Zebra in the Kitchen (1965)

Enjoyably silly Disney nature film has a boy forced to put his pet puma in the zoo, who then steals the zoo keeper's key to free all of the animals. So, no, Disney did not exactly make "Day of the Animals" or a nature-gone-wild horror film, but my kids found the silly animal antics pretty hilarious, even if in real-life there would would have been a lot more mauling. My kids also did not notice that a teenage Jay North is still as bad of an actor as he was on TV as Dennis the Menace. In the plus column for the film, the above mentioned zookeeper is played by the great Andy Devine. Nothing classic here, but it mostly held my interest and you could probably do worse.

Ivan Tors, who brought "Flipper" to movie (and later television) screens, tried his luck again with this animal-based comedy-drama starring Jay North, from TV's "Dennis the Menace". Framed in flashback for no apparent reason (other than to pad the reedy-thin narrative with exposition), story concerns a domesticated Puma mountain lion and his unhappy preteen owner, who is forced to give his pet to the local zoo after his parents relocate them from the sticks to the city. Nothing in this movie feels accurate: the boy's father lost the family homestead because he was apparently hurt, but there seems nothing wrong with sturdy Jim Davis in the part; the zoo appears to be in mountain terrain (away from the town) and is described for us as "shabby" and "pitiful" when, actually, it seems well-staffed and very clean; also, the youngster is taken in quite readily by the friendly zookeepers as an assistant, yet he treats this job indifferently (while scheming to betray everybody and free the Puma). North, a competent child actor, isn't allowed much mischief beyond stealing Andy Devine's cage-keys, and is kept petulant and scowling. The extraneous shots of animals eating or pacing their cages are dropped in sloppily (much of the time, they're not even reacting to anything, so there's no humor in their presence), while the quasi-slapstick finale--with zoo animals finding their way into homes, as well as the local ice cream shop--lays a big egg. *1/2 from ****

Zebra In The Kitchen combines the talents of two icons of children's television, Ivan Tors who produced Flipper and Jay North who had finally grown out of playing Dennis The Menace. What they came up with is a film that only kids could possibly appreciate despite a wonderful group of comic character actors in small roles.Young Jay North is not happy over his parents decision to sell the family farm and move to the city. Father Jim Davis was injured and can't work the farm as he used to. But this means that North will have to give up a mountain lion that he has had as a pet since it was a cub.That's the dangers of taking a pet from the wild. One of two things will happen, either it will revert to its natural ways and turn on the owner or if you leave the animal it won't function in the wild. That problem was best dealt with in a far better film, The Yearling. The mountain lion stows away in the family truck. And then breaks loose and while it hurts no one, the city folks are real scared as well they should be.Enter the management at the city zoo which is Martin Milner, Joyce Meadows and Andy Devine. They offer to take the mountain lion and keep him at the zoo. But neither North or the mountain lion are real happy with that. What to do, but North decides no animals should be kept and he gets Devine's keys and opens all the cages. Chaos descends on the city as the animals are running wild.Instead of what does happen in real life North would have gotten a juvenile record and Devine would have been canned if not more. I think even the kids watching above a certain age would know that.Oddly enough almost 30 years before Zebra In The Kitchen, Devine also played a zoo-keeper in the Bing Crosby classic Dr. Rhythm and one of high points of that film is an inebriated Devine letting loose the animals in his charge. Fortunately Bing saved him in the nick of time from letting loose the big cats which do get out here.A really horrible premise and bad choices ruin from the start what Ivan Tors thought was a good idea for a family film.

This was my first movie EVER. I was 6 and saw it at the Starlite Drive-In in Bantam, OH. I remember falling asleep halfway through and my parents drove home before the movie ended. I too have absolutely no idea if it was a good movie or what it was about as I was too young and obviously too sleepy! To show you what little I remembered about it, I thought it was another of the 1960's Dean Jones movies (of course I saw all of them as well, especially The Love Bug). I see that it's in DVD form now and I too am a bit scared to buy it, fearing that my first movie experience was watching a dud! But for the right price, I might just take the risk!