BLACK ZOO

BLACK ZOO (1963). Director: Robert Gordon. 

This long-unseen horror thriller is one of three films producer Herman Cohen did with star Michael Gough (the other two are Konga and Horrors of the Black Museum). Like the others, Black Zoo is lurid, somewhat campy fun. Gough is owner of a zoo as well as member of a weird cult of animal worshipers. Threatened with losing the zoo and his beloved tigers and lions -- who lie around his living room like treasured and pampered guests -- Gough sics his pets on anyone who dares to get in his way. His wife Edna (Jeanne Cooper) has a trained chimp act and wishes that hubby were kinder to the handsome mute boy Carl (Rod Lauren) who helps him with the murders. Gough is florid and easily enraged, but as an actor he puts on a lively, energetic show, and Cooper is excellent and equally energetic. The interesting cast also includes Virginia Grey as a booking agent, Jerome Cowan as an entrepreneur, Elisha Cook, Jr. as a zoo worker, and even Ed Platt ("the chief" on Get Smart) as a detective. One of the most interesting scenes is an funeral for the dead tiger Baron that takes place in a misty forest by night. Cooper and Gough have a great, lively dinner scene that ends in an hysterical (in more ways than one) fight. Cooper played Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless; one of her co-stars on that show was Jerry Douglas, who plays a police lab man in Black Zoo. (He's not very good at his job, however, as he thinks a gorilla is "a member of the chimp family!") What's most surprising about this entertaining picture isn't the final revelation as much as how moving it is. Rod Lauren (of The Young Swingers) hasn't a word of dialogue but his expressive face says volumes. (Ironically, the actor-singer was accused years later of hiring someone to murder his wife.) Script by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel. Robert Gordon also directed It Came from Beneath the Sea. 

Verdict: Lions and tigers and apes, oh my! ***.

BERSERK

Joan Crawford and Ty Hardin

BERSERK (1967). Director: Jim O'Connolly.

Tough broad Monica Rivers (Joan Crawford) is at first not too concerned -- to say the least -- when one of her high-wire performers is killed in an accident as she feels it will attract the ghoulish to her circus in droves, which it does. When her business partner Albert (Michael Gough of Horrors of the Black Museum) gets a rivet pounded into the back of his head, Monica is free to do what she chooses -- and the murders continue. Monica begins an affair with the hunky new high-wire artist Frank Hawkins (Ty Hardin) who wants a piece of the circus action for himself. Two other women cause issues: Matilda (Diana Dors), who does a saw-the-lady-in-half act with her husband and can't keep her hands off Frank; and Monica's daughter Angela (Judy Geeson), who gets thrown out of school and insists on joining the troupe. Who will be the next to die?  

Diana Dors with Hardin

Berserk is a very entertaining film that manages to work up significant suspense even as it shows us some amazing acts from the real-life Billy Smart Circus -- trained elephants, horses, and poodles, not to mention the lions. Crawford plays with her customary authority although at times she just seems to be reading her lines the way she would at a rehearsal. Ty Hardin, better-known for his beefcake status than for his acting, is actually quite good in this and even manages to do love scenes with the much-older Crawford with conviction-- they are unlikely lovers, however. Dors is her usual vivid and zoftig self and there is also good work from Geeson, Gough, George Claydon as the little person Bruno, and others. The circus performers do an amusing number called "It Might Be Me." The Billy Smart Circus was also featured in the earlier film Circus of Horrors. 

Verdict: Genuinely suspenseful and a lot of fun. ***. 

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM

Michael Gough

HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959). Director: Arthur Crabtree.

Crime writer Edmond Bancroft (Michael Gough) taunts Scotland Yard for failing to solve the murders of several women in extremely grisly incidents. The latest victim had needles shot into her eyes and brain when she looked into a doctored pair of binoculars. Bancroft thinks the murders may be tied into Scotland Yard's "black museum" of criminal artifacts, although he has his own black museum that in his opinion puts the Yard's to shame. 

June Cunningham

Bancroft has a handsome assistant, Rick (Graham Curnow), who does whatever his employer tells him. Bancroft is also keeping a buxom lady named Joan (June Cunningham), but in a scene that plays like something out of Of Human Bondage, she bitchily taunts the lame author when he refuses to give her any more money. Joan is later beheaded by a man with a grimacing, disfigured face. And there are more murders to come ...  

Michael Gough and Beatrice Varley 

Horrors of the Black Museum is a delightfully lurid and ghoulish horror flick with the usual zesty, adroit, if over-the-top performance from Gough at his best. Cunningham is also vivid and gets to do a sexy dance number in a pub. Curnow, Geoffrey Keen as Superintendent Graham and  Gerald Andersen as the ill-fated Dr. Ballan are also effective, while Shirley Anne Field makes an attractive fiancee, Angela, for Rick. Beatrice Varley also makes her mark as Aggie, the owner of an antique and notions store that stocks many items of interest to Bancroft. 

Graham Curnow 

Horrors of the Black Museum is a riot of deadly guillotines placed on top of beds, dead bodies boiled in acid, murder by ice tongs, and other tasteless tidbits that will delight the horror fanatic. One imagines that the first sadistic killing involving the binoculars might have turned a few stomachs back in the day. This is one of a trio of films Gough did for producer Herman Cohen, Konga and Black Zoo being the other two. 

Verdict: All this and CinemaScope, too! ***.