Murders In The Zoo’s climax is even more disturbing than the film’s opening, albeit for different reasons. Cornered in the zoo, Atwill tries to escape via “Carnivora House,” where, in order to create a diversion, he opens the cages housing the zoo’s big cats and lets them run wild. Which they do, on camera, and with no apparent thought to the animals’ safety. The scene lasts less than a minute, but it seems to go on forever. A lion wrestles with a jaguar, panthers run amok, and cats leap from high metal perches onto the concrete floor. All the while, Atwill looks on at the violence approvingly. It’s hard to know what to feel at this point: That the villain enjoys what he sees feels like an implied condemnation, but all this unsimulated animal-on-animal violence didn’t just happen. It was orchestrated for our entertainment. It’s a vestige of a time before the American Humane Association and its “No Animals Were Harmed” disclaimer, and before most people questioned whether animals should suffer for our amusement.
