A newspaper headline in an opening scene states "Police Claim Gorilla a Professional Killer". When a wealthy businessman is threatened with a note tied to a rock and thrown through his window, Walter Stevens (Lionel Atwill) hires on the Ritz Brothers to protect him. By the time the story is over, the film will have zig zagged enough times to make it senseless, so don't spend a lot of time trying to understand what's going on.<br /><br />This was my first introduction to the Ritz Brothers, and unfortunately, I was not impressed. Their gimmick was a repeated one trick pony, a series of abrupt starts punctuated by hunching shoulders and a "Take that down, Garrity" that got old pretty quickly. Patsy Kelly performs as Stevens' maid Kitty; she has a few clever lines but comes across a bit harshly with unnecessary screeching at times. I was surprised to see Bela Lugosi pop up in this one as Stevens' butler Peters. His character appears and disappears at inopportune moments to the consternation of Kitty and the detectives. Lugosi's portrayal is reminiscent of another characterization, that of Murkil the butler in "One Body Too Many" in a film done five years later. In both films, Lugosi seems to be above it all, with an almost conscious recognition that there's got to be something better to do than this.<br /><br />No one's mentioned it in prior postings, but in the movie's second half, as Harrigan (Harry Ritz) makes his way from room to room in the huge Stevens mansion, he's followed by the "gorilla" who quite obviously changes from a crouching walk to an upright position between rooms. Even the gorilla costume looks different in each scene. Apparently an animal trainer with a gorilla was hired to throw the investigation off track, so we have a "real" gorilla and a "fake" gorilla adding to the pandemonium.<br /><br />Here's what doesn't make sense when the film is over and the "gorilla" killer is revealed. In the early part of the movie, Atwill's character gets a phone call demanding the repayment of a two hundred fifty thousand dollar loan. When A.P. Conway (Paul Harvey) makes his appearance later in the film to collect his money, it's revealed that he's actually a special investigator working in concert with the Ritz Brothers - huh? <br /><br />As I stated earlier, don't spend too much time thinking about this one, it will only make your head hurt. The odd thing is that the individual actors in the film generally fared well in other ventures, but thrown together in this mish mash it only brought the resulting product down, not succeeding as either a comedy or a mystery. There must have been something about movie gorillas in the 1930's to recommend making this picture, but this is one ape too many.