Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie''s plot.
Can someone please explain to me Hollywood’s fascination with gorillas in the 1930s and 40s? Sure KING KONG was the sht, but let it go. There was THE APE with Boris Karloff, THE MONSTER WALKS and THE MONSTER MAKER with no one of note, even 1952 got in on it with BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA. And there’s 1939’s THE GORILLA. Enough already. We all know they’re just men in very bad suits, and, really, who has that damn many apes in cages in their basement anyway? Was it really that common in the 30s???
So this time around we’ve got a hired assassin called The Gorilla who’s been making headlines all over the place. Then there’s rich banker (because in the 30s it was the law: if you’re making a movie, one of the main characters has to be either a rich banker or a rich doctor), Walter Stevens, played by Lionel Atwill. Stevens is in the sht, so, to get himself out of a big debt, he comes up with a plan to use the Gorilla scare to murder his niece, after which he’ll inherit her fortune, pay off his debts, and, presumably, get back to stealing money from his clients, because why not?
Stevens’s plan consists of faking a death threat to himself from The Gorilla. Fearing for his safety, he asks his niece, Norma (Anita Louise), to come visit him. To show he’s taking every precaution he hires three private detectives, Mulligan, Harrigan, and Garrity (played by The Ritz Brothers who apparently were a cross between the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and a big stinky wheel of cheese that thinks double takes and stammering are the height of comedy). MH&G are obviously inept, but Stevens insists they’ll be able to keep him safe. Meanwhile he’s secretly hired a visiting circus ape to come to his house under the pretense of performing for a party. Did I mention the ape, Poe, hates women? So while Stevens pretends to be kidnapped by The Gorilla, Poe will kill Norma. We assume that Stevens will then reappear, feign relief at his escape, then remorse for the loss of the niece he barely knows. Unfortunately, there are several other characters who decide to muck about and foil his well-thought-out plan. There’s the detectives, but there’s also The Stranger who is seen snooping around the house, there’s Norma’s fiancee Jack, there’s A.P. Conway (the man Stevens is supposed to have stolen $250,000 from), and Poe. Plus we’ve got Kitty (the maid) and Peters (the butler, played by guess who, Bela Lugosi--I wonder just how many butlers Lugosi played in his time, and I wonder if he ever thought to himself, “Man, I’m friggin’ DRACULA, btch, wtf am I doing playing hired help, when I should be running this sht!?!”)
It’s not that this was a bad movie, this was a horrible movie. Based on a play by Ralph Spence, THE GORILLA actually seemed less like a coherent, planned event, and more like the director brought some actors onset and just kind of moved them around for a couple days until he had enough footage he thought he could edit together into something that made sense. He failed.
The entire thing is just so convoluted and inane with characters running around here and there, trying to solve some mystery that’s not really even that intriguing. We have secret panels and people disappearing and mysterious figures lurking outside windows. But we don’t really have anything that engages the viewer or makes us care what happens next.
There is no character development, but honestly I didn’t expect any as the movies from the 30s seemed to be stocked with typical cutout character types, not real people. We’ve already mentioned the rich uncle (it’s almost always an uncle and the niece, very rarely the rich father and daughter, and there’s almost NEVER a mother in the picture), there’s the fast-talker (usually a reporter, but in this case it’s the Ritz Brothers, and to an extent Kitty the maid), the emotionless void/finance, the obedient servant, and of course the villain who almost never has any kind of real motivation that might possibly justify his actions.
The quality of the movie itself--set decoration, music, and such--is all typical of the era. The location is a mansion, lavishly decorated. Everyone is neatly dressed in suits and hats. You know, like reality.
In the end, THE GORILLA wasn’t so much a mystery/horror movie as it was simply a vehicle for the Ritz Brothers to be moronic onscreen in yet another movie, of which they made several during the 30s. What this movie is doing in a series of Horror Classics, I have no idea, because there’s not a thing classic about this, nor is there any horror in it, even with the He-Man Woman Hating gorilla on the loose. It’s just sad and now I’ll never get those 68 minutes back. And that’s the real tragedy.
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