Wed 20 Oct 2021
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: GORILLA AT LARGE (1954).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[11] Comments
GORILLA AT LARGE. Panoramic Productions/Fox, 1954. Cameron Mitchell, Anne Bancroft, Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Burr, Lee Marvin, Charlotte Austin, Peter Whitney, Warren Stevens, John Kellogg, Billy Curtis, and John Tannen. Written by Leonard Praskins and Barney Slater. Directed by Harmon Jones.
If you only see one movie in your entire life, it should be Gorilla at Large. Where else in the known universe will you get a chance to hear tough cop Lee J Cobb snarl, “We’ve got two gorillas around here, and one of them’s a murderer.†Where, I ask you?
Cobb is only one feature of a surprisingly able cast for what is essentially an inflated B-movie. Raymond Burr radiates menace very nicely as the boss of an elaborate carnival, playing effectively off Anne Bancroft as his wife, who does a trapeze act above the cage of Goliath “the world’s largest Gorilla†who manages to narrowly miss grabbing her at each performance.
Cameron Mitchell and Charlotte Austin walk through their bland parts as leading man and heroine, and Lee Marvin is wasted as a comic relief dumb cop, but Perter Whitney as a blackmailing carny and John Tannen as a publicity flack with his eye on the main chance ooze a very fitting sleaziness into their under-written roles.
Come to that, maybe it’s the writing that puts Gorilla at Large. so firmly into B-movie class. The dialogue is flat and obvious when it isn’t memorably bad, the plot is predictable when it’s not implausible, and…
Oh yeah, the Plot: Burr decides to put Cameron Mitchell in an ape suit to double for Goliath, but someone steals the hirsute suite and goes around killing blackmailing carnies and blaming it on Goliath. Yeah, who’s gonna notice an ape running around the lot? And the concept is not helped at all by the fact that the real ape and the phony are both played by guys in gorilla suits.
Fortunately, all this arrant nonsense is handled with pace and precision by Harmon Jones, a director who had his moments, and in his sure hands, it’s all really quite enjoyable. And really, if you’re only going to see one movie in your whole life, well, whathehell, it might as well be Gorilla at Large.
October 20th, 2021 at 1:58 pm
Among its other assets (such as they are), GORILLA AT LARGE was made in 3-D. I remember when they revived 3-D in the early ’80s and they showed various ’50s 3-D fare (like HOUSE OF WAX), this was one of them. It didn’t make it a good movie, of course, but I do remember seeing it
October 20th, 2021 at 5:27 pm
That looks like quite a cast for such a minor league sort of movie, but is that only in retrospect?
October 20th, 2021 at 6:32 pm
Director Harmon Jones has never attracted much attention.
His first film “As Young As You Feel” is charming. But possibly any film comedy with Monty Woolley and Thelma Ritter would be charming, even if directed by a gorilla. Or at least, a man in a gorilla suit.
I also liked Jones’ “Incident of the Stargazer” on Rawhide.
When DC comics would put a gorilla on the cover of a comic book, sales would soar.
October 20th, 2021 at 7:48 pm
Save for Bancroft it is a “Star” B cast. Fun, but not in the way a really good movie is fun, but at least this once Mitchell isn’t playing a rapist or wanna be rapist has he was so often cast after NO DOWN PAYMENT.
October 20th, 2021 at 8:39 pm
Harmon Jones did 3 superior Westerns that I think I’ve mentioned here: SILVER WHIP, CITY OF BAD MEN,and A DAY OF FURY.
October 20th, 2021 at 9:35 pm
Dan,
Not only did you mention these three films.
But you wrote full-length positive reviews of them!
(I learned this by doing a search here for “Harmon Jones”.)
I’ll try to track all of them down.
October 21st, 2021 at 4:02 am
Did Cameron Mitchell find himself being typecast as a man in a gorilla suit when he wasn’t typecast as a rapist or wanna be rapist? Did he ever combine the two roles?
October 21st, 2021 at 8:04 am
The highlight – or probably lowlight – of Mitchell’s career had to be THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978) as the crazed handyman with a drill, singing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.”
October 23rd, 2021 at 10:19 pm
Never been a fan of Cameron Mitchell, I must admit. He’s somehow always cast in oddball roles. Something about his low, sloping forehead, simian brow, swarthy complexion, and black/beady eyes? I think the only innocent character I ever saw him play, was a gob in the engine crew of a submarine movie. He was fine there.
I’m sure he must perform capably in many other flicks, which I simply haven’t seen. I genuinely do admire his late-career appearance in a particular flick I much admire: ‘The Midnight Man’ (supporting Burt Lancaster). He’s perfect in that.
October 28th, 2021 at 8:48 pm
Lazy,
Sam Fuller’s HELL AND HIGH WATER probably, and even there he’s a bit rapey.
February 7th, 2023 at 5:36 am
Anne Bancroft was one of the few actresses they literally reinvented herself. Anne Bancroft made her film debut in the film Don’t Bother To Knock 1952 was put under contract at 20th Century Fox made some really awful films like Gorilla At Large and she made some good films like New York Confidential and The Girl In Black Stockings. But Anne wanted more challenging roles so she bought out the rest of her contract returned to Broadway in 1958, Bancroft made her Broadway debut as lovelorn, Bronx-accented Gittel Mosca opposite Henry Fonda (as the married man Gittel loves) in William Gibson’s two-character play Two for the Seesaw, directed by Arthur Penn. For Gittel, she won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play. She subsequently won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play in 1960, again with playwright Gibson and director Penn, when she played Annie Sullivan, the young woman who teaches the child Helen Keller to communicate in The Miracle Worker. She took the latter role to Hollywood, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress, with Patty Duke repeating her own success as Keller alongside Bancroft in the 1962 film version of the play. Anne Bancroft died, age 73, of uterine cancer on June 6, 2005, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. Her death surprised many, even some of her friends. She was intensely private and had not released details of her illness.