Eric Gorman’s venomous jealousy of his wife’s main squeeze makes her cry crocodile tears (quite literally...and fatally), but in the end he’s the one who gets squeezed! This is one of the most brutal Pre-Code horror films in its utter nihilism and crude violence, yet balances chuckling goofy humor between these particularly gruesome scenes. It’s either the unfunniest horror film ever made or the grisliest comedy produced before the Hays Code enforcement!
Eric Gorman (Lionel Atwill) is a hunter who brings back majestic beasts for the Municipal Zoo, but he’s also a virulent narcissist, consumed with jealousy over any man who even looks askew at his beautiful wife Evelyn (Kathleen Burke). The film begins with Gorman and a few of his indigenous guides holding a man down and sewing his lips closed for trying to kiss his wife. Abandoned in the jungle, the man is eventually devoured by tigers. But not before he staggers to his feet and runs haphazard towards a close-up where we see in bloody detail Gorman’s stitch-work! Wow. The film then follows the arc of Mrs. Gorman hiding her extra-marital affair amid the antics at the Municipal Zoo, where a temporarily sober Peter Yates (Charles Ruggles) is hired as an Advertising Executive to bring media attention (and customers) to the failing business. Interestingly, Ruggles is top billed, so this makes me believe this was intended as more of a comedy, focusing more upon Ruggle’s “slacker” demeanor and his jumbled jargon than on Atwill’s toxic Actus Reus and Mens Rea. The opening credits depicts various animals dissolving into the actors: Ruggles is first, a clapping seal becomes our pipe-smoking laugh-track while Atwill is last, a cagey tiger fades into our inscrutable antagonist. The entire film plays off this dichotomy. The film is wonderfully photographed by future seven-time Academy Award Nominee DP Ernest Haller, who would win in 1939 for a little film titled GONE WITH THE WIND. His compositions and low-key lighting help create the dread but become rather mundane in the comedy bits.
Gorman murders his wife’s lover with Mamba poison, a deadly snake brought back from his recent expedition. Dr. Woodford (Randolph Scott) and his beau Jerry Evans (Gail Patrick) work to discover the antivenom. When Evelyn discovers the truth, her husband throws her into a pond full of hungry crocodiles and she’s ripped to shreds. Which leads one to question why a zoo has a pedestrian bridge over such a dangerous exhibit! But Gorman has a unique murder weapon: a fake snake head with needle-fangs filled with real Mamba juice. Dr. Woodford realizes the ruse by measuring puncture wounds in the victim so his time on Earth is limited. Then Jerry saves the day with one injection and Gorman has nowhere to run and becomes terminally constricted. As in Boa.
The film is rather a tough watch, not because of the violence inherent in the story, but in the actual treatment of the animals. Majestic Lions trapped in tiny cages, baby bears chained by the neck, and the finale of a huge fight between the animals that isn’t staged, where panthers and lions claw and rend one another for our entertainment. There was no certification in 1933 assuring the safety and protecting these animals from exploitation, and the cruelty is alarming especially in the final act.
Final Grade: (B-)