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.

It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955)

Starring Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, Donald Curtis, Ian Keith, Dean Maddox Jr.
Directed by Robert Gordon
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

After an atomic submarine encounters an underwater creature that nearly cripples the ship, its commander teams up with a pair of scientists who discover the creature is a giant octopus.

Stop-motion effects wizard Ray Harryhausen begins a long partnership with Columbia Pictures and producer Charles H. Schneer with this film, in which Harryhausen convincingly animates the giant creature, bringing real menace to its tremendously long tentacles, and making it seem real with its fluid movements.  The monster's attack on San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge is a definite highlight and impressive movie moment.  Kenneth Tobey, already familiar to fans of science fiction pictures for his roles in The Thing From Another World and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, makes a fine lead as the sub commander with a friendly demeanor, although George Worthing Yates' story and screenplay shows his character has a lot to learn about contemporary women.  This development and Faith Domergue's importance to the storyline is refreshing in the light of sexism in the other films of the day, although clearly there was still a long way to go.  It's a fun picture, and Harryhausen's work is really first-rate, although he would admit his octopus only had six legs to animate, unlike the real sea creature.  Although Harryhausen would later dazzle us with multiple and varied creations in films to come, I think this movie is still a key component of his filmography.