A Besta Negra

Just saw the new print of this maligned fun house of a production. First of all if you can't see this in real projected 3-D, I suggest skipping it. The color 3-D photography is excellent and the crew only pulls off the typical stick-it-in-the-camera 3-D hijinks a few times. The opening sequence of Raymond Burr walking through the carnival is some of the most effective 3-D photography I have ever seen.

The story...yipes! It's campy and weird in an Ed Wood sort of way but it seems that the entire cast and crew were in on the joke. Lee Marvin and Lee J. Cobb both time their performances in a very strange but funny way. Anne Bancroft vamps up a storm in some scenes and Raymond Burr plods thru his role. The gorilla suit is funny too. Good movie? No! Fun? Yes!

The second half drags at points and the 3-D photography loses a little steam here. I wouldn't want to sit through this movie in 2-D at this point.

Who knows if this is ever going to be projected again, but if it is and you enjoy 50's kitsch make it a priority. The screening I was at, during the intermission, projected 1950's era 3-D nudie slides by...HAROLD LLOYD, the silent film comedian! Unfortunately, I don't think that will ever happen again.

It's not so much that there's more than meets the eye as it is what

does meet the eye that makes this picture worth a look-see.

Sure, if you want to be all serious, then you could easily object to a

rather predictable plot, or some wooden performances (though I'd

have something to say about that), or a delightfully inept gorilla suit

that looks more like an animated swatch of shag carpet (the eyes

are so...human!). You could moan and groan about the film's

portrayal of women, etc., etc. You could call it a bad movie.

But you shouldn't! Firstly, it does offer the sorts of thrills that

B-movie fans relish: the lurid carny life, cartoonish violence,

trapeze artists in skimpy costumes, emotions writ large and

unambiguously (at least ostensibly).

In fact, I'd say that many of the performances are great, not

because they are especially moving or "realistic," but rather,

because the conventions of the genre frame them in such a way

as to be quite effective, and not least of all, gratifying. Anne

Bancroft smolders magnificently as a trapeze artist with quite a

shady past. Raymond Burr's controlling, yet ambiguous carnival

manager never fails to intrigue. Lee Marvin is great as a feckless,

blow-hard police officer. And perhaps most compellingly, there is

Lee J. Cobb, as a no-nonsense, cigar-chomping gumshoe. You

really get a sense of what an entirely watchable performer he is in

this picture, and personally I think he's better here than he is in "On

the Waterfront" (gasp!).

Camp values aside, the technical aspects of the film are

breathtaking. The picture's technicolors blast out of the screen,

aided by 3-D that is so sharply defined and brilliant that you feel

like you are watching some sort of moving ViewMaster reel. A

restored print has recently been struck and you'll be blown away if

you have a chance to see it. I'd say that its use of technicolor and

3-D are perhaps more impressive than even "House of Wax," and

certainly more accomplished than such unnecessarily 3-D'd

features such as "Dial M for Murder" or "Miss Sadie Thompson."

Color, violence, a beautiful girl and a gorilla--and in not one, nor

two, but THREE dimensions. What's not to like?

The title of this film would bring to mind the myriad low budget shockers from the 50's. But with a cast including Anne Bancroft, Lee Marvin, Raymond Burr, Cameron Mitchell, Lee J. Cobb, John Kellogg, and Warren Stevens, we're talking 8 Academy Award nominations, and 2 wins. That doesn't sound like the typical low budget 50's shocker and this Technicolor 3-D thriller is nothing of the sort. Of course, none of the nominations had yet occurred, and whether this film was the springboard that launched the careers of the aforementioned actors is no absolute. But there is no question that shortly after this film all of them began to appear on a regular basis in more important roles and in more important films and television, the most successful examples being Anne Bancroft, Lee Marvin, Raymond Burr and Lee J. Cobb. And this film is a perfect example of Lee Marvin's early work where it was obvious he was emblazoned with "Star". Oddly, it was the director Harmon Jones whose career seemed to go downhill after this film. After having previously directed such notable efforts as, Paddy Chayefsky's "As Young as You Feel", the popular biopic "The Pride of St. Louis", "The Silver Whip", "The Kid from Left Field", and "City of Bad Men", Harmon's career seemed from then on to be destined for weekly television episodes.

As for production values, script, suspense and action, the film is not bad. That is with the exception of the man in a gorilla suit which was supposed to be a real gorilla. I guess they were never able to get that right until "Planet of the Apes"! We're fortunate that Fox Movie Channel had rediscovered this peculiar gem. Although the film's current condition is good, a restoration for release on DVD and the inclusion of 3-D glasses would surely be a success.

I've seen this film being bashed before within other circles and forums and I'm always somewhat puzzled by it. We're talking 1950's era, 3-D, monster hokum here folks. Fun, lighthearted with none of it meant to be taken all that seriously. It's sort of like trying to critique, ' Plan 9 From Outer Space ' ; it's all a little beyond that, isn't it ? Let's all go to the Saturday matinée for some laughs and a good time ! Visually enjoyable in wonderful color, great nostalgia value centering around the old amusement park with the fun house, room of mirrors, dodgems, trapeze act and all the rest. Including cotton candy ! The impressive, high profile cast, ( see the credits for yourself ) must of been having a grand old time with it all. The unoriginality of the ' gorilla ' is usually the main focus point for the films negative comments. Sure, you keep an eye on him to stay up to speed with the story but Anne Bancroft is, of course, the main attraction. At twenty - something and gorgeous, she spends the majority of her on screen time in Capri swim suits and black, fishnet tights; often contorted or strategically placed into unconventional physical positions. Yessiree. So who was paying attention to the big monkey ? MONTER ON THE MIDWAY !! Recommended.

This semi-indie murder mystery from the fifties has a little bit of something for everyone. For one thing, it has an amazing cast: Anne Bancroft, Cameron Mitchell, Lee Cobb, Lee Marvin and Raymond Burr. It captures perfectly the tail-end of the amusement park era that was drawing to a close at this time due to television and Disneyland. Men dress in garish suits in this one, and smoke cigars, and there is, as always seemed to be the case with films with a circus or carnival setting, the air of an alternate reality just around the corner, in a sideshow or a funhouse.

This picture was an oddity even when it was new, feeling at times more like an episode of Superman than a movie. The gorilla looks exactly like what it is, a man in a gorilla suit, yet somehow this is acceptable, the way painted backdrops in silent movies are acceptable. If the big ape were presented realistically it would throw the whole film off. Method actors Mitchell and Cobb deliver fine B movie performances that give no hints that they were in fact classically trained, not to mention that they had once played together as father and son in the original Broadway production of Death Of a Salesman. Miss Bancroft was a babe, yet restrains her natural talent to give the sort of Suzanne Pleshette performance her part demands. Raymond Burr, still a few years away from Perry Mason, draws on his natural and inscrutable saturninity. His occasional moments of smiling and bonhomie remind me a little of Peter Lorre at his most forlorn, as he comes off like a grim, serious man trying awfully hard to be a good sport, which in turn makes him a perfect red herring. Lee Marvin plays a dumb cop named Shaughnessy, a good indication of the cleverness of the script.

Yet the movie works on its own terms. The color is well above average for this basically small-scale picture. Director Harmon Jones was a seasoned Hollywood veteran and knew how to slow down the action to create a sense of place, whether a policeman's office, a pier, a trailer or the ersatz jungle set, complete with trapeze. This sort of stylized, non-realistic movie was, like amusement parks, going out of fashion at the time it was made, and yet it has its virtues, notably a commitment to artifice rather than a representation of the real world, which freed the imaginations of the men behind the camera, allowing them to make little experiments with color, space and lighting. The movie is much better than camp. It's more like Edward Hopper Goes To the Circus.