The Gorilla Mystery is a 1930 Mickey Mouseanimated film produced by Walt Disney for Columbia Pictures, as part of the Mickey Mouse film series.[1] It was the twenty-second Mickey Mouse short to be produced, the seventh of that year.[2]
Mickey Mouse reads in the newspaper that a gorilla has escaped from the zoo, and he calls Minnie to warn her. She is not afraid, and sings a song to Mickey over the phone. Then the gorilla breaks into her house and kidnaps her, and Mickey—hearing her screams over the telephone—rushes to save the damsel in distress. The gorilla takes Minnie upstairs to the attic and ties her up, then plays cat and mouse with Mickey. At the end, the gorilla trips over the rope, knocking him senseless. Mickey and Minnie dance to celebrate their narrow escape.
Production
While the gorilla in the short isn't named, it was retroactively identified as the same gorilla seen in the 1933 shorts Mickey's Mechanical Man and The Pet Store, named Beppo.[1]
The 1944 short Donald Duck and the Gorilla has a similar plot to this film, with a killer gorilla named Ajax escaping from the local zoo.
Reception
In Mickey's Movies: The Theatrical Films of Mickey Mouse, Gijs Grob observes: "The Gorilla Mystery is noteworthy for the extensive dialogue in the beginning. By now the Disney animators had mastered lip-sync, and neither Mickey nor Minnie show any awkward faces while talking. Even more interesting is the cartoon's elaborately drawn gorilla, which in several scenes is staged to show its huge size. The gorilla and the clever use of light and shadow make The Gorilla Mystery look more sophisticated than earlier Mickey Mouse cartoons. Even The Fire Fighters of only three months earlier starts to look primitive".[3]
Motion Picture News (December 6, 1930): "This is not up to the standard of other Mickey Mouse cartoons, but it is a good comedy, nevertheless. The telephone sequence is especially good".[4]
