Planet of the Apes

Index	The Planet of the Apes
Planet of the Apes Beneath the Planet of the Apes Escape from the Planet of the Apes Conquest of the Planet of the Apes Battle for the Planet of the Apes	We need some adjectives here; groundbreaking, cutting edge, vanguard and so many more. This is the birth of modern sci-fi. If human life started with the apes, then the sci-fi movie world started with Planet of the Apes, in my opinion. Of course, this film came out before many of us younger sci-fi fans were born, and I still include myself in that category and apologies to anyone who is not. The first time I saw the Planet of the Apes I was awestruck, the whole idea intrigued me, the film kept me guessing and the scene with the Statue of Liberty was just the icing on the cake, the whisky chaser which burns you inside. Charlton Heston with a loin cloth on his head and on his buttocks was just enough in itself for many. There the makers were, worrying about if the apes were going to be a laughing stock or not, and the biggest prosthetic was going to be on Charlton’s head. But this couldn’t take away from the brilliant plot which we all have to thank the French for. The film in itself takes us from Earth to Earth but in different times, both as dangerous as the other. It is compelling and for a 1968 film it stands up and stands out even today. Of course, what stands out more than anything is the make up, the so convincing apes with facial expressions and unmuffled voices. The acting was literally out of this world and convinced you that you were on another planet even though it looked like Earth, but there was the catch, it was Earth. Oh dear, I’ve spoilt it for you if you haven’t seen the film. I’m not going to apologize for that, if you haven’t seen it then you haven’t lived and therefore no apology is warranted. We mustn’t forget that the film was made into four more sequels. Of course the original was the best, but the others take us through many other possibilities about Earth’s future that make you sit down and think. The films were produced in the Cold War era and made everyone think about the future of the Earth as the bomb hanged over our heads. The curious thing about Planet of the Apes was the budget. It must be the only franchise that got a smaller budget with every subsequent film. Instead of the big budget remake, we got a smaller budget sequel with a Charlton Heston look-a-like and cameo role by Charlton himself at the end of the film. The penny pinching is noted in every sequel as the camera lens gets less panoramic and the extras become less visible, but the writing is good and it keeps the franchise alive.
	Planet of the Apes	Index
	Directed by: Frank Schaffner Starring: Charlton Heston Roddy McDowell Kim Hunter Released: 1968 We must ask ourselves, why the hell do we go into space? We get lost, we make enemies and we get sent into a hostile future. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t get the kind of plots that we get in this film, so it must be worth it. Taylor, Landon and Dodge, our unlucky astronauts, find themselves rudely awaken from a nice hibernation sleep by a crash landing in a lake. As they sink towards certain death, they realise that they aren’t quite as unlucky as Stewart, the fourth astronaut, who is already dead, but if they don’t get out immediately they will be asking for Stewart’s funeral home number as well. After an inflatable life raft ride and a rather long trek through the desert, hounded by Taylor’s cynicism, they eventually arrive at an oasis where a nice swim is taken and there is a hint of a glimpse of Heston’s butt. Unfortunately, the old gag of having your clothes stolen whilst in the pool happens in this world as well, the first hint of the parallels between our worlds. After a bit of a chase they find themselves in all sorts of trouble. Our heroes are mixed up in a new world where the simians are in charge, with their own hierarchy between the chimpanzees, orang-utans and gorillas, and where the humans are lobotomized in zoos. Not what Taylor was hoping for when he signed on as an astronaut. Luckily for him, he befriends a chimpanzee, Zira and her husband Cornelius, who has doubts about the simians’ religion and the truth of the scrolls. On the other hand, Taylor has his work cut out to escape as the apes think all humans are beasts and the most dangerous thing since time travel to another world occupied by apes. In this world, humans can’t speak and are considered fair sport without any anti-hunting protests. Poor old Taylor is dying to tell his new ape friend capturer that he isn’t just any old human and that he’s from another planet, as if they’re going to believe him, but his vocal chords were damaged in a hunting accident, damn! The accident being that he was supposed to have died. Taylor makes his escape and finally is allowed his freedom after everyone goes ape (pun intended) in a shoot out on the beach. Taylor manages to make time for a bit of romance with one of the local dumb females and rides off into the sunset in the belief that man from his planet was much more advanced than the barbarian apes of this planet. Ironically it is the apes who believe Taylor to be the barbarian, and when Taylor finds the Statue of Liberty, he realises that his arrogance was misplaced and he was in fact a member of the dangerous race. But who cares, he still had his new, rather lovely romance in a bikini loin cloth with him.
	Beneath the Planet of the Apes	Index
	Directed by: Ted Post Starring: James Franciscus Kim Hunter Charlton Heston Released: 1970 Time to underground, literally, the film and the budget. We never learn, do we? Yet again another astronaut ends up on the Planet of the Apes, hapless and disorientated. This time it’s the turn of Brent and Skipper. This time Brent and Skipper, who is about to shuffle off his mortal coil, know that they have somehow been thrown into the future. Skipper kicks the bucket, leaving poor old Brent in the future with all his crew dead and a burial to do. It’s Brent’s mission to find Taylor from the last film, who has better things to do than the starring role of this film (but a small cameo role will fill the coffers). Chance would have it that Taylor’s bit on the side appears, Nova, on horseback and instantly realises that Taylor is alive due to the dog tags Nova is wearing. We escape the corny phrase, ‘take me to your leader,’ instead we get, ‘take me to Taylor.’ Brent quickly realises that the city he soon sees is full of apes and hence says, ‘It’s a city of apes.’ Very perceptive. Then there is some confusion as Cornelius is another actor and his wife is so confused that she thinks Brent is Taylor. Who wouldn’t? Once you’ve seen one hairy chested, blond in a loin cloth, you’ve seen them all. Soon Nova and Brent are captured, escape and learn about the pending invasion of the forbidden zone by the apes. Nova and Brent end up underground and find themselves with some telepathic humans who are completely bonkers and a nuclear missile short of another nuclear war, quite literally. In this underground world the inter ballistic missiles are God and why not have mass with a weapon of mass destruction? In the mean time Brent has found Taylor in a jail cell and it’s just impossible to tell their hairy chests apart. The apes have invaded the forbidden zone and are knocking on the door of the raving mad, radiation affected humans, with a battering ram. A few renditions of ‘All things bright and beautiful’ later and the world is about to end. The apes force themselves into St Patrick’s Cathedral where the Doomsday Bomb is held which can take out the whole planet in one go. Taylor and Brent have escaped and Ursus, the gorilla general, orders the bomb to be pulled down which on impact starts to leak fuel. Ursus decides it’s a good idea to flick the detonator switch and Brent tries to distract him by playing the organ. The upshot of all this is that Taylor and Brent get shot and then the final irony; Taylor in his dying throws stretches out his hand for help from the gorilla and accidentally throws the bombs switch. Taylor, the cynic, who criticized the ape and then man for destroying the Earth, is in fact the one who triggers the Doomsday Bomb. What a bummer! The film ends on the poignant note of the end of the world. Just what you need when outside the cinema the Cold War is raging. But still a classic.
	Escape from the Planet of the Apes	Index
	Directed by: Don Taylor Starring: Roddie McDowell Kim Hunter Bradford Dillman Released: 1971 How the hell do you make another sequel to the Planet of the Apes when you’ve killed off Heston and blown up the Earth, now that’s pretty definitive? Hollywood knows no boundaries of how to make a remake. It’s simple isn’t it, the chimpanzees re-float and fix the spaceship that crashed landed in a lake in the first film, even though in their village they haven’t invented the internal combustion engine, they somehow have a knowledge of missile technology. They fly it, even though they haven’t even driven a car and they luckily get thrown back in time back to the cheaper to film 20^th Century. Cornelius, his wife and Doctor Milo are the lucky three who escape the holocaust by taking a crash course in astrophysics and quantum mechanics. If they thought their problems were going to be over in the 20^th Century, they are well wrong. Imagine the US military’s face when they salvage a space pod and out pop three chimpanzees. Understandably they are whisked straight off and the poor old doctor gets killed by a bloke in a gorilla suite in the local zoo. It isn’t until the two remaining apes reveal their ability to speak that they are welcomed to Earth and taken out of the zoo. Now it’s all presidential suites and TV interviews for our talking chimps. Enter the baddie, a mean Dr Otto Hasslein is convinced the apes are evil and are covering up something, and of course they are. Zira is pregnant and there is that small thing about the Earth becoming dominated by apes and it being blown up. The Doctor gets the information out of the chimps by several interrogation methods including getting Zira drunk. The President, no less, orders Zira to be sterilized and Cornelius accidentally kills an orderly, making life just that bit more difficult for an honest chimp trying to make a living. They have no choice but to escape and hide in a circus where they are befriended by the ring master. But no talking chimp can hide forever and the film climaxes on a derelict ship with the whole family of chimpanzees dying. Or did they? There’s another sequel to make and how the hell are we going to make the future destruction of the Earth come true? Easy, a quick swap of baby chimps at the zoo by Cornelius, his wife and the ring master Armando and suddenly some poor unsuspecting, non-talking chimpanzee baby has been tossed into the sea by Zira and the real child is still at the zoo saying, ‘Mama, mama?’
	Conquest of the Planet of the Apes	Index
	Directed by: J. Lee Thompson Starring: Roddie McDowell Don Murray Natalie Trundy Released: 1972 The Planet of the Apes factory is in full swing and would make Henry Ford proud. A film every year. The problem this time isn’t the plot as that was left open in the last film, but this time how the hell do you give Roddie McDowell another pay day. The answer, yet again, is simple. McDowell can play his own son. Brilliant. So this film follows the life of the orphaned son of Cornelius and Zira, who was named Milo at first, only to be re-named Caesar. Caesar is brought up by Armando the ring master and we find ourselves in the future, 1991. Something terrible has happened, the world has become more authoritarian and oppressive, but that’s not it, the really terrible thing is that all the cats and dogs have died. So here’s the ‘what the hell?’ question, what the hell do we do if there’s no cats and dogs? Easy, train the monkeys to be pets and even better than that, get them to clean the streets and deliver the mail. But of course the apes are treated worse than the cats and dogs were and this really annoys Caesar. Here we are building up to the big paradox which you could sit down and think about for hours. Caesar starts the ape rebellion which was talked about in the first films, Caesar is the son of Cornelius and Zira who only went back in time because of Brent who went to the future because of Taylor, so who the hell started what? Well, my keyboard is steaming after having just written it. The rebellion is put in motion by Caesar after Armando does a tucked pike dive out of a window rather than tell the truth about Caesar, as if that wouldn’t draw suspicion. Caesar starts to show the apes combat and they start to collect a small arms dump. Caesar leads a rebellion and wins. The humans lose and the apes are now in charge; welcome to the Planet of the Apes, please drive carefully.
	Battle for the Planet of the Apes	Index
	Directed by: J Lee Thompson Starring: Roddie McDowell Claude Akins Natalie Trundy Released: 1973 The budget has all but gone, make-up starts to fall off the apes and the director tries to cover this up with blurred images, the screen shots are so narrow that you only get three characters in each shot and the Governor Kolp looks one way at the enemy to the left, the troops fire in completely the opposite direction to the right and still manage to hit their target, all part of the magic of Planet of the Apes! This film follows Caesar about ten years after the rebellion of the last film and after the nuclear war. Caesar is trying to make reconciliation between his ape peers and the remaining humans. Caesar wants peace but elements of humans and apes are dead set against this, and there is trouble in their midst. Eventually, after a bit of bother and a few cinematical cock-ups, the humans and apes make peace. The final twist of the saga is that this film was being told by an ape from the future called the Great Lawgiver, to a group of young apes. There are many theories to what this actually meant, and I’m buggered if I know. Was there peace or wasn’t there? Caesar’s statue cries, what does that mean? Knowing humanity as we all do, we know that there was bugger all peace and we deserved exactly what we got.