The fake gorilla in the colesseum

Gorilla 'monsters', that is, stunt men dressed up in gorilla costumes, have been a Hollywood monster staple almost since the beginning of the film industry. Gorillas run amok serve a specialty niche where a 'natural' monster is desired as opposed to a fictional one, e.g., the werewolf.

Yet I've never seen a realistic-looking highland or lowland gorilla costume. The ones Hollywood uses appear to be the same one or ones passed down for the last 80 years or so. The Hollywood 'gorilla' looks to be a fictional species of gorilla, much uglier and threatening than the real-world central African gorilla species.

Real-world gorillas avoid man but the silverback male gorilla can and will charge a human if it thinks the human is encroaching or threatening its immediate space where the gorilla and his harem are living. It would usually be a bad situation for the unfortunate human. The highland silverback male gorilla would typically beat the hapless human to a pulp with repeated hammer blows from both its fists. The silverback male gorilla is thought to possess the equivalent strength of ten, grown human males.

In THE SIGN OF THE CROSS, the weirdly mutant-looking gorilla menaces a naked, beautiful woman, chain-bound to an art sculpture stone pillar. Flower garlands entwining the chain lend a peverse artistic flair to the festival atmosphere of the Colesseum games, and more, help conceal the private parts of the actress, which was more important to the film, after all, the movie year was 1932. Real-world gorillas would not act in such a predatory way. The gorilla should be running and hiding; not unless the Romans had discovered a now-extinct, semi-carnivorous species of gorilla, which they didn't. Europe didn't even know of the real-world gorilla until 1,500 years later.

The scene was possibily a metaphor reference to the time immemorial, 'beauty and the beast' concept.

I was also drawn to the horrific scene - like a moth to flame - of female 'Amazon' gladiatrix combating African pygmy men. Political correctness and compassion for other races and ethnic groups was not a strong suit of the ancient Romans and while the scene is exploitative in the movie, conveys that historic culture of the Romans. The pygmies depicted don't look anything like the real-world pygmy people of west-central Africa. Imagine a proportionately-smaller African tribesman typical of southern Africa. Pygmy people are living human specimens that confirm Nature's formula for adapting living species to its environment. The Watusi tribe, living on the wide-open plains of north central Africa, grow to 6'7" plus individuals. It's like when goldfish are abandoned and poured into a lake by graduating college students. The goldfish grow to ten times their aquarium size. The Hollywood pygmies depicted appear to be little people midgets hired out for the role and given funky Afro wigs and dark skin make-up. Holding a burning torch in the left hand and a short spear in the right gives these pygmies more-than-equal odds against the normal-sized female gladiators, armed with long saber swords.