Lack of good storyline.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

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."

When a wealthy man (Lionel Atwill) is threatened by a killer known as the Gorilla, he hires the Ritz Brothers to investigate. A real escaped gorilla shows up at the mansion just as the investigators arrive.Although included in public domain horror box sets, and featuring Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill, there really isn't anything horror about this. It is something of a comedy, and something of a mystery. The mystery part isn't all that great, as I think the audience is smarter than the script.The humor is okay. The real mystery is about the Ritz Brothers. Where did they go? 75 years later, we still know the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, but the Ritz Brothers are barely a fading memory. Is it time for them to get a renaissance? Maybe a box set?

Newspaper headlines proclaim the notorious 'Gorilla' has murdered several people. The setting for this spooky comic murder mystery is the house of Warren Stevens. Stevens' estate is no ordinary edifice. The place is a maze of secret passages. Virtually, every room boasts a concealed panel. The maid Kitty (Patsy Kelly) is reading the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet. before she goes to sleep when she sees the arm of a gorilla pin a note to her robe. Kitty raves hysterically with fear about her close call with danger, and Peters (Bela Lugosi) the butler examines that document. Stevens (Lionel Atwill) arrives to investigate and peruses the note, too. The note is a death threat for him. A thunder storm with recurring lightning enhances the atmosphere laden with paranoia about when the 'Gorilla' will next strike. The same night that this happens, Stevens sends an urgent radiogram to his niece Norma Denby. It seems that Stevens and Norma are joint heirs under the terms of her late father's will. Until Norma marries, Uncle Walter is the executor of her estate. Walter wants Norma and Jack to know what the contents of the estate are. The next day Norma and her boyfriend arrive to find Walter feeling a little apprehensive about the death threat. Of course, Walter has no idea why anybody would want to kill him. Earlier, we see him on the phone begging for clemency in regard to a monetary debt of $250-thousand. Later, a genuine gorilla enters the mansion. Somebody has knocked the gorilla's trainer out and unlocked the beast's cage. Later, we learn that the gorilla is named Poe.Stevens hires three detectives from the ACME Detective Agency. The nitwit Ritz Brothers play the numskull private eyes that Stevens hires to protect him from the homicidal ape on the loose. They make their entrance about ten minutes into the action. They arrive in the pouring rain in a convertible with an umbrella serving as their roof. They have cut holes for their eyes so they can see where they are driving. "I'll bet there's a dead body in every room," Garrity (Jimmy Ritz) observes before they climb out of her automobile. At best, the Ritz Brothers are low-brow comics that rely on verbal wit and hammy acting to yield laughs. They freak out at the very mention of the Gorilla's name and Harrigan puts on a dumb show when he encounters the ape. Everybody is in the study when the lights go out and Stevens vanishes. The Ritz Brothers try to reenact Stevens' disappearance by using a stand-in for him. "Look," Mulligan says, "I've got an idea. If we can figure out how Garrity disappeared, we can figure out how Stevens disappeared." Mulligan (Al Ritz) sits where Stevens sat behind the desk. Harrigan (Harry Ritz) switches off the lights and Mulligan disappears. The next stand-in for Stevens that Harrigan uses is Kitty. This time the lights go out and Harrigan rather than the stand-in for Stevens disappears. Suddenly, Kitty finds herself face-to-face with Peters.At the halfway point in the film, a couple of other people arrive. Not only does a mysterious but natty stranger (Joseph Calleia) appear without invitation, but our bumbling heroes discover a sailor in a closet. The stranger prowls the premise after Harrigan has vanished as a part of his reenactment ploy. The stranger finds Harrigan. Initially, Harrigan suspects the stranger is the 'Gorilla.' The stranger explains he stepped into the house to use the telephone because his car broke down. When Harrigan brandishes his revolver, the stranger assures him he is making a big mistake. The stranger surprises Harrigan, knocks him unconscious, and claps handcuffs on him. About forty minutes into the plot, A.P. Conway (Paul Harvey) storms into the mansion. He is adamant about collecting a quarter of a million dollars. "I have proof that Stevens have been stealing from his client's accounts for over a year." He refuses to leave until he has his money. More than ever the Ritz Brothers are determined to solve the mystery. Eventually, they venture into the cellar and encounter the real gorilla. During their search, Harrigan gets himself snagged to a dressing dummy and freaks out. The fake gorilla attacks Norma. Jack suspects Peters is the culprit because the butler is never around when anything occurs. Later, Harrigan confronts the real gorilla in a clever scene when he thinks that his partners are accompanying him. The sailor recovers and warns them about Poe. Poe hates women. The sailor says a man hired him and Poe. Somebody clobbered the sailor and released Poe."The Man in the Iron Mask" director Allan Dwan's version of "The Gorilla" is the second remake of the Ralph Spence stage play. Spence was a comic scriptwriter, too. He wrote the screenplay for the Wheeler and Woolsey comedy "Hook, Line, and Sinker." Scenarists Rian James and Sid Silvers have penned some snappy, rapid-fire dialogue for the Ritz Brothers that aptly illuminates their idiocy. The gobbledygook dialogue is amusing in its lunacy. Dwan doesn't squander a second in this fast-paced laffer. He gets more mileage than you might imagine out of the weird sounds that a Zenith radio receiver emits with warnings about Stevens' impending demise. Bela Lugosi is cast as a sinister butler. Typically, the cliché in murder mysteries such as this one is that the butler committed the crime. Dwan uses Lugosi as an effective red herring. Nobody likes or trusts the butler. Dwan gets as much mileage out of Lionel Atwill as Stevens. Patsy Kelly spends most of her time screaming in fright. The fake gorilla that is supposed to be a real gorilla is hilarious because it is so obviously ersatz.

Ritz Brothers nonsense about a mad killer on the loose called the Gorilla. When Lionel Atwill is marked for death he calls in a trio of detectives, the Ritz brothers, to keep him safe. Add to the mix an angry investor, Bela Lugosi as a butler and the appearance of Atwill's niece and her fiancé and you have a crowded old dark house comedy. Shrill remake of a remake of a play this might have worked had there been different detectives than the Ritz Brothers. The problem is that their clowning, more often then not of limited appeal under the best of times, comes off as stupid or rather mean and nasty. I kept thinking that they were annoyed with some one and so channeled that into an air of moronic cruelty. Perhaps had their gags actually been funny I might have gone with it but what ever they do seems to in from another movie entirely. They sink what was otherwise an okay horror comedy. (In all fairness to the Ritz Brothers, they were often quite funny in their supporting film roles. Trouble only really hit them when they tried to be anything other than support where their style of comedy, which was based on the three working together, was pushed past the breaking point.)