Netflix series Chimp Crazy lives up to both parts of its title

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Like many people — probably too many people — I binged Tiger King in its entirety when it arose as a short-lived cultural behemoth during the early dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic. What else was I — or we — to do?

The 2020 Netflix series from director Eric Goode and centered on the bizarre blood feud between big cat fanatics Joe Exotic and Carol Baskin was too lurid to be true, and perfect fodder for panic-stricken people confined to their couches and wondering whether civilization was collapsing outside.

There’s no sense in recapping the many grotesqueries of Tiger King — suffice it to say, it was a prolonged staring contest with the abyss about people who use and abuse exotic animals for their own psychological, emotional and financial benefit.

While the show made Joe Exotic and Baskin household names (and even spawned an unwatchable sequel), it also vaulted Goode into the spotlight and made him among the most reviled men in the world by roadside zoo operators, the people who supply them with their rare attractions and the private owners of such creatures.

That’s why Goode had to take an unconventional approach with his newest “docuseries” Chimp Crazy — which hit Netflix in August — hiring a “proxy” director to stand in for him when interviewing subjects who otherwise would have slammed their doors in his face.

Courtesy screenshot from Chimp Crazy.

Therein is the first of many ethically compromised elements in the four-part series, which explores the phenomenon of humans keeping chimpanzees as pets. At least that’s the broad scope of the project.

Really, it begins with Connie Casey, who started a business in the 1970s supplying individuals and businesses with captive chimps. Based in Missouri — which we learn had almost no regulations regarding the breeding, trafficking and ownership of exotic animals — Casey rose to be probably the biggest player in the chimp game, with her facility coming to house upward of 42 of the animals, some of whom had featured on nationwide greeting cards and starred in movies.

The biggest celebrity ape was Tonka, who appeared in early-1990s films George of the Jungle, Babe: Pig in the City and Buddy — the latter performing opposite actor Alan Cumming. More on that later. 

Decades later, chimp-obsessed Tonia Haddix volunteered with Casey’s so-called Missouri Primate Foundation, quickly falling in love with Tonka.

“He loved me as much as I loved him,” Haddix says at one point. “It was meant to be … like your love for God.”

And that’s where we get the “crazy” in Chimp Crazy.

Haddix dominates the narrative arc of the series, as the “proxy” filmmaker delves deeper and deeper into her many neuroses, delusions and fixations — all revolving around what she calls “monkey love” (despite chimps being apes) and describes as being “totally different to love for a child.”

“When you adopt a monkey the bond is much, much deeper,” she says, while acknowledging that not only does she have a human son, but she loves chimps more. “A human child is meant to grow up and bond with other people in society. But not chimpanzees. Their mother is their whole life.”

As the episodes unfold, viewers see Haddix spiral further into “monkey love,” behaving with increasing recklesness as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals starts coming down on the Missouri Primate Foundation for mistreatment of the animals (who we see living in almost barren concrete cages and being fed a regular diet of fast food and soda).

Casey fades into the background and Haddix comes to the fore, doing battle with PETA to keep “her kids.” Cumming enters the fray when he realizes that his former co-star, Tonka, is one of the imperiled apes and goes to bat through PETA to save him.

As the legal conflicts mount and Haddix continues to flout court orders, things get even more bizarre and tread into ever-dicier moral and ethical territory — both on the part of Haddix and the filmmakers.

Meanwhile, throughout it all, Goode — via his proxy — makes side trips into other stories of chimp ownership gone horribly awry, including gruesome and often fatal attacks by the animals against their owners.

I won’t give away the big mystery that animates the second half of the series, but it’s probably crazier than you might guess. And, by the time of the final reckoning, one thing becomes clear: When people get this wrapped up in their pets, it stops being clear who the “animal” really is.