Black Zoo (1963)

Starring Michael Gough, Jeanne Cooper, Rod Lauren, Virginia Grey, Jerome Cowan
Directed by Robert Gordon
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

The owner of a private zoo uses his big animals for murder and revenge against those who threaten the control he's established over the zoo and his personal life.

The third of Michael Gough's horror films for producer Herman Cohen (after Horrors Of The Black Museum and Konga), moved production to the United States, and figures many familiar American faces in the cast.  In my opinion, it's the least of the three, but Gough's characterization again carries the film, masking a character filled with depravity and sadism under a genteel facade.  The animals Gough's Michael Conrad uses for his dirty work, including lions, tigers, cheetahs, and the like, are very well-trained and memorably share the screen with the actor in scenes where he plays the organ like Jules Verne's Captain Nemo.  Further fleshing out Conrad's villainy are Cooper (as Conrad's wife), and Lauren (as his mute teen assistant), who provide the film's human characters for Gough to dominate and subjugate to his will.  The performances are good, the film's color photography is lush, and the animals look great, but for me the film doesn't do enough to distinguish itself from its predecessors.  Still, fans looking for another Gough/Cohen collaboration should find something of interest here.