Load of rubbish!!

I wanted to but couldn't!

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

1939's "The Gorilla" was hardly the best choice for a Ritz Brothers vehicle, somewhat reduced in stature by a complete lack of song and dance patter. Much more at home in the old dark house setting is horror veteran Bela Lugosi, able to effectively prowl with equal amounts of seriousness and bemusement as the butler Peters. His employer, Walter Stevens, is played by frequent co-star Lionel Atwill, so at least the duo lend dignified stature to the lighthearted proceedings, made well before Bob Hope's more successful remake of a similar 1920s chestnut, "The Cat and the Canary." The Ritz Brothers are still an acquired taste, but here the talented trio are handicapped by the single setting and lack of decent material to work with, snappy verbal sparring all they can muster in this one. Contrary to what is often reported, this was not in fact the last straw for the brothers at Fox, doing one final feature for Sol Wurtzel's B unit, "Pack Up Your Troubles," a vehicle for pint sized Jane Withers, leading Harry Ritz to famously quip that their careers had gone "from bad to Wurtzel!" A subsequent move to Universal fared little better, departing after only four additional titles, ironically missing out on the mystery musical "Murder in the Blue Room," which at least would have allowed them plenty of room for dancing and singing, a far more suitable vehicle than the stifling confines of "The Gorilla," a decent horror comedy but hardly the brothers at their best (it is after all hard to upstage the scene stealing Bela Lugosi). Lon Chaney Jr. had earlier appeared with the Ritz Brothers in "Life Begins in College" and "Straight Place and Show," while John Carradine earned more prestigious roles in both "Kentucky Moonshine" and "The Three Musketeers."

With today being Halloween, I thought I'd celebrate the day by watching some comedy teams' films with scary things. So after so many years of reading about The Ritz Brothers' The Gorilla, I finally watched this public domain movie on YouTube. Along with Patsy Kelly as an easily frightened maid, brothers Jimmy, Harry, and Al provide some funny lines and one of them also does quite a hilarious scared face when encountering some chills in a house where the title character threatens through a radio. Oh, and there's a real gorilla involved as well. I didn't think everything was funny but there were enough laughs for me to recommend this. Oh, and Bela Lugosi also appears as a butler. Is he one of the suspects? Well, I'm not gonna tell...

The Gorilla is a low budget picture with a lot of low comedy in it, courtesy of the Ritz Brothers. In this film the three brothers play detectives hired to guard the person of rich millionaire Lionel Atwill. You might want to question Atwill's sanity with that move, but believe it or not there's some method to his and everyone else's madness.This film has a really great ensemble cast with everyone looking like they're having one rollicking good time making this film. In the Atwill mansion on a dark and stormy night where a killer known as The Gorilla has made threats on Atwill's life besides those mentioned are butler Bela Lugosi, maid Patsy Kelly, sailor Wally Vernon, Atwill's niece Anita Louise and her fiancé Edward Norris, disgruntled investor with Atwill's firm Paul Harvey, and a mysterious stranger Joseph Calleia. After a couple neat plot twists, The Gorilla's identity is revealed.I loved Patsy Kelly best in this film, but Bela Lugosi gave a lot of his lines a nice deadpan twist to them. Even Lionel Atwill who also plays mostly sinister characters has a twinkle in his eye here.20th Century Fox did a fine job on this low budget comedy that is still a real treat.

Slapstick comedy featuring the Ritz brothers. Who are the Ritz brothers? I don't know, I've never heard of them until now, but they seem a very cheap and shoddy imitation of the Marx brothers. They play detectives out to catch "The Gorilla", a man who kills people after sending them threats 24 hours in advance. The Ritz bros. bungle and trip their way to discovering the truth of the matter, and hilarity is supposed to ensue. It doesn't. The comedy falls flat--or maybe not enough, as sometimes it's supposed to--and the plot is completely illogical.The movie gets some props for generally trying to have fun with the hidden passageways motif and Bela Lugosi's usual outrageousness, but the problem with camp is that when it's camp horror, it's funny, and when it's camp comedy, it's not, meaning that this movie is kind of suspended between both by boredom and disinterest.--PolarisDiB