Michael Conrad (Michael Gough) owns Conrad's Animal Kingdom, home to cheetahs, lions, tigers, and a gorilla. A busload of tourists pay for a tour of the small zoo and art school students stop by to sketch the big cats. Conrad explains he doesn't use fear and intimidation to train his animals, but love and affection. If only he would show the same regard for the humans in his life. His wife Edna (Jeanne Cooper) performs with a trained chimp act for zoo customers, but hits the bottle after hours in the wake of Conrad's domineering abuse ("You're the last person I want to hurt," Conrad tells her after he's slapped her around). Carl (Rod Lauren), Conrad's mute aide and handyman, is likewise subjected to his master's imperious rants.
BLACK ZOO's script, by Aben Kandel and producer Howard Cohen, cleverly makes Conrad's character into a variation of his wild animals. In the film's opening scene, a young woman is attacked by Baron, one of Conrad's tigers, on a city street at night. We learn that she was a "meddling secretary" who had to be silenced, and that Conrad's love for his animals goes beyond benign conservationism. He's insane, and has trained his beasts to kill those who get in his way or crosses him. His victims invade his territory -- a land developer who tries to bully him into selling the zoo to make way for tract homes; and Edna's agent, who tries to lure her away from Conrad with promises of a better venue for her chimp act.
When a sadistic zoo worker (Elisha Cook Jr.) shoots Baron dead, an enraged Conrad first beats the man with a metal prod and then throws him to one of his hungry lions. Edna turns the other cheek and Carl actually helps him. Should we say (to paraphrase Forry Ackerman) the family that slays together stays together?
Not exactly. When Edna realizes Conrad is behind the murder of her agent, she convinces Carl to pack it in and escape with her. But Conrad disrupts their defection and threatens to throw her to the lions, too.
The movie is a step up from Cohen's KONGA (1961), but doesn't hit the gross-silly highs of HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959). The animal attacks, which are fairly violent and effective, alternate with labored melodrama. Near the end, the whole movie is hobbled by a long scene of detectives debating whether or not trained animals committed the murders (despite their exposition, they never connect the deaths to Conrad).
BLACK ZOO's cast plays the material straight, despite some risible elements. Conrad frequently refers to the animals as "the family," holding group meetings with them in his home, where he plays lugubrious organ music and talks to them as though they were human. Also, he attends secret meetings of the "true believers," a cult of animal-worshipers who chant to monotonous tom-toms and oversee the "transfer" of Baron's soul to a live cub.
The real reason to see BLACK ZOO is to watch Michael Gough's delightful overplaying as Conrad. Each line is delivered with a side of ham, spit out through pursed lips and oozing nastiness even when he smiles unconvincingly and interacts with benign children and teenage art students.
