User Reviews

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.

I've seen this film being bashed before within other circles and forums and I'm always somewhat puzzled by it. We're talking 1950's era, 3-D, monster hokum here folks. Fun, lighthearted with none of it meant to be taken all that seriously. It's sort of like trying to critique, ' Plan 9 From Outer Space ' ; it's all a little beyond that, isn't it ? Let's all go to the Saturday matinée for some laughs and a good time ! Visually enjoyable in wonderful color, great nostalgia value centering around the old amusement park with the fun house, room of mirrors, dodgems, trapeze act and all the rest. Including cotton candy ! The impressive, high profile cast, ( see the credits for yourself ) must of been having a grand old time with it all. The unoriginality of the ' gorilla ' is usually the main focus point for the films negative comments. Sure, you keep an eye on him to stay up to speed with the story but Anne Bancroft is, of course, the main attraction. At twenty - something and gorgeous, she spends the majority of her on screen time in Capri swim suits and black, fishnet tights; often contorted or strategically placed into unconventional physical positions. Yessiree. So who was paying attention to the big monkey ? MONTER ON THE MIDWAY !! Recommended.

Although Goliath the gorilla in Gorilla At Large is not a monster like King Kong he does create a whole lot of mischief at the carnival he's a feature attraction at. Several murders are suspected of being pinned on the poor beast. But is a human hand behind it all.

There are no lacking suspects in this film, the whole show is filled with intrigue of all kinds. Police detective Lee J. Cobb first suspects young Cameron Mitchell who is working at Raymond Burr's carnival for the summer. Wife Anne Bancroft who is a trapeze artist wants to get Mitchell in the act and she eyes him like a slab of beef. Her former husband Peter Whitney is the animal handler and the real friend of Goliath.

Given the title I was really expecting some kind of schlock film, but Gorilla At Large is a very nicely done mystery with a really good cast of solid players. Lee Marvin has an unusual part for him, he plays a really dumb uniform cop under whose watch the gorilla escapes and wreaks havoc on any and all.

The ending is a surprise, I guarantee you will not suspect who it is.

I had heard about "Gorilla at Large" for years, but avoided watching it because of the campy title and brief clips I had seen, usually of the gorilla swinging on a vine. Recently, this movie was broadcast on Fox Movie Channel. On a whim, I recorded it with my PVR and watched it the next day. To my surprise, I found "Gorilla at Large" to be an entertaining movie. It's not a monster film at all, or even a jungle themed movie. Rather, it's a crime/detective story that keeps you guessing. "Gorilla" has a very good cast and interesting story. A young Lee Marvin has an amusing role as a policeman. The sexy Anne Bancroft is the main star....although some might claim it is the gorilla.

GORILLA AT LODGE is an oddity--a "B" picture with a distinguished cast of more than competent actors--CAMERON MITCHELL, ANNE BANCROFT, LEE J. COBB, LEE MARVIN, WARREN STEVENS and RAYMOND BURR--and is filmed in excellent Technicolor using the gimmick of 3D which was just a passing fad at the time.

It's a murder mystery with most of the action taking place in a colorful amusement park called "The Garden of Evil", all of the atmosphere fully taken advantage of by the color photography which accents the garish while the story accents the puzzling background of several suspects who might be involved in the shady doings.

ANNE BANCROFT was at her physical prime in a part that requires more acrobatics than acting skill, but still there's a glimmer of the actress to be. LEE J. COBB is a gruff cigar smoking detective who treats everyone like a suspect, and LEE MARVIN is amusing as an Irish cop whose intelligence is questionable. PETER WHITNEY (who played those amusing twin brothers in a screwball comedy from the '40s called MURDER, HE SAID), is creepy as the chief suspect and the Gorilla is obviously a man in a gorilla suit.

But it's all meant to be strictly lightweight entertainment, a no brainer for the kiddies and nothing that puts a strain on anyone's thinking cap. It's mildly entertaining but strains credibility at almost every turn.

"Gorilla At Large" is a very good example of a 1950's 3-D film. If you only see it in 2-D, you are literally seeing only half the picture. Why do you think the bars are in the foreground, the gorilla jumps at the screen, the girl is trapped in a house of mirrors, or the rockets are shot at the gorilla? Because it is supposed to be seen in 3-D. That's why.

Having said that, 23 year old Anne Bancroft gives an interesting sex-pot performance. She spends most of the time either in her trapeze costume or in lingerie. Raymond Burr, known as a bad guy at this time, gives a very offbeat performance. And a very young Lee Marvin is extremely funny as a cop who doesn't have a clue.

The 1950's saw a great many 3-D films that are no longer available in that format. It is really too bad we can't see "Gorilla At Large", "House Of Wax" and "Dial M For Murder" the way they were meant to be seen.

I had originally watched this one a long time ago during my childhood days on a now-defunct Sicilian TV channel; in hindsight, it can now best be considered as a guilty pleasure and, besides, the fact that it isn’t really a bona-fide horror film (given that the murders are not actually committed by the titular beast but rather by somebody conveniently donning a simian costume) might perhaps endear it to those film buffs who normally shun the genre.

The terrific cast is also a definite attraction here: Lee J. Cobb and Lee Marvin are particularly fun to watch as, respectively, the cigar-chomping Police Detective heading the murder investigations under the Big Top and a loudmouth but sleepy-eyed cop left to guard the caged gorilla but, inevitably, ending behind its bars himself! Cameron Mitchell, Raymond Burr and Anne Bancroft – who, arguably, never looked lovelier on screen than she does here as the star trapeze artist of husband Burr’s circus – all have good roles and gleefully enter into the fun spirit of the thing. Interestingly enough, both Cobb and Burr were about to embark on their signature screen roles that same year in, respectively, ON THE WATERFRONT and REAR WINDOW! The gorilla keeper (Peter Whitney) is also a noteworthy and malevolent presence, particularly when trapping a victim into his self-designed mirror maze and when offering to teach Mitchell how to raise ex-wife Bancroft over his head for the crowd's pleasure!

The belated identification of the real killer is a big surprise – which makes the sequence of Burr taking on the blame for the circus murders and his eventual revelation as a cripple by Mitchell in front of Cobb a moving one and the film’s highlight. While the ape itself is clearly a man in a suit, it’s not a particular liability to one’s enjoyment of the show; the 3-D effects are not especially obtrusive either and are limited to the beast swinging by rope or walking into camera and passing through the revolving merry-go-round at the film’s climax. In conclusion, this modest production proved to be highly enjoyable hokum – although, admittedly, the nostalgia factor may have had a hand in how much I wound up liking the whole thing. Being a picture originally distributed by Fox, it was surprisingly (but thankfully) added to the coveted “Midnite Movies” line of DVD releases (which has recently been taken over by Fox from MGM) along with the unrelated Spanish adventure effort MYSTERY ON MONSTER ISLAND (1981) featuring genre icons Peter Cushing and Paul Naschy and which I will get to later on during this Halloween marathon.

Anne Bancroft, Lee J. cobb, Raymond Burr, Cameron Mitchell. Quite a cast, but in my opinion wasted in this indifferent detective film and scenes of mild horror. The copy I saw of it was terrible colour and despite the fact the film that no visual merit and indifferent direction I can see why some people are fond of it. I would have thought that gorillas were out of fashion as ' horror ' creatures by 1954, but obviously a 3-D take on it seemed necessary. ' Phantom of the Rue Morgue ' dating from the same period was much, much better. The cast did not try to have to act in that film, and the gorilla question was left until the end. Another point the IMDB need to know that in the UK the film was originally given an X certificate and not an A. This can be confirmed in the picture gallery of posters and Picturegoer of July 24 1954 shows its X classification twice in its review. These details for film researchers are necessary, and the BBFC has fallen into a misleading certificate as well. No doubt it was given a lesser certificate later, but the original showings in the UK had an X for Adults only. I give it a 5 for the actors who did much better work elsewhere for being the main attraction and Lee J. Cobb, for me the best of them all gives a performance that really excels with trite dialogue.

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 film works out to be a mystery film wrapped around a fascination of Anne Bancroft getting pawed by a gorilla. It was made for the 3D glasses that came with it in the same time as Hondo (John Wayne) and House of Wax (Vincent Price). I mention these because these 3 films were part of a 3D film revival in the late 1980's on television which spurred some new 3D productions after.

This film is Raymond Burr's second film with a gorilla. I am not sure why he would be in 2 of them & I have not seen the other one. Burr in this one is the obvious suspect which is why he turns out not to be the guilty party. He really does not get a lot of script to work with.

The settings and era of the 1950's nostalgia is here but the film itself pretty much fits a normal who done it formula of the period. Burr's next film would be Rear Window which has much more to recommend it than this one.

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.

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.

This picture is, in some ways, a re-working of Fox's CHARLIE CHAN AT THE CIRCUS. The problem with the whole affair is that the pacing is deadly. Most emblematic of this is poor Lee J. Cobb. He sleepwalks through his performance (this is the same year he played Johnny Friendly in ON THE WATERFRONT). I would love to have been a fly on the wall between takes listening to Cobb and fellow Actors Studio chum Anne Bancroft bemoaning their current assignment. Don't get me wrong - this is a swell slice of cheese; the color is magnificent and even in 2-D it's a visual banquet set dec-wise. But it should have moved a lot quicker and clocked in around 76 instead of 83 minutes. With so much footage devoted to the investigating officer, they needed a firecracker in the Jimmy Gleason mold, not tired-out Willy Loman at the end of one of his long trips.

As for Raymond Burr being surprised that John Kellogg was a schnook behind the shooting gallery counter, he should have seen THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH!

It's not so much that there's more than meets the eye as it is what

does meet the eye that makes this picture worth a look-see.

Sure, if you want to be all serious, then you could easily object to a

rather predictable plot, or some wooden performances (though I'd

have something to say about that), or a delightfully inept gorilla suit

that looks more like an animated swatch of shag carpet (the eyes

are so...human!). You could moan and groan about the film's

portrayal of women, etc., etc. You could call it a bad movie.

But you shouldn't! Firstly, it does offer the sorts of thrills that

B-movie fans relish: the lurid carny life, cartoonish violence,

trapeze artists in skimpy costumes, emotions writ large and

unambiguously (at least ostensibly).

In fact, I'd say that many of the performances are great, not

because they are especially moving or "realistic," but rather,

because the conventions of the genre frame them in such a way

as to be quite effective, and not least of all, gratifying. Anne

Bancroft smolders magnificently as a trapeze artist with quite a

shady past. Raymond Burr's controlling, yet ambiguous carnival

manager never fails to intrigue. Lee Marvin is great as a feckless,

blow-hard police officer. And perhaps most compellingly, there is

Lee J. Cobb, as a no-nonsense, cigar-chomping gumshoe. You

really get a sense of what an entirely watchable performer he is in

this picture, and personally I think he's better here than he is in "On

the Waterfront" (gasp!).

Camp values aside, the technical aspects of the film are

breathtaking. The picture's technicolors blast out of the screen,

aided by 3-D that is so sharply defined and brilliant that you feel

like you are watching some sort of moving ViewMaster reel. A

restored print has recently been struck and you'll be blown away if

you have a chance to see it. I'd say that its use of technicolor and

3-D are perhaps more impressive than even "House of Wax," and

certainly more accomplished than such unnecessarily 3-D'd

features such as "Dial M for Murder" or "Miss Sadie Thompson."

Color, violence, a beautiful girl and a gorilla--and in not one, nor

two, but THREE dimensions. What's not to like?

Gorilla at Large is directed by Harmon Jones and jointly written by Leonard Praskins and Barney Slater. It stars Cameron Mitchell, Anne Bancroft, Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Burr and Charlotte Austin. Out of Panoramic Productions and filmed in Technicolor, the music is by Lionel Newman and cinematography is by Lloyd Ahern.

An amusement park/circus is rocked when a freshly sacked employee is found brutally murdered inside the cage of the star attraction, Goliath the Giant Gorilla. The evidence points to it being the short tempered beast, but many of the human employees also had reasons to commit the crime...

Well it sounds like a Z grade picture, both in title and synopsis, and with it originally released in 3D during the short lived 3D boom of the mid 1950s, it was hardly going to be the Citizen Kane of Schlocky Horrorville. Yet it's a picture that is far better than it has any right to be, oozing a fun vibe coupled with the "who done it?" mystery element, pic doesn't lack for effort or genuine intrigue. Yes it's unintentionally funny at times, and there was never going to be a time when a man in a Gorilla suit (George Barrows) wasn't going to be corny, but it's a very good production (lovely Technicolor) and boasts a super cast of actors into the bargain. Is it scary? Well no, not really, that is unless you suffer from Agrizoophobia? Yet there's enough suspense and iffy character shenanigans to more than lift this above the ridiculous.

Anne Bancroft spent the rest of her career denouncing the film, like many others who were tied into studio contracts back in the day, thus "having" to do films they would rather not do, she forgot that this type of film still had many fans. She looks a picture here, very slinky and shapely, OK so she's not pulling up any acting trees as the central lady character, but it's a nice performance that sits well with the tone of the story. Burr files in for one of his imposing "possible" villain roles, and Mitchell is at home in the genre. There's much fun to be had with Cobb's performance as cigar chomping Detective Sergeant Garrison, mainly because he seems to be the only male actor taking it seriously! Unlike Lee Marvin, who in a secondary supporting cop role plays it with tongue in cheek and appears to be enjoying himself into the bargain. Nice to see the chiselled features of Warren Stevens (Forbidden Planet) on board as well.

Filmed at Nu Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, California, Harmon Jones (The Pride of St. Louis) makes good use of the funfair location. With rides and stalls colourfully forming the backdrop, there's a big sense of fun and adventure as the bustling public carry on about their business oblivious to the murder, love ratting and suspicion that's going on behind the scenes. It also allows the director to slot in some staple (good) funfair sequences, namely the Room of Mirrors and the Roller Coaster. While Newman's score isn't found wanting as it builds up a head of steam for the more dramatic periods. As for the outcome of this murder mystery? Well it's a doozy, nigh on impossible to figure out because it's suitably bonkers. And that's just one of the many beauties of Gorilla at Large. 7/10

This film was made in 3D. Whether or not it looks better thus it certainly won't play any better. Rather than "Gorilla At Large" it should have the word turkey in the title, because that is what it is.

There is evil afoot at the circus, two rather unpleasant individuals are murdered in quick succession, and the police are called in. We see a detective, a none-too-bright uniformed officer, the doctor/pathologist/coroner, and barely another. In a real life scenario, the place would have been crawling with police, and a suspect, albeit a weak one, would not have been permitted to take over the investigation!

Something the censor seems to have missed, did that detective really use the word bollocks? And one wonders how many viewers have.

Back in the early 1980s, a big deal was made when "Gorilla at Large" was shown on TV. After all, it was originally a 3-D movie and for once, it was going to be shown on TV WITH 3-D! So, folks ran to their local 7/11 stores and got their 3-D glasses and watched...and saw that the film was a mess and hardly any of the TVs were able to show the film in true 3-D. It was mostly a blurry mess and I gave up on the film about midway through it. Now, decades later, I decided to watch the non-3-D version of this movie.

A carnivals' big headliner is a gorilla which has supposedly killed a thousand people! Of course, it's a lot of hype but the gorilla puts on a good show...acting very hostile from its enclosure. But suddenly people start dying...and it's pretty obvious that it's being done by someone wearing a gorilla suit (the film doesn't try to hide this at all). But who is doing it and why??

Because this was one of the first 3-D movies, "Gorilla at Large" is basically a B-movie with a longer run time AND color...so it's obvious that Twentieth Century-Fox was pulling out the stops to make it. While the cast is not full of unknowns, it has no big star either...with the likes of Raymond Burr, Cameron Mitchell and Lee J. Cobb in several of the leads. Anne Bancroft also stars but this was made very early in her career and she was not famous at all in 1954. The same can be said about Lee Marvin...he's in the film but was an unknown at the time.

So is it any good? Yes, surprisingly so. The film isn't exactly a masterpiece but is enjoyable and fun....even without (or perhaps because there is) 3-D.

There was a big radio station promotion in the early eighties for this movie. They distributed 3-D glasses at fast food restaurants that were supposed to allow 3-D viewing on television.

However, the 3-D effect was not any good. It just looked fuzzy, not 3-D. Further, the movie was the PITS! Everyone I knew started to watch the movie (due to all the hype) and everyone I knew took off their 3-D glasses about twenty minutes into the movie, and everyone I knew gave up on the whole thing before the conclusion. There was a lot of bitching around the coffee machine the next day.

This movie was an annual tradition for many years in Boston, and I remember, as a kid, getting my 3-D glasses at the supermarket weeks in advance. "Gorilla at Large" is, in my humble opinion, a cult classic in every way. SEE THIS MOVIE!!! If you can get the 3-D version, definitely do that!

It's a shame that I wasn't able to see Gorilla at Large in 3-D as originally intended because without the gimmick of an extra dimension the film is rather unremarkable, despite a surprisingly strong cast.

Cameron Mitchell stars as Joey Matthews, who is working the summer at a fairground, saving so that he can afford law school and marry his sweetheart Audrey (Charlotte Austin). Joey is given the opportunity to earn extra cash by partaking in a sideshow involving a savage gorilla called Goliath and sexy trapeze artist Laverne Miller (a young Anne Bancroft). However, the show is shut down after a series of murders in which the victims' necks are broken, as if by a large and powerful animal. Investigating the case is Detective Sgt. Garrison (Lee J. Cobb), whose suspects include the gorilla's trainer Kovacs (Peter Whitney), fairground boss Cy Miller (Raymond Burr), and Joey. Rounding out the cast is a young Lee Marvin as policeman Shaughnessy.

The plot is strictly routine, like so many B-movie gorilla thrillers of the '30s and '40s, and no amount of acting talent would be enough to make this hokey nonsense work. It doesn't help that Goliath (played by a man in an unconvincing ape costume) looks no more real than the fake ape that Joey has to play in the sideshow act. Anne Bancroft is the best thing about the film: she looks amazing and plays the seductress so well that it's not surprising that she would go on to portray an iconic temptress in The Graduate.