Panique sur la ville

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.

From what little I can find on the internet about Gorilla at Large, it seems that Anne Bancroft viewed the movie with disdain and wasn't at all proud of her appearance. Well, as far as I'm concerned, you can have your Academy Award for The Miracle Worker and you can have the incredibly dull The Graduate - who needs them? You can look down on Gorilla at Large, but I'd rather watch it any day over either The Miracle Worker or The Graduate. Why? It's just more fun! Call it cheesy, call it campy, call it whatever you want - bottom line, Gorilla at Large is one entertaining movie. What's not to like? A Technicolor 3-D (though I saw it in 2-D) murder mystery where a gorilla is one of the prime suspects - how cool is that? I mean any movie with a gorilla that is so obviously played by a guy in a suit and a director that has the cajones to have a character put on another gorilla suit is okay with me. Two gorillas for the price of one - can't go wrong with that.

In addition to the dismissive Anne Bancroft, Gorilla at Large has a very impressive cast. The resolute Raymond Burr, the cigar-chomping Lee J. Cobb, a baby-faced Lee Marvin, genre favorite Cameron Mitchell, and the most famous man in a gorilla suit, George Barrows, are all on hand for the fun. I realize that most of these actors were in the early stages of their careers, but what's the likelihood of getting two or even three "names" in a movie. Gorilla at Large has a known name or face at every turn. Amazing!

Overall, I had a great time watching Gorilla at Large. It's too bad Anne Bancroft never saw the fun in this movie.

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.

One of the "gems" from Anne's first stab at Hollywood. Drive in fodder would be completely forgotten if not for its cast. Anne Bancroft, looking sensational in Technicolor, is as good as the script allows-meaning she manages to keep a straight face during the ridiculous contrivances that the movie presents. Raymond Burr and Lee J. Cobb also put in professional performances, although Lee must have been longing for the days of the Group Theatre during production of this lulu. It's fun to see Lee Marvin just starting out as a clumsy cop. The whole thing is nonsensical but harmless unless you count the mystifying decision to make the usually brunette Cameron Mitchell a bleached blond, it does him no favors.

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.