| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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THE GORILLA
Rating: 
USA. 1939.
Director – Allan Dwan, Screenplay – Rian James & Sid Silvers, Based on the Play by Ralph Spence, Photography (b&w) – Edward Cronjager, Music Direction – David Buttolph, Art Direction – Lewis Creber & Richard Day. Production Company – 20th Century Fox.
Cast:
Harry Ritz (Harrigan), Al Ritz (Mulligan), Jimmy Ritz (Garrity), Lionel Atwill (Walter Stevens), Bela Lugosi (Peters), Patsy Kelly (Kitty), Anita Louise (Norma Denby), Edward Norris (Jack Marsden), Joseph Calleia (Carlotti), Wally Vernon (Seaman), Paul Harvey (A.B. Conway), Art Miles (Poe the Gorilla)
Plot: Walter Stevens receives a note from a criminal known as The Gorilla, where The Gorilla announces that he is going to kill Walter. Victims have only 24 hours after receiving the note before The Gorilla strikes. And so Stevens takes the step of hiring three idiotic private detectives, Harrigan, Mulligan and Garrity, to protect him. As the hour nears, Stevens’ niece Norma and her fiancée arrive at Stevens’ house, along with various other strangers.
The Gorilla was originally a stage play in the 1920s. It fell into that era’s notion of Old Dark House plays, featuring a balance of light comedy and scares in a gloomy mansion setting, which are always revealed to be the mundane machinations of a masked villain. And as with other similar plays like The Bat (1920) and The Cat and the Canary (1922), both of which were filmed several times during the 1920s and 30s, the super-criminal villain likes to adopt the guise of an animal. The Gorilla, which had first aired as a play in 1925, had previously been filmed, once in the silent era, as The Gorilla (1927), and then a sound remake, The Gorilla (1931), before this much more explicitly comic remake.
This version of The Gorilla was made in clear imitation of the success of the Bob Hope Old Dark House comedy version of The Cat and the Canary (1939). Now the story has been retooled for a comedy trio called The Ritz Brothers who take over a role that is played by only one character in all the other versions. The Ritz Brothers were like a poor man’s Three Stooges or Marx Brothers. They have been almost entirely forgotten today. [Interestingly, today the only name that attracts attention on the credits is that of Bela Lugosi, although for once – about the only time in one of his films – Lugosi plays a straight role as merely the butler (who didn’t even do it)]. The Ritz’s lowbrow clowning around is at least quite snappily paced and comes with enough stupidity to be engaging in a dumb sort of way. Alas the second half drags the first half’s amiability out with a lot of repetitive knocks involving a gorilla. The end revelation of the killer’s identity is improbably contrived.
Copyright Richard Scheib 2001
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