Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Leofwine_draca This rarely-seen film is astonishingly gruesome for the time in which it was made, especially when compared to the other popular horror films of the time, like Dracula, which merely hinted at depravity and had all the violence occur off screen. Not so with MURDERS IN THE ZOO, a film which opens with a man having his lips sewn together for a minor misdemeanour, a stark moment designed to shock an audience hungry for blood. I'll bet that the opening moments got a few people fainting in the aisles, after all, they probably never expected anything like it.Today the film is worth seeing not just for the shocks, but for the characterisation too. Gorman, the central character, is a husband whose insane jealousy of any man his wife flirts with leads him to coldly murder all involved. Lionel Atwill plays Gorman with just the right glossy sheen of respectability, hiding all the oozing evilness underneath with ease. Atwill gives a wonderful performance, really adding strength to the character, when he might just as well have been an over-the-top maniac. Just watch Gorman entertaining dinner guests above the table while underneath it he stabs venom into a rival's leg, killing him. I would say that this film shows Atwill at his best, a man whose coldly calculating mind is finally outwitted by a triumph of science, an anti-toxin which returns one of his victims from the dead.The use of a zoo as a setting is an interesting one, and allows for plenty of footage of lions and snakes to pad out the running time. Although there is a low body count, the deaths are inventive, with Atwill planning them intrinsically to make them look like accidents. The supporting cast is a good one, with Kathleen Burke (the panther woman from ISLAND OF LOST SOULS) making a striking heroine, and Charles Ruggles manages to be amusing, although I could have done without his non-stop comic relief. I know that most of these early films had wisecracking reporters prowling around, but this comedy goes on and on throughout the film, balancing uneasily with the grisly murders occurring - in fact, it almost seems like it should belong in a different film.Another plus is the extremely short (sixty minute) running time, which keeps things flowing along smoothly and never lets up with the action. The film is at it's best when shocking the audience, either with the aforementioned mouth-stitching or the bit where Gorman drops his wife into a pit full of crocodiles which proceed to gobble her up (other films would have cut away at this point, but not this one). Atwill's terrific performance is just the icing on the cake in this neat story of a madman's short reign of terror.

Cujo108 Eric Gorman (Lionel Atwill) hunts down exotic wildlife for a zoo back in the States. He also has an intense jealous streak when it comes to men interacting with his wife (Kathleen Burke from THE horror film of the 30's, Island of Lost Souls). So jealous that he's more than willing to kill any man he deems a threat, and his weapons of choice are the animals that he has access to.This is a solid 30's horror picture with a unique storyline. It also has a pretty potent mean streak for a film of it's time, one scene involving an alligator pit coming immediately to mind. Lionel Atwill has an effective screen presence as the sinister Gorman. As murderous as he may be, I found it hard to root against the man. What can I say? I'm not remotely sympathetic towards philanderers. His idea to utilize animals as murder weapons is both one of convenience and a clever way to be free of incriminating evidence. The animal attacks, including an encounter with a large python, are intense and believable.My main qualm with the film is a problem that plagues many pictures of the era, that being the style of comic relief that was popular back then. The Peter Yates character is pretty annoying, and we're treated to a particularly absurd scene where he pops a lion on the head. Charlie Ruggles plays Yates, and he's about as unfunny as it gets. Why he has such a prevailing presence in an otherwise serious film is beyond me. The time taken up by his antics could have been used to further develop our main storyline.However, this is worth seeing. It's also well-paced, clocking in at just a little more than an hour in length.

Prichards12345 Murders in The Zoo represents Lionel Atwill at his evil best, and is a film that just about beat the rigid enforcement of the Hays Code. Many of the horror set pieces would never have made it past the censors had the film been released in 1934 and though they may be tame today must have given contemporary audiences quite a horror kick.Atwill plays Eric Gorman, a millionaire hunter- trapper busy procuring specimens for a large Metropolitan Zoo in French Indo China. Gorman possesses quite a jealous streak and at the opening of the movie is seen stitching the lips together of a Lothario who tried to kiss his wife! Whether it's using the venom of a Green Mamba to get rid of another love rival, feeding his wife to the alligators to prevent her going to the police or releasing wild animals to hamper his pursuers Atwill is a hoot. There's sterling support from Kathleen Burke as his long suffering wife, and Randolph Scott - his second horror appearance after Supernatural! - as a young toxicologist. This less said about Charles Ruggles' publicity agent the better.Preposterous? Certainly! Entertaining? Definitely! Give Murders in the Zoo a spin and you'll be engaged, amused and possibly even a little shocked. The opening is pretty gruesome even by today's standards...

marcslope One of a wave of macabre little "Frankenstein"-inspired horror programmers from the early '30s, this botch has some atmospheric zoo photography (the city is never specified) but is deficient in most other respects. About a mad zoologist who kills anyone who dares to get near his luscious and flirtatious wife, it stars Lionel Atwill, who looks like he's having fun, but whose character makes no sense. Check out one scene where he first professes his undying love for his spouse, then makes sadistic overtures to her, then laughs at her, then kills her. He murders many (and the opening sequence, dispensing with one of her suitors, is quite creepy), in such a way that we can't believe he would ever attain the zoological prestige the script conveys. Young Randolph Scott is another near-casualty, and as his girlfriend, Gail Patrick, so good in later nasty comedic roles, looks bored. Charles Ruggles, as the "comedy relief" publicist, has only two character aspects--he drinks, and he's afraid of animals--and his material falls terribly flat. There are a couple of good animal sequences, including a climax where the evil doctor springs lions and tigers from their cages (and it looks as though animals WERE harmed in the making of this movie), then, in the next sequence, they're safely back, and we're never shown how that happened. The plotting is jumpy, and at 62 minutes, one suspects a lot of continuity was cut.