Following a plague of murders committed by the titular beast, a rich man (Lionel Atwill) receives a note that fingers him as the monkey’s next victim, to be killed at midnight. He calls his niece, her fiancée and three bumbling detectives (The Ritz Brothers) to his mansion, which turns out to house a ton of secret passages, which the gorilla uses to terrify the houseguests (which include butler Bela Lugosi).

But director Allan Dwan’s The Gorilla is no horror film — rather, it’s Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders at the Rue Morgue” mystery rejiggered as a screwball comedy. And the comedy is perfectly stupid, which helps make the movie perfectly enjoyable.

The Ritz Brothers are like a combination of The Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello and … oh, I dunno, Sammy Petrillo and Duke Mitchell, just to even things out a bit. (Typical exchange: “How do you spell ‘gorilla’? Two Rs or two Ls?” “Gorilla. G-O … Gee! Oh! Gorilla!”)

Every old, dirt-cheap, 66-minute movie should have a killer monkey on the loose running through a hidden maze of corridors, bonking guys on the head. Yeah, I kinda loved it. —Rod Lott

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Years before Bob Clark did the same with Murder by Decree, director James Hill pitted Sherlock Holmes against Jack the Ripper in A Study in Terror, a more-than-servicable entry in Holmes pastiche cinema. Strange how it was promoted with a campaign comparing it to TV’s campy Batman, because the master detective is neither a superhero, nor is this film campy.

It is, however, surprisingly bloody for its time. And pretty good, although slow by today’s rough-and-tumble standards. In his lone appearance as Holmes, John Neville does a terrific job, almost as if he knew this was his one shot; Donald Houston is his Watson, and Robert Morley and Judi Dench are among the supporting players.

Plot? We’ve pretty much already said it. Like From Hell, it’s all about the Ripper ripping up — or stabbing, to be precise — London’s prostitutes. Here, their cups runneth over their corsets, and they’ll all pretty hot. Not so much once they get a knife through the neck, although some people are into that sort of thing.

Producer Herman Cohen cuts some corners, but not when it comes to splashing on ever-vibrant color. The game is afoot … and fun! —Rod Lott

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Passengers plays like a mix of The Sixth Sense, Fearless (the airplane one, not the throat-kicking one) and all the bluish Crayons in the big box with the built-in sharpener. After a commercial jet crashes, grief counselor Claire (Anne Hathaway) is called in to talk to the passengers — hence the title!

They seem to differ on whether there was an explosion and other details. They also seem to disappear one by one, which may have something to do with the shadowy man who stalks them and appears outside the window. But, hey, what’s with the looniest of the bunch, this Eric fellow (Patrick Wilson)? He acts like he just stubbed his toe, not survived the opening of Lost!

Rodrigo García directs with a gloomy crispness that makes all of Canada look like an Architectural Digest spread, but the limp screenplay by Ronnie Christensen jumps from drama to mystery to romance to “how much longer does this have?” It’s not a thriller, as it’s generally classified.

The film is yet another that introduces a lazy twist ending, presented so shoddily it holds no surprise. García doesn’t so much build up to it as he does stumble into it. The actors are passable, but why does Hathaway always look like she just drank cherry Kool-Aid? And is it in Wilson’s contract to show his bare ass in every movie? —Rod Lott

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