CREEPING HORROR
Animal cruelty
▸RELEASED OUT NOW! 1933-1946 | 12 | Blu-ray
▸Directors Edward Sutherland, Ford Beebe, George Waggner, Jean Yarbrough
▸Cast Lionel Atwill, Dick Foran, Robert Lowery, Charlie Ruggles
BLU-RAY DEBUT Eureka Video’s latest pailful scooped from the seemingly bottomless well of the Universal back catalogue is by turns gruesomely macabre, tiresome and discomfiting.
The oldest of the box set’s four entries, 1933’s Murders In The Zoo, is the stand-out. Actually a Paramount production later acquired by Universal, it stars Lionel Atwill as Eric Gorman, a man so insanely jealous that he stitches up the mouth of a man with designs on his wife, poisons her lover using an imitation snake’s head, and finally tips her into an alligator pool. Anyone unaware of quite how grisly horror cinema could be before the Hays Code was strictly enforced will be left with their jaw hanging open.