soon uncover and delve into four interlocked romantic triangles among the human murder suspects.

The movie is weird and amusing, often unintentionally so, with the superb cast smacking their lips even as they keep their tongues in their cheeks – a nice trick if you can do it. Of course the movie is trashy, as written by Leonard Praskins and Barney Slater with their tongues in their cheeks too, but it is a lot of good fun.

Also in the cast are Charlotte Austin, Peter Whitney, John G Kellogg and Charles D Tannen.

Movie buff film director Joe Dante names it as ‘the only 3D movie where they throw objects away from the camera’.

Trying to under-sell it, Fox went with: ‘From the highest point of the carnival midway…he unleashes a terror never known by mortal man before!’

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5184

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