Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)

Director: J. Lee Thompson

Cast: Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy, John Huston

Have I Seen It Before: Yes, but it leapt immediately from my brain and memory, even all those years ago.

Did I Like It: If you cut out the awkward framing device, wherein The Lawgiver (Huston, because I’m betting Orson Welles uncharacteristically said no) pontificates on the legend of the first intelligent ape, Caesar (McDowall, who here is far too fascinated with the fact that he looks exactly like his father, Cornelius, for my taste), you might have a leaner movie that doesn’t end on an ape statue crying (no, really). If you cut out all the footage from earlier (read: better) films, this may not even qualify as a feature. Although, if you had added more footage of Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) you would also accidentally increase your Kim Hunter quotient, and I think there’s a pretty strong correlation between Kim Hunter or Andy Serkis’ presence in a Planet of the Apes movie and whether or not the film is worth a damn. It probably wouldn’t save the film. It certainly didn’t save Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).

Now, I come here not to bury Caesar. I’ve even managed to find ways to praise him somewhat*. Stopping for several minutes to unpack the logic of time travel will only kind of work as a way to suck up to me. This movie wants to spend several minutes getting mired in the logical problems of time travel, which is usually a sure-fire way to suck up to me. It has more than enough weirdness in it. In fact, while the majority of this review has been demonstrably negative, I don’t think you would have a terrible time if you watched, certainly if you have watched the previous five films.

*I’m unreasonably proud with how that one turned out.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Director: J. Lee Thompson

Cast: Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalbán, Natalie Trundy

Have I Seen It Before: Yes, but I’ve always had a dim view of that era in the series post-Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) but pre-Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) was just not worth re-visiting.

Did I Like It: And that memory largely bears out here. Conquest is largely perfectly fine b-sci-fi fare. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had thought that this film and its follow up, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) were produced as a precursor for the short-lived Planet of the Apes TV series. I didn’t get that sense, at least here. This is a fully realized, if flawed, movie.

Montalbán is here, which is always welcome, but departs the proceedings early, sort of for a plot reason, but one imagines far more because the film could only meet his quote for just so many shooting days. The makeup for the various apes have again taken a turn, not necessarily in a sense of artistry (read: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) but as a question of tonnage. Escape avoided problems with dwindling resources by populating the affair with only three Ape actors. Here, the planet is back, baby, but it feels like the vast majority of those whose would take up Caesar’s (McDowall) call to arms are wearing masks which would have been far, far in the background when Charlton Heston still rocked a loincloth.

None of that is inherently wrong. There are plenty of cheap films, and even genre films (Halloween (1978) immediately comes to mind, or any early Carpenter) that are an absolute delight. What’s wrong is that the series has lost its nerve. Every movie in the series has an ending that makes one feel (to varying degrees) genuinely surprised. Here, everything has an inevitable quality. Then again, when Planet of the Apes (2001) felt obligated to throw in a twist ending, things didn’t work out so well. Maybe I’m being unfair, but after three wild endings in a row, one can’t help but think that ideas were running thin.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

Director: Don Taylor

Cast: Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Bradford Dillman, Ricardo Montalbán

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: First of all, and I don’t think my eventual re-watch of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) will turn me around on this, but as a general rule you can’t go wrong including Ricardo Montalbán in your science fiction sequel. I challenge you to find me an exception.

There’s a level at which I want to say this might even be superior to <Planet of the Apes (1968)>, and I’m not entirely sure it is insane. Certainly, this third film in the series is less iconic than anything that culminates in Charlton Heston trying to have an argument with a be-togaed French lady (shit, there I go again, spoiling the first one for you…) but even that is a subjective argument. Maybe Escape from the Planet of the Apes has some special meaning for you. What cannot be disputed is that Escape is a far cheaper film then either of its predecessors, to the point where the title almost begins to seem like a misnomer. Then again, A Trio of Apes Travel to and Attempt to Adapt to Life on the Planet of the Humans lacks a certain poetry.

Lest you think that is knock against the film, let me say without any doubt that quality is its secret strength. Right from the opening credits where we’re led to believe that cohorts of Heston’s Taylor or Franciscus’ Brent have somehow made it back to a recognizable version of terra firma, only to be greeted by two of our favorite apes from prior films (and a friend (Sal Mineo)) have somehow found their way on the other end of the franchise’s denial. A dour, foolish sort of person may look at this premise and say that the near-plausible accounting of time travel in the first two films (am I the first person to ever attach the word “plausible” to <Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)>? Quite possibly, yes.) is flipped on its head when it is no longer a matter of time dilation, and instead a stable rift in the fabric of time which will allow travelers to travel back and forth between the simian and human ages.

What this premise does is trick—and quite masterfully so—the audience into letting their guard down. The jaunty Jerry Goldsmith score and the playful banter between Zira (Hunter) and Cornelius (McDowall) all makes you think that this is going to be “the funny one” in the series. For much of its runtime, Escape delivers on that process. We even get a delightful homage of Zira and Cornelius trying on human fashions. You are not prepared when matters become not only just as bleak as the two previous films, but heartbreaking to boot. No longer are we confronted with the massive tragedy of all of humans or apes being snuffed out in an instant, we are forced to watch the painful, tragic death of two characters we have grown quite fond of over the course of three films, and their child lives on, to start the process all over again in just about the only sci-fi headfake ending in this series to rival the first. The bleakness of this series becomes no longer an abstract, and it is all the more heartbreaking for it.

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Director: Franklin J. Schaffner

Cast: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans, Kim Hunter

Have I Seen It Before: Oh, sure. Those far-flung summers where all I need out of life was what I’ve come to think of as the Albertson’s Special. Some chicken from the Deli, and five VHS (kids, ask your parents) rentals (kids, ask your parents) from the grocery video department (kids, ask your grandparents). Perfectly fit for five-film franchises (at the time) of varying quality, like this or the Superman films (yes, I’m counting Supergirl (1984), and you should, too; it’s better than Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987)).

Man, to live again in a time when cholesterol and VHS tapes were all one needed on a hot day…

Did I Like It: If you’re reading this review, you’ve probably already seen the movie. Or, at least, you’ve seen the last few seconds of it. The ending was ruined a good fifteen years before I was ever born. But, if you’re a fan of that particular brand of pulpy sci-fi (read: the kind of stuff at which Arthur C. Clarke, and by extension, Stanley Kubrick, would turn up their noses), then there is hardly a movie I could recommend more. One might be tempted—before getting into either actor’s later politics—to say that Heston is really just bringing the same schtick to the big screen Shatner was still using to make his living on the original Star Trek. Maybe it’s hard to wander around the any American western desert in a torn spacesuit and not evoke something resembling Shatner. That feels like a complaint, but it isn’t. It’s an attempt to bring in more eyes who have just seen the Statue of Liberty (crap, now I’ve gone ahead and spoiled it too) to a movie that has more than few other pleasures to offer.

Macbeth (1948)

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O’Herlihy, Roddy McDowall

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know. I’m a fraud. Do I turn my credentials into you or is there some kind of central office to which I need to mail it.

Did I Like It: I mean, right out of the gate, I’m thinking… Gee, he even managed to give the witches Scottish accents. As the film proceeds, nearly every character (maybe not so much Dan O’Herlihy’s Macduff, but you can’t win them all). You don’t see that in every filmed adaptation of the Scottish play. Hell, at times it feels like the Scottish accent is the single most misappropriated in the history of the motion picture, but then again, that might be mostly tied to Sean Connery and his vague insistence to never play a Scotsman, but instead play every other nationality on the Earth as if they were Scottish.

Here in this film, the big budgets of the studios had departed, and were never to quite return (with the possible exception of Touch of Evil (1958), but this is where the least spoken about parts of Welles’ genius (and he was a genius, despite what the vagaries of Hollywood might have tried to do to it) comes into full, undeniable bloom. 

Even when the money had run out, and the eyes of power not only ignored Welles but were content (and not entirely incorrect) in their assessment that they had destroyed him, he was still committed to making a film that always engages, and often surprises. Welles is—from the film’s first few moments—reaching for something a bit better than the average, and in ways that people would have never noticed/forgiven him. This is a b-movie in the resources brought to bear, but that doesn’t mean it has to accept its lowly status. It will always reach to be one for the ages. Failure is acceptable (it does not fail), but it would be in accepting limitations that things become irretrievably lost.

One note? While Mercury stalwart Jeanette Nolan equates herself well as Lady Macbeth, I can’t help but wonder if Welles had only met Eartha Kitt earlier. Had she played the character, the film just might have been as memorable (if not necessarily better) than Citizen Kane (1941).