Movie Review: Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971): Let's face it. The second Planet of the Apes film was pretty bad. It really wasn't required. As if to illustrate this point, they ended the film by blowing the fucking Earth to smithereens, putting the kibosh on any future attempts to squeeze money out of the franchise. Except that didn't work, and we got a third one. And you know what? It's not that bad. This installment reveals that Zira, Cornelius (back to Roddy McDowell) and some other dude called Dr. Milo survived the explosion by finding the old spaceship and somehow time-traveling back to Taylor/Brent's original time, i.e. the present day. I know there's an element of "Don't ask" to time travel but there's too much left unanswered here. All attempts to link the second and third movies are mostly convoluted and ridiculous and just reek of a massive deus ex machina, so I just ignored all that shit and moved on. The poor links between these films really does show how little planning went into the franchise. Instead of leaving loose ends to link to potential new films it's as if they made a film, released it, then realised they'd quite like to make another and had to invent some convoluted connections between them.

The film starts off as basically Apes in the Big City. Gasp, as an ape drinks champagne! Marvel, as an ape goes to watch a boxing fight! Observe, as an ape takes a warm bath! That takes up a good chunk of time, but then the film gets serious, as it's revealed that Zira is pregnant and there's debate over the consequences of the child for the future uprising of the apes, all while creating a delightful paradox for people to sweat over. After all, this child of Zira and Cornelius could lead to the ape uprising, leading to the birth of Zira and Cornelius in the future. This is where the plot is at its best. The two main leads, Zira and Cornelius, are likable, familiar characters and really carry things. Roddy McDowell's particularly entertaining. The man was born to play an ape. More specifically, a nervy, eccentric, wide-eyed ape. He's like a simian C3-PO. The humans who aid and go against the two are also worthy additions, with the main villain Dr. Hasslein being suitably menacing throughout, aided by his Jogi Low-esque appearance. Bloody Germans. Ricardo Montalban has a minor role as the owner of a circus who helps the two apes which is good fun.

This is the second best Apes film I've seen so far. It's not a patch on the first, lacking in its deep social commentary and underlying messages, but there's nothing much wrong with this. I did find it amusing to find out that Sal Mineo hoped that this film would do for him what the first did for Roddy McDowell. In the end, Mineo hated the makeup and his character was killed off rapidly. On the other hand, McDowell's in four and a bit Apes films. He may as well have just kept the makeup on and lived as a chimp, to be honest. One thumb up.