The Gorilla
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, NR, 66 m, 1939
Directed by Allan Dwan. Stars The Ritz Brothers, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi, et al.

I found The Gorilla, an “old dark house” comedy based on the play by Robert Spence, so excruciatingly tedious that I gave up trying to get to the bottom of its shadowy monkeyshines somewhere around the second or third reel. My god, between Patsy Kelly’s earsplitting yelps and the Ritz Brothers’ incessant twitching and eye-popping double-takes, I found myself wishing that I had taken better notes when reading Derek Humphry’s Final Exit. But despite my contempt for The Gorilla’s insufferable characters and rudimentary humor, I feared that throwing in the towel would’ve suggested crumbliness on my part as a reviewer, so I grudgingly marshaled whatever strength I had left just to reach the closing credits. After all, if I couldn’t hack The Gorilla’s disregard for my brains, how could I be expected to take on the even bigger duds that litter our multiplexes these days? And, dammit, if I could sit through that pious snooze-fest Chariots of Fire—not once, not twice, but thrice—surely I had the stamina to get through this wretched bore. So, even if you find my critiques largely off-putting (if not a tad haughty), you still need to give your intrepid reviewer props for sticking out his noble chin and persisting to sludge through this sort of fetid schlock week in and week out. If given a choice, though, I’d opt for weeding the garden (hell, I’d weed the neighbor’s garden) before wasting sixty-some precious moments of my life with The Gorilla again. (That’s sixty-some minutes I’ll surely be begging for on my deathbed, you hardhearted weasels!) Though it touts the presence of such screen luminaries as Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill, Twentieth Century Fox fashioned Spence’s opus as a vehicle for the Ritz Brothers, and it fits them as shabbily as Room Service fit the Marx Brothers. Though they were middling showmen at best, the Ritz Brothers not only enjoyed a successful run on the Vaudeville circuit (as well as George White and Earl Carroll revues), but their movies continue to generate support from some rather distinguished circles. (Latter-day devotees of note include Mel Brooks, Jerry Lewis and even Pauline Kael.) Am I missing something? There isn’t one frame in The Gorilla that highlights anything terribly novel about the brothers’ shtick, nor is it clear why anybody in their right mind would find any of it funny. Harry Ritz (whose lights I just wanted to knock out) bellows like a drill sergeant and his siblings counter with spastic jerks, but nary a joke (certainly not a good one) is ever told. The filmmakers must’ve thought that simply plopping the Ritz Brothers into The Gorilla (which originally called for one actor to play a role that’s now carved up into thirds for the Ritzes) was enough to make it funny, but they should’ve tailored it to oblige the boys’ style—whatever the hell that is.  

There’s a lot of ground to cover in The Gorilla’s pithy running time, so its back-story is relayed to us up front through a succession of lurid newspaper headlines: “Gorilla, Maniac Murderer Terrorizes Suburb!” and “Police Baffled as the Gorilla Strikes Again!” As the bodies pile up, so do the headlines, all of which are superimposed over a nifty montage featuring the creature’s ghastly visage in extreme close-up, Keystone Kops running to and fro, women recoiling in horror, and so on. (This is as far as The Gorilla is opened up; the ensuing action takes place in a single location, making everything feel frustratingly stage-bound.) As the movie proper gets going, we find the aforementioned gorilla (Art Miles) perched on the roof of a sprawling manor occupied by the very moneyed insurance broker Walter Stevens (Atwill), his uptight maid Kitty (the wearyingly shrill Kelly) and his urbane, shifty-eyed butler Peters (Lugosi). As Kitty retires for the evening, a hairy paw reaches through her bedroom window and pins a note to her nightgown. She bounds out of bed and runs screaming through the manor, awakening Stevens and Peters. (Her screams would awaken the dead, so I suggest you keep some earplugs handy, though driving carpenter nails into your eardrums will also do the trick.) The gorilla’s memo (made up of words cut from a newspaper) announces that Stevens will be “the next to die,” which means that if the killer is following his usual modus operandi, Stevens has only twenty-four hours to get his affairs in order. Of course, Stevens elects not to involve the fuzz (that kind of logic would only serve to unhinge the plot, silly), but instead sends for his niece Norma (Anita Louise) and her fiancé Jack (Edward Norris) to sort out any particulars with the family inheritance in case he buys the farm. (If he does, Norma gets the whole shebang. Or vice versa.) Well, it’s not long before we’re presented with the first batch of many, many red herrings: a hush-hush exchange with an unforgiving loan shark reveals that Stevens is cooking up some sort of plan that’ll help him make good on a $250,000 obligation; a shadowy figure outside keeps sneaking looks into the mansion; Lugosi is shot at spooky angles; etc. Perhaps the private detectives that Stevens hired will get to the bottom of all this… Yeah, right!  

When the Acme Detective Agency finally reports for duty (in the middle of a brutal storm), everything goes straight to hell. The gumshoes—Harrigan, Mulligan and Garrity (Harry, Al and Jimmy Ritz respectively)—tear through the house, bullying its bemused residents into coughing up some helpful information. But their take-charge bravado is all show: a clap of thunder sends them into uncontrollable shakes, and they nearly race for the door when Stevens drops the word “gorilla.” When the vociferous ringleader Harrigan (he’s to the team what Moe was to the Three Stooges) gets up in Peters’ grill, Lugosi (or rather his stunt double) communicates the audience’s annoyance by flipping the jerk on his ass. (This was the only time I laughed.) Later, a rock is thrown through a window, hitting Stevens on the noggin. Attached to the projectile is a note that cryptically states “at midnight.” Meanwhile, down in the basement, an unidentified hand frees a gorilla from his cage, leading us to wonder if there are actually two apes (one being real and the other being the killer in disguise) now running wild through the manor. Back upstairs, the dicks have corralled everyone into the study, but come the witching hour, a strange voice crackles over the radio and informs Stevens that he’s not long for this Earth. Just then the lights go dead, and when they come back up, Stevens is missing. Well, this all goes on and on, the filmmakers serving up more twists and turns that you’ll care to keep track of. There are lots of secret panels, mysterious footsteps, flickering lights—the works, but not enough honest chills (or laughs) to keep you involved. 

Believe it or not, this wasn’t the first time The Gorilla was brought to the screen: there was a silent adaptation in 1927, followed by a talkie (now assumed lost) in 1930. It’s uncertain if this 1939 version is the most polished of the three, but I have little doubt that it’s the most desperate. (We’re cued to guffaw every other second, making this look like a template for most television sit-coms.) I’m sure Spence’s play would fare well on a middle school stage, but what about it could possibly justify all these movie treatments? (The Bat and The Cat and the Canary were also subjected to numerous retellings on the big screen.) The last director to take on The Gorilla, Allan Dwan (who in the same year reunited with the Ritz Brothers for The Three Musketeers), does all he can with the material at hand, but his style is perfunctory at best. Of course, the biggest offenders in this stupid ape-fest are the Ritz Brothers. These unfortunate schmucks are so exasperating that you’ll be grateful every time Lugosi sashays into the frame; his imperturbable manner brings a sense of calm to the frenzied proceedings. Yes, it’s the same thankless doorman-as-decoy role that Lugosi would go on to play yet again in Frank McDonald’s far superior One Body Too Many, but an underused Lugosi is better than no Lugosi. Alas, The Gorilla wasn’t the last movie in which our beloved Hungarian actor would be saddled with a team of third-rate humorists: In 1952, he made monkeys (literally) out of Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo in William “One-Shot” Beaudine’s Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. (He was also paired with those irksome East Side Kids in the 1941 comedy Spooks Run Wild and its inevitable 1943 sequel Ghosts on the Loose.) Such gimmicky team-ups were certainly a waste of Lugosi’s genius, but his willingness to have a little fun paid off in 1948 when he spoofed his most celebrated role under the direction of Charles T. Barton in the cockeyed masterstroke Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Catch that one and forget all about The Gorilla. Aren’t your precious eardrums worth it?  

February 2, 2005 

© Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.