Cameron Mitchell, Anne Bancroft & Raymond Burr in "Gorilla at Large" (1954) feat. Lee Marvin
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One night, at a sinister carnival called the Garden of Evil, carnival owner Cyrus Miller (Raymond Burr) wanders through the fairgrounds and listens to barker Joey Matthews (Cameron Mitchell) tempt the crowds to see the main attraction, Goliath, the world's largest gorilla.
Inside the tent, the audience enjoys being frightened by the ferocious animal. Their terror grows when Miller's wife, the beautiful Laverne Miller (Anne Bancroft), does trapeze tricks over Goliath's open-topped enclosure. After the show, Miller informs Joey that Laverne wants him to join her act and orders him to put on the costume in his locker.
Laverne petulantly asks Miller to fire Kovacs (Peter Whitney), Goliath's brutish handler, but Miller refuses, as Kovacs is the only one who can control the beast. Miller then checks the receipts of lazy concessionaire Morse (John G. Kellogg) and realizes that they are short. He leaves just as Joey enters, wearing a gorilla costume. Laverne informs Joey that she is changing the act so that while she is doing her trapeze tricks, Goliath will secretly be taken to his cage below the enclosure and Joey will emerge wearing the costume. Laverne will then do a ""drop,"" placing her within Joey's reach so that he can grab her and lift her over his head.
Joey tells his fiancée, ticket taker Audrey Baxter (Charlotte Austin), that he will be making extra money, to help build their ""nest-egg."" Joey escorts Audrey into Goliath's tent and they are horrified to discover Morse's body impaled on the the cage. The police are called, and the coroner informs Detective Sgt. Garrison (Lee J. Cobb) that Morse's neck was broken and that he was already dead before being impaled.
Garrison becomes suspicious of Joey because his gorilla costume has disappeared, and orders the fairgrounds closed, then interrogates Joey, who admits he threatened Morse after he harassed Audrey, but protests his innocence.
At the park, Joey tells Laverne that he will be leaving the carnival to alleviate Audrey's fears, but she persuades him to stay. At Goliath's cage, policeman Shaughnessy falls asleep, and someone wearing a gorilla costume knocks him unconscious and frees Goliath.
Owens says that he knows who the killer is. Before he can tell Garrison, however, they hear screams from Audrey, who is lost in the mirror maze attraction and is being followed by Goliath. They dash inside. Owens' neck is broken by a gorilla. Kovacs finds Goliath and silently leads him away.
Garrison takes Audrey to the medical tent. When Joey visits her, Audrey begs him to leave in the morning, but Joey insists that he must prove to Garrison that he is not the murderer. The police desperately search for Goliath, who has been hidden by Kovacs. The bumbling Shaughnessy unwittingly frees Goliath, and after the gorilla wanders through the circus, turning on the rides, he is captured and returned to his cage.
Later, Miller confesses that he killed Morse and Owens. The carnival prepares to re-open, Laverne and Joey practice their act, and Kovacs hoists Laverne over his head. Laverne becomes frightened when he refuses to release her, convincing Joey that Kovacs is the real killer and that Miller confessed to save his own life. Joey proves Miller was incapable of breaking anyone's neck because of a weak right arm. Garrison and Mack accompany Joey to the carnival, where Joey begins to put on his costume. In the costume's hands, however, Joey finds tape such as that which Laverne uses to wrap her wrists, and realizes that because Laverne knows judo, she could have killed Morse and Owens. Kovacs admits that Morse was blackmailing Laverne and Owens. Kovacs refuses to bring Goliath down and when Laverne does her drop, the gorilla grabs her. Carrying Laverne, Goliath escapes his cage and climbs to the top of the roller coaster. Joey climbs the rigging and prompts Garrison to distract Goliath with fireworks. While he tries to grab the fireworks, Goliath puts Laverne down, and as Joey helps her to safety, the police shoot Goliath to death. As Garrison then arrests Laverne, Audrey rewards Joey with a kiss.
A 1954 American crime horror film-noir mystery 3-D film directed by Harmon Jones, produced by Robert L. Jacks, written by Leonard Praskins and Barney Slater, cinematography by Lloyd Ahern Sr., starring Cameron Mitchell, Anne Bancroft, Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Burr, Lee Marvin, and Warren Stevens.
The second time Raymond Burr starred in a movie with Gorilla in the title, the first being ""Bride of the Gorilla"" (1951). In an episode of ""Perry Mason: The Case of the Grinning Gorilla"" a gorilla attacks Burr. Anne Bancroft cited this film as an example of how bad her early roles for Twentieth Century Fox were.
Made by Panoramic Productions, and one of the early movies distributed by 20th Century Fox to be filmed in 3-D. The first was ""Inferno"" (1963), released the year before. Director Joe Dante has called this film ""the only 3-D movie w