The Gorilla

Rating:
Summary: Better than The Pianist!
Review: Adapted from Ralph Spence's play, the film opens with a montage of screaming newspaper headlines documenting the reign of terror of a mysterious simian assassin who leaves threatening letters at the homes of his victims. The film then arrives at the room of maid Patsy Kelly, who reads aloud from Romeo And Juliet before being rudely interrupted by the titular gorilla and his malevolent brand of monkeyshines. This prompts her employer (Lionel Atwill) to hire Harry, Jimmy, and Al Ritz to hunt down the gorilla, a decision he begins to regret once the mere mention of the word "gorilla" sends the trio reeling into an orgy of shaking, eye-bugging, and agitated wordplay. The brothers' investigative tactics do little to inspire confidence: When Kelly tells them she spent the evening with Shakespeare, they angrily demand to know the writer's whereabouts. The Ritzes do no better with the butler (Lugosi); they mock his accent and act aggressively, until he flips one of them in self-defense. At the stroke of midnight, Atwill is abducted, and his disappearance is followed by a series of blackouts, disappearances, and the arrival of a mysterious stranger (Joseph Calleia) purporting to be a detective. In spite of their nonstop clowning, the Ritz brothers eventually encounter the gorilla in the house's basement, though they initially mistake it for a wiseacre in a raccoon coat. Lugosi, meanwhile, has a suspiciously Clark Kent-like way of disappearing whenever trouble and excitement arrive. His mysterious absences turn out to be one of many red herrings, after it's revealed that there are two gorillas, a real trained one and a mass murderer­Calleia­who's only pretending to be a gorilla. Calleia lays out the particulars of his nefarious plot just before Lugosi apprehends him, in the process steeling himself for his fateful meeting with a Brooklyn gorilla 13 years later.

Rating:
Summary: Fun comedy Horror
Review: Combine the comedy antics of the Ritz Brothers (who are rather underrated) with the creepy veteran Horror stars Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill and you get a fun comedy horror film that was so prevalent in the 30's and 40's.

The story concerns a villain known as The Gorilla, who may be a human criminal or really an escaped ape no one seems to know for certain one way or the other, threatening the life of one Walter Stevens (Atwill), who hires three bumbling detectives (The Ritz Brothers) to protect him. Lugosi meanwhile plays Stevens' butler Peters and generally appears just at the opportune (or is that inopportune) moment to scare the willies out of and arouse suspicion in The Ritz Brothers.

Bela Lugosi does a fine job in his role as the butler, managing to appear both innocent and guilty at the same time in one of his many roles as a red herring. He maintains his composure no matter what is going on around him as if he has no idea what is taking place in the house.

The print is fairly clean the sound is good. It's a B movie for sure but slightly better quality than similar PRC or Monogram fare of the same period.