With the second installment of the re-boot of the Apes franchise, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, pulling in huge numbers at the box office, it’s a good time to go back and examine the original Planet of the Apes and the successful movie series it launched.
April 3, 1968 – Planet of the Apes: Two astronauts, led by Captain Taylor (Charlton Heston) as part of a space time travel expedition, crash land on a remote planet in the distant future and discover to their horror that the dominant species is no longer humans but instead is intelligent talking apes who hunt mute humans on this world. Separated from his comrades during the hunt and captured by the apes, Taylor is kept in a cage and studied by two chimpanzees, Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter), who begin to realize how advanced Taylor due to his ability to communicate via hand gestures before finally writing his name on a piece of paper (he can’t talk because he was shot in the throat during the hunt). With the head of the scientific ape community, Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans), determined to execute Taylor fearing him as some major threat to the apes way of life, Taylor’s only hope of escaping and surviving lies in the paws of Zira and Cornelius.
Ground-breaking for its time and with a shocking ending, the original Planet of the Apes broke box office records and was considered by most film critics one of the best movies of 1968. The film won an Oscar for John Chambers who created the ape make-up for the actors portraying the different types of apes. And Charlton Heston was not just the lead star of the film but one of the driving forces trying to convince studios to make the now classic science fiction film. The film still ends up on most ‘Best Science fiction Films’ lists today.
GRADE: A+
May 26, 1970 – Beneath the Planet of the Apes: Astronaut Brent (James Franciscus) crash lands on the planet of the apes looking to rescue Taylor who never returned. Discovering Nova (Taylor’s female companion) and realizing she knew Taylor, Brent and Nova head into the Forbidden Zone trying to find Taylor. There they discover an underground world with a group of telepathic humans who fear and hate the apes.
The only apes film not to star Roddy McDowall, Beneath the Planet of the Apes is a subpar sequel for the following reasons:
– No Roddy McDowall as Cornelius, and Kim Hunter as Zira has only two brief scenes with James Franciscus as Brent.
– Charlton Heston only agreed to be in the film because he owed the studio’s president at the time (Richard D. Zanuck) for greenlighting and making the original when no other studio would. Thus he is only in the very beginning of the movie and in the last 15 minutes, which means the three most interesting and likable characters from the original film are barely in the sequel.
– Due to other films failing at the box office, 20th Century Fox cut the film’s budget in half resulting in poor quality, cheap apes masks for extras in the crowd scenes.
The best element in Beneath the Planet of the Apes is the hiring of actor James Gregory as the new ape Gorilla General Ursus who hates all humans and wants to exterminate them. It’s an over the top yet scary performance which inspired the ‘human hating gorilla’ ape character that would re-occur in other ape films, including Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. GRADE: C
May 21, 1971 – Escape from the Planet of the Apes: Cornelius and Zira shock 20th century Los Angeles by emerging from Brent’s partially fixed space ship in astronaut outfits. It seems they escaped the Earth just before it was destroyed and traveled back into just a few years after Brent left to rescue Taylor from the future. At first the talking chimps are embraced as celebrities, but when the government and Secret Service start to suspect they could begin the end of mankind being the dominate species, Cornelius and Zira’s lives become threatened.
With the return of Roddy McDowall as Cornelius and Kim Hunter as Zira, Escape from the Planet of the Apes is perhaps the only other film among the five in the original series that’s a worthy and entertaining sequel. The two most likable and interesting apes are front and center, and McDowall and Hunter have solid chemistry as these two intelligent simians trying to find a home in the 20th century. Also, for the first time humor and cultural references are introduced into the franchise to lighten the tone of the movie. GRADE: B-
June 30, 1972 – Conquest of the Planet of the Apes: 20 years after the birth of Cornelius and Zira’s son Caesar (Roddy McDowall), now grown, begins to lead an ape revolt against man who has created and embraced ape slavery using them for simple tasks and replacing dogs and cats – due to a deadly plague which annihilated those animals – as family pets.
With only Roddy McDowall returning from the original cast to portray Cornelius’s son, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes suffers from a lack of character development and again another big reduction in the film’s budget. The only reason to watch this move is for McDowall’s strong performance as Caesar, a much stronger, tougher and more determined chimpanzee than his father or mother ever was. GRADE: C-
June 15, 1973 – Battle for the Planet of the Apes: 10 years after conquering what’s left of Earth, Caesar (Roddy McDowall) wants nothing more than to live in peace with both apes and enslaved humans. But gorilla General Aldo (Claude Akins) has other plans, including overthrowing Caesar and wiping out humans once and for all. Meanwhile, a band of military humans have heard of Ape City and have decided to wage war upon it, hoping to rid the world of ape control.
What could and should have been an exciting and action-packed end to the Apes franchise, Battle for the Planet of the Apes turns out to be a painfully slow and boring film with almost no action until the last 20 minutes. Akins’ performance as the human-hating gorilla comes up short when compared to James Gregory’s Ursus in Beneath which is the obvious inspiration for the character. It should be noted, however, that many of the ideas in this film and plot elements are copied and used much better in the new Apes movie Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, including a gorilla betraying Caesar, Caesar wanting to only live in peace, the battle between the human survivors and the apes, and the law the apes live by: “Ape shall not kill ape.” GRADE: D+
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All of these films are available separately on both DVD and Blu-ray and there’s a collector’s set which includes all five films.
– By Kevin Finnerty
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