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In 2011, the owner of Ohio’s Muskingum County Animal Farm, Terry Thompson, committed suicide, but not before letting loose 50 of his 56 exotic animals he owned into the wild. These animals ranged from lions to tigers to monkeys. What happened next was a nail-biting situation wherein law enforcement had to go hunt these wild animals to protect the public from harm. Citizens were warned to stay indoors and strange occurrences took place such as a woman watching in horror as a wild cat chased her pet horse and signs on the highway informing drivers to be cautioned for exotic animals!
In the end, law enforcement managed to kill most of the escaped animals (a few were eaten by the other animals) and the panic was over. Ever since then, I’ve always wanted someone to make a movie about this incident! It would be incredibly suspenseful, thrilling, and even delve into the world of horror somewhat. Alas to date, nobody has made a film about this incident, so I must satisfy my curiosity with other fictional films about wild animals on the loose.
This brings me to today’s Disney film about an escaped circus tiger, A Tiger Walks, directed by Norman Tokar. Read on for my review of the film.
And remember, SPOILERS AHEAD!
The film takes place in a small Americana town of Scotia. A traveling circus is passing through the town when the truck transporting the circus tigers has a flat. While waiting for the tire to be replaced, the kids of the town are fascinated by the tigers in the truck. One of the tiger handlers, Josef, played by Theo Marcus, is somewhat drunk and shows the kids the tigers in their cages. However, he’s also a cruel man. And that coupled with his drunkenness encourages him to start prodding one of the tigers, Raja, with a pole, something Raja does not appreciate.
He then opens the cage a bit which results in Raja jumping out of his cage and into the nearby forest while the people panic. Sheriff Pete Williams, played by Brian Keith, is informed of this and heads into the forest with a bunch of volunteers from the town to capture the tiger. There they come across the mangled dead body of Josef who went into the forest earlier to recapture Raja.
Fearing the tiger to be a “mankiller”, all of Sheriff Pete’s volunteers return home. To top it all off, a thick fog has descended into the forest making it virtually impossible to go forward with the search until the fog clears. By now, news of an escaped tiger in Scotia has reached news reporters of multiple cities who have all come to Scotia to follow the story. Sheriff Pete tries to persuade them to hold the story of the killed handler, at least for a while so as not to spread more panic, but being news reporters, they refuse.
Sheriff Pete tries to figure out what to do including speaking with the other gentler tiger handler, Ram Singh, played by Sabu in his final film appearance. Ram says that he’s friends with the tiger and that it’s not a mean mankiller. It only attacked Josef because Josef was abusive to him. Ram wants everything to be done to protect Raja from being killed.
Not only Ram, but Sheriff Pete’s daughter, Julie, played by Pamela Franklin (doing an American accent, but with her British accent popping out every so often), wants Raja to live as well. Since she was a kid, her parents (with her mother played by Vera Miles) instilled in her a great regard for the value of life and rights of animals that she’s incredibly headstrong that Raja not be killed. Sheriff Pete tries to convince her that it’s not such an easy decision to make since Raja has killed a man already thereby posing a threat to the public’s safety. Their arguments on animals rights are actually very deep and not at all what I expected from a Disney film in the ’60s.
Julie even speaks to a television reporter saying how her dad agrees with her that the tiger should be spared. This interview is broadcast across the nation resulting in Governor Robbins, played by Edward Andrews, declaring martial law and sending in the National Guard to Scotia to kill Raja. Not only that, but Julie’s broadcast stirs up feelings amongst the children of America who try to collect money to put Raja in a zoo after he’s captured. As you can imagine, this upsets Sheriff Pete.
When the National Guard arrives and enters the forest despite the thick fog still present, one of the zealous soldiers accidentally shoots an old farmer, Frank Lewis, played by Arthur Hunnicutt. Frank had seen Raja on his farm and was heading into town to alert Sheriff Pete as his phone wasn’t working.
This further fuels Sheriff Pete’s disappointment with the situation at hand. After one big argument with Julie, Sheriff Pete promises her that he’ll do all he can to prevent Raja from being killed. He speaks with a doctor at the zoo regarding using a tranquilizer gun on Raja. The doctor says that this could work and ships a tranquilizer gun to Sheriff Pete which will arrive the following day.
The next day, the fog has cleared and the National Guard is ready to go full-force into the forest and shoot Raja. Sheriff Pete along with Ram also head there to try to hold things off until the tranquilizer gun arrives. When it does arrive, Julie along with her friend Tom, played by Kevin Corcoran in his final Disney film appearance, rush to the forest to deliver the tranquilizer gun to Sheriff Pete. Sheriff Pete manages to shoot Raja with it, but not before Raja pounces at him. Sheriff Pete is a bit injured, but at least Raja is caught without needing to be killed.
Governor Robbins calls off the National Guard and the money sent in by the children of America is used to give Raja a home in the local zoo. Both Frank and Sheriff Pete recover from their injuries and everyone is happy!
And that was A Tiger Walks! Overall it has a promising premise and gets unexpectedly very deep with its discussions on shooting the tiger versus not. But, the film does feel a bit too long for the scant plot. A lot of the fog scenes were hard to see, but I guess that was the point. Oh, and that “Save the Tiger” song was so annoying! I can’t believe somebody got paid to write that!
Brian Keith is very believable as a sheriff as were the character actors. I wasn’t that thrilled with the other actors though, but mostly because they weren’t given that much to work with. I don’t even know why Kevin Corcoran was in this movie, but his voice break is very noticeable!
I feel a remake of this film could be good (or just make a film on the 2011 Exotic Animals Escape incident already!). Until then, we have to grin and bear it with this one.
So, my final score for this film is 17/35 = 48.57% (F) !
The next review will be posted on February 6, 2024.
My Live Action Disney Project 
I live in Ohio and I remember that Terry Thompson incident well. Even at the time we were very skeptical of the rationale the police used to kill nearly all the animals.
We were in agreement, though, on the irresponsibility of Thompson in letting them free in the first place and creating the problem.
Have never seen this movie.
Oh wow, I can only imagine what it must have been like to live through that incident.
Were you near that city?
We were about a 2-hours’ drive away from Zanesville, so while it was surreal we felt fairly safe. I was homeschooled at the time, my father worked from home, and our aunt was mobile-but-still-retired, so it was easy to comply with the staying-indoors order.
Ah ok! Glad you all were safe!