Studio: Walt Disney Productions (Mickey Mouse)
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Produced by: Walt Disney
Short Synopsis
Mickey reads in the paper that Beppo the gorilla has escaped from the zoo, and telephones Minnie to warn her. She is not worried and sings him a song down the line. As she sings, the gorilla's shadow falls across her room; he breaks in and carries her off, and Mickey, hearing her screams through the receiver, grabs his gun and runs to the rescue. In Minnie's house the gorilla has taken her to the attic and tied her up, and he and Mickey play cat and mouse through the dark rooms, with Mickey's bravado collapsing every time the ape appears. In the end the gorilla trips over his own rope and knocks himself cold, and Mickey and Minnie dance to celebrate their escape.
Why It Matters
- It is the first Mickey Mouse horror-comedy, with the gorilla's shadow on the wall and the dark house as its set pieces, and the sequence of Minnie singing while the ape creeps up behind her is a small masterpiece of suspense staging for 1930; Gillett's direction already shows the control that made The Mad Doctor three years later.
- The film's copyright ran out with the other 1930 Disney shorts, and it is public domain in the United States. Its plot was reworked in 1944 as Donald Duck and the Gorilla, with the escaped ape renamed Ajax, and Beppo himself returned in the 1931 Mickey Cuts Up.
Notes and Trivia
- The gorilla was a topical monster; Ingagi, a fake gorilla documentary, had been a hit earlier in 1930.
- Marcellite Garner's song for Minnie is one of her longest solos in the series.
- See also: The Fire Fighters (1930), The Chain Gang (1930), The Mad Doctor (1933).