Apes of Wrath (1959)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Story by Warren Foster
Animation by Arthur Davis, Virgil Ross, Gerry Chiniquy
Music by Milt Franklyn
A drunk stork tasked with delivering a baby gorilla to his impatient parents loses the simian infant during a jungle stop. Unwilling to admit his negligence, the stork knocks out Bugs Bunny, dresses him in a diaper and baby bonnet, and delivers him to the gorillas. The father gorilla (named Elvis, for some reason) is appalled by the sight of Bugs as his baby and grabs a mallet to pulverize the decidedly non-gorilla-looking infant. But the mother gorilla (who has no given name) is in love with her new baby and chastises her husband (with a rolling pin to the head) for being an unkind father. Bugs decides to take advantage of this unlikely situation and antagonize the ill-tempered gorilla father, until the stork delivers the real baby and Bugs is forced to escape from the revenge-hungry gorilla that he ruthlessly annoyed.
“Apes of Wrath” is another example of director Friz Freleng recycling material, this time pilfering from the 1948 Bugs Bunny romp “Gorilla My Dreams” plus the 1953 Sylvester cartoon “A Mouse Divided.” This retread lacks the wit and inventiveness of the original material, although some fun can be found with Bugs’ obnoxious behavior backfiring on him on two specific occasions – when he demands that his gorilla father give him a drink of water and when he threatens to cut a rope serving as a bridge between two cliffs. Bugs also gets his comeuppance in the closing gag featuring a surprise appearance by Daffy Duck, but that moment isn’t particularly funny.
In addition to this cartoon and “Gorilla My Dreams,” the gorilla character was also a memorable menace in “Hurdy-Gurdy Hare” (1950), which was among the best Bugs Bunny cartoons. It is a shame he wasn’t used more often – but, then again, how many gorilla-themed cartoons could Bugs have? And while the angry gorilla character had a more docile wife in “Gorilla My Dreams,” the aggressive mate in “Apes of Wrath” (voiced by an unbilled June Foray) added a funnier dimension to the proceedings as a humorless spouse who asserts her dominance with a few well-placed knocks of a rolling pin to her belligerent spouse’s noggin.