| Multiple Mirror Effects in Movies | ||
Gorilla at Large (1954) |
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| Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film. |
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| This grade B murder mystery has everything you could want in a movie - murder, dames, hard-boiled detectives, and a killer gorilla in a mirror maze. It takes place at The Garden of Evil, a carnival operated by Cy Miller (Raymond Burr). His star act is his wife Laverne (Anne Bancroft) who performs on a trapeze every night above Goliath, claimed to be "The World's Largest Gorilla" and a vicious killer, who has a King Kong complex regarding the sexy trapezist. Can't blame him. The only person who can control Goliath is Kovacs (Peter Whitney) Laverne's ex-husband. She's hot for Joey (Cameron Mitchell), so she's training him to be part of her act - to put on a gorilla suit and pretend to be Goliath then pick her up when she falls from the trapeze. Joey is telling his fiancé Audrey (Charlotte Austin) about his new job when they find the freshly-murdered corpse of one of the carnies impaled on spikes in Goliath's cage. This brings the cops and Detective Sgt. Garrison (Lee J. Cobb) who is suspicious of everybody, as he digs up the secrets of their sordid past. |
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| The murder stresses Audrey so she decides to quit the carnival. Standing in front of the mirror maze building, the publicist Owens (Charles Tannen) tells her it's a good idea to leave asap, because the carnival is a sucker trap that you can't get out of, like the mirror maze behind them. (It's called the "Crazie Maize" [crazy corn?] and hasn't opened yet.) Laverne tells Joey that the maze was Kovac's idea and he is the only one who knows how to get around in it easily. But she's the femme fatale of the flic, so it's hard to believe anything she says. |
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| Owens sends Audrey into the mirror maze building to turn off the lights, then she decides to take a look inside it. As designed, she can't find her way out. Then she sees Goliath's reflections in the mirrors and screams, then faints. Sgt. Garrison and Owens hear the scream and run into the maze where they frantically search for her. Garrison yells to Owens, asking how he can get out of the maze. Then we see the gorilla kill Owens. Frustrated by all the mirrors, Garrison smashes the glass with his pistol and finds Owens' body. We see Goliath holding Audrey's limp body when Kovacs runs up and convinces Goliath to put her down, then he opens a secret mirror door and helps Goliath escape. The cops find Audrey in shock but unharmed and help her out of the maze. I'm not going to spoil the twist ending, but we find out later that the killer was actually someone dressed in Joey's gorilla costume, so maybe there were two gorillas in the maze, including Goliath. Either that or Kovacs was in cahoots with the murderer. Of course, Goliath was actually played by a man in a gorilla suit, so we never saw any real gorilla, which makes it even more confusing. The copyright must have run out on this movie, because it's available to watch on YouTube. The mirror maze sequence starts at about 40:15 |
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