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Post by StevePulaski on Mar 7, 2017 18:22:21 GMT -5
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Directed by: Franklin J. Schaffner  Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes. Rating: ★★½
Franklin J. Schaffner's science-fiction landmark is a pretty standard, unsurprising affair, aside from how it takes a wacky premise and gives it such a straight-laced execution. It focuses on an astronaut crew led by George Taylor, played by Charlton Heston, that crashlands on a planet following one-hundred years passing back home on Earth. The planet looks like a remote island, ala Lord of the Flies, until Taylor and his team, Landon (Robert Gunner), Dodge (Jeff Burton), discover the only inhabitable life on the planet, aside from subhuman slaves, are anthropomorphic apes.
The apes have discovered a way to meet or, in some cases, surpass the intelligence of humans far enough to enslave the human race. Humans are mute and nameless, servants to the ape rulers that brandish swords and other heavy artillery while riding horseback around an otherwise desolate island. Taylor assumes the thankless task of trying to communicate with the apes to strike some sort of bond, in addition to befriending a female slave he nicknames Nova (Linda Harrison).
The apes have also formed a caste system of sorts, starting with the gorillas at the bottom, who serve as police officers and hunters. From there on, the system works upwards, with orangutans serving as politicians and lawyers and chimpanzees playing intellectuals, scientists, and philosophers. Writers Michael Wilson and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling pen a screenplay that keeps its socially relevant undertones downplayed in the context of greater science-fiction adventure and a committed performance by Heston.
Just nine years after playing Judah Ben-Hur in William Wyler's sprawling, biblical epic, Heston is acting as the mediator between ape overlords intent on wiping out all control humans have manifested over animals and other elements of nature. His performance is impressive, actually, mostly in the regards of him delivering on the convincing and dramatic level we're used to seeing Heston. Where most actors would likely see the role of a stranded astronaut victim to a planet of controlling apes, Heston sees it as a challenge and a welcomed one at that.
Planet of the Apes has the typical elements of science-fiction films from the 1960s through the 1980s, where the first act is largely made up of lengthy, extreme long-shot establishing shots that show the slow-moving descent of either spaceships or humans across a limitless terrain - that terrain being a solar-system or the soggy sand of a remote beach. The repetition is there for much of the first half, regardless of how incredible the special effects are (it prompted the same effect Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture and Tron had for me, where I found my attention span waning from staring at drawn-out scenery for so long).
There is an enjoyment element present, however, probably more than there ever should've been for a film with this title and this concept. The concept represses most laughs (except when an ape spouts the line "man see, man do," which I find more memorable than Heston's "damned dirty ape" quip) by carrying on with competent action and fairly good depth to a story that could've been woefully inert and sterile. Thank whoever you feel should be credited with that, but don't thank whoever purchased those ape-masks and decided to linger on them with closeups for a decent portion of the film.
Starring: Charlton Heston, Robert Gunner, Jeff Burton, and Linda Harrison. Directed by: Franklin J. Schaffner. |
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Post by StevePulaski on Mar 8, 2017 20:19:07 GMT -5
Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
Directed by: Ted Post  Rating: ★★
How those films would've played out would've been intriguing to see, but the studio's rationale for moving forward with Paul Dehn's (Goldfinger) screenplay really makes you wonder if the studio knew the nonlinear mess they'd be getting into with this particular installment. The original Planet of the Apes was a pretty straight-forward film in the regard that, at least for me, very little seemed surprising or out of place except for the fact that it was a B-movie concept treated like A-list science fiction.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes initially seems like another rehash of the first film, right down to the facial similarities of both the original leading man Charlton Heston and newcomer James Franciscus, until the figurative and literal mask comes off and you realize that you've been duped into seeing one of the most damning and insane sequels to a mainstream franchise in history.
The ribbon is tied on the previous film within the first few minutes of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, as astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) winds up meeting his fate on a cliff in front of the mute slave Nova (Linda Harrison), whom he tried to free from the apes. Meanwhile, another spaceship has crashed, leaving an astronaut named Brent (James Franciscus) to be the only survivor in search of the missing Taylor. He investigates the ostensibly newfound land shortly after meeting Nova and learning that she cannot speak, but as soon as he sees a gorilla known as General Ursus (James Gregory) rallying together other apes to conquer the area - known as the Forbidden Zone - and exterminate all surviving humans, he learns that maybe her inability to speak isn't such a negative.
The apes carry out General Ursus's orders to storm the Forbidden Zone, while Brent and Nova eventually find their way underground, taking refuge in the New York City subway, which has now been turned into a dark cave. Underground, Brent discovers a gang of bomb-worshiping mutants with telepathic powers that gradually work to seize control of Brent's thoughts, polluting them with motivations and coercion to kill Nova.
For a moment, I thought I was watching two different film serials spliced together. The first forty minutes of the film looks to recreate the atmosphere and the feel of Planet of the Apes, while the second half takes a massive detour into previously unexplored ideas, like telepathy and cult-like behavior of worshiping an atomic bomb. In that sense, Beneath the Planet of the Apes takes cultural context or nuclear warfare into consideration and replaces all the racial and social commentary of the first one with a timeline injection of what was a very real concern.
While credit needs to be given to Dehn and new director Ted Post for forging a different path and curbing the nudging feeling one has forty minutes in that they're watching a rehash, albeit a serviceable one, of the previous film, Beneath the Planet of the Apes feels cheap and stunted despite its valiant efforts. It feels hokey and rushed, bearing social commentary that's more surface-level than anything in the previous film, and a screenplay that doesn't seem committed to the full-blown lunacy suggested by the last half-hour.
It seems as if Dehn and Post were hired to take the series in a cornier direction, muting a lot of the social relevance of the first film and writing off Heston's terrific performance as a way to lighten the mood a bit with this story. Planet of the Apes does have serious potential to be a goofy, light-hearted franchise, especially in this particular era as the series shifts into the 1970s as a contrast to the "New Hollywood" films of the time, but Beneath the Planet of the Apes isn't a particularly good introduction to that potential tonal shift. It's a strangely made, acid-trip of a film with some serious narrative problems in regards to its dichotomous acts working against the film's commitment to competent sci-fi or B-grade schlock. Either would satisfy me at this point, but it's time to make a decision.
Starring: James Franciscus, Linda Harrison, James Gregory, and Charlton Heston. Directed by: Ted Post. |
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Post by StevePulaski on Mar 11, 2017 12:30:31 GMT -5
Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
Directed by: Don Taylor  Cornelius (left) and Zira (right) in Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Rating: ★★★
Being that Beneath the Planet of the Apes ended with the destruction of the Earth due to nuclear warfare, Escape from the Planet of the Apes open by showing that three apes - Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), Zira (Kim Hunter), and Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo) - managed to repair astronaut George Taylor's spaceship and make a return home. The voyage was successful, as the three land in the Pacific Ocean in 1973, being taken to the Los Angeles Zoo for scientific observation by Dr. Stephanie Branton (Natalie Trundy) and Dr. Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman). When the apes are found to be talking, freethinking beings, they are then used for a barrage of tests for science and the government. They also supply both branches with information about the future, where the world is built off the enslavement of the entire human race, much to the dismay of both Cornelius and Zira.
Zira is also pregnant, prompting a new set of circumstances for one particular ringleader man at a local circus, who wants to see the family as part of his sideshow attractions.
Escape from the Planet of the Apes has a lot more in common with the first film than its sequel. It's a film that favors the social politics of the story rather than the absurdist dichotomy in tone Beneath worked to present. We see heartbreaking but necessary sequences involving animal testing and the way animals are commodified and exploited in America, if not as pets, than something the public can look onto in a show or at a party in order to find some sort of enjoyment or pleasure. Cornelius and Zira are painted as intelligent and receptive beings because they can talk and express themselves fully, and perhaps that's the connective tissue for us, the audience, in terms of understanding their emotional complexes better. It's a lot more humanizing and easier to connect with than pervasive whimpering.
The film has been criticized for being slow, something I completely understand. Upon opening with Cornelius, Zira, and Dr. Milo crashing to Earth, with the subsequent investigation into the three and the land from which they came, it takes a while for Escape from Planet of the Apes to build its stakes (the circus story being the most climactic addition to the film). But during this time, we spent a great deal of scenes learning about Cornelius and Zira, and debatably sympathizing more with them than we ever did Taylor or Brent from the previous films. There's something innocent and amiable about the two apes and their relationships with one another, especially as they stick together and try to explain the hierarchy of the land from which they came. It's poignant, revealing, and I'd argue necessary for this franchise.
Escape from Planet of the Apes was written by Paul Dehn, the same man who wrote the previous installment of the series. Rather than partly paying homage and recreating the original Planet of the Apes film before deviating course into a cornball sci-fi film, Dehn is a lot more focused on political themes and slowburn development with this installment. It's more mature and I'd say even sadder. Where the ending of Beneath the Planet of the Apes was just plain hopeless, this film takes bleak to a whole other level, creating an ending that's incredibly upsetting because it's more personal. Escape from the Planet of the Apes is a fine sequel and the best of what has been an uneven franchise so far.
Starring: Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Sal Mineo, Natalie Trundy, and Bradford Dillman. Directed by: Don Taylor. |
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Post by StevePulaski on Mar 15, 2017 17:03:06 GMT -5
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson  Caesar (right, Roddy McDowall) tries to reason with MacDonald (left, Hari Rhodes) in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Rating: ★★½
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is the fourth of five films in the original Apes franchise, the first of two helmed by director J. Lee Thompson. While Thompson widens the canvas on which the apes exist, making Conquest feel more like an open-world film than the previous two thanks to larger landscapes for the characters to roam, screenwriter Paul Dehn goes back to his dichotomous narrative style where the first half is so tonally different from the second. Much like in Dehn's first outing for the Apes series, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, he acknowledges that there needs to be setup for such the conclusion to make sense, but doesn't create a project that's interesting as a whole or as captivating as the moments we're inevitably waiting for.
We're informed by Armando (Ricardo Montalbán), the ringleader of a circus, in the very beginning of the film that, ten years after the events of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, that cats and dogs have become extinct, meaning humans have adopted apes as the new household pet now. However, unlike cats and dogs, apes can be trained to perform menial tasks, such as housecleaning, successfully becoming the modern day slaves to humans. Governor Breck (Don Murray) and his close aide MacDonald (Hari Rhodes) have been working together to make sure this form of unpaid labor stays, being that it has created a functioning economy and a generally happy public. The ape that's most alert to what's going on, and with his eyes open to the unjust system, is Caesar (Roddy McDowall), the son of Cornelius (also played by McDowall in Escape from the Planet of the Apes) and Zira, the apes from the previous film.
In retaliation to Breck's law, and in a state of disgust after seeing apes sedated, beaten, and mutilated into becoming thankless house-slaves, Caesar tries to assemble his own rebellion to the law. This involves gathering weapons and staging a strategic and destructive uprising that is predicated upon disrupting the class-based society that far too frequently parallels the modern day. Caesar's radicalization happens as a result of his own moral compass, one of the ideas that could've proven very groundbreaking and thoughtful to explore.
But Dehn has a hard time retaining interest up until the retaliation scene. The first fifty minutes largely consists of a pretty sterile, stiff setup, remarkable because Thompson takes colors and framing very seriously in terms of what sort of mood he's trying to convey, but it gets lost in translation. Governor Breck isn't a very menacing character, the other apes aren't very developed, especially those forced to live with humans as pets, and Caesar's story isn't as compelling as his parents', who both traveled to Earth and subsequently found themselves caught up in a slew of trouble.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was apparently heavily edited and muted when it came time to edit the film, with a lot of Dehn's parallels to racial tensions and social commentary being left on the cutting-room floor due to the effects of the Civil Rights movement still being a topical issue in America, at the time. I feel that this has played a part in nearly every installment in the Planet of the Apes franchise and why these films always come within what seems to be a few inches of greatness. It's almost as if Fox wanted their cake with the series, but didn't want to see it exercise its full potential, for that would mean pushing the boundaries with a series about talking apes.
The film is marginally entertaining when it shows the violent revolution at the end because that's the closest thing we get to emotion following a lot of talky, constrained exposition during the first half of the film. Dehn doesn't really build up a real tone outside of Caesar's growing contempt for his rulers, only touching on the torment his parents' death brought upon him, and the result is a surface-level film that wastes a perfectly good title in the process.
Starring: Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalbán, and Hari Rhodes. Directed by: J. Lee Thompson. |
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Post by StevePulaski on Mar 16, 2017 17:19:57 GMT -5
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson  Caesar (left, Roddy McDowall) tries to rebuild civilization in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Rating: ★★
Think about it for a second. The original Planet of the Apes franchise began and ended in five years, with five years. Already, the new series began in 2011 and is still awaiting the release of the third installment six years later. Even the Star Trek and Star Wars films took their time over decades to be released, and those were based off of preexisting source material. This is a series that very much feels as if it had been playing every subsequent installment by ear following the original being a breakout hit. Aside from producer Arthur P. Jacobs, this franchise's closest constant was screenwriter Paul Dehn, who didn't write the original film.
This concluding chapter, again, revolves around Caesar (Roddy McDowall), the survived son of Cornelius and Zira, the two apes from Escape from Planet of the Apes, now living in post-nuclear attack America in 2670 A.D. Caesar, who once led the ape rebellion against humans that were using them as slaves, Caesar has decided that it's best to make peace with the few surviving humans. He's married to his longtime girlfriend Lisa (Natalie Trundy), which I suppose indicates that he's settled down and become far less radicalized, but his harmonious ideas don't necessarily intersect with those of Aldo (Claude Akins), a gorilla who has militarized others into exterminating the last of the humans on Earth.
A subplot involves Caesar's continued struggle with not knowing who his parents were, until he hears from government official MacDonald (Austin Stoker) that an old tape of his parents does indeed exist in the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was destroyed and left desolate following nuclear attack and is now victim to dense and toxic radiation levels. Such things don't faze Caesar, as he tries to search for even the shortest video evidence that his parents were living, breathing apes, just like he is.
Meanwhile, Aldo's militarization tactics are pretty amusing to watch, as he stands before a group of apes with a Stalin-like pose, drilling the motto of "Ape shall not kill other ape" repeatedly into their minds. His blunt-force style of leadership comes from years of being at the mercy of humans, whether he was their pet or their slave. From what I gather, it's as if screenwriter Dehn wanted to pose a Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X contrast between the protagonist and the antagonist of the film. This is one of the many things that makes this film more interesting in theory than it does in practice; we don't nearly get enough of Aldo's personal history and story to really constitute a meaningful contrast.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes features J. Lee Thompson's wide-angle, cinematic landscapes once again in a way that makes the film a nice piece of eye-candy, but the emotion here is lacking, especially given that Caesar is the character we've spent the most time with in this franchise (Taylor's impact was felt through the second and third film, but we didn't see him outside of the original). Caesar, in this state, just isn't a very compelling leader when he's playing a vocal proponent of passive resistance, meaning that Aldo is the de facto interesting party here from an ideological standpoint, but I think whatever ideology we subscribe to him makes him more interesting than what he portrays to us.
Aside from establishing roots to a series and a concept we don't sneer at in the modern day due to its existence spanning over five decades, the Planet of the Apes sequels don't hold much impact on film nor society for a reason. While different from their predecessor in a creatively ambitious manner, they come up short for a barrage of reasons and they are never as interesting on the surface as they are in regards to the themes and parallels they raise about the world around them. Credit Paul Dehn for giving the series a lot to work with and never feeling as if two installments were identical (though I can see my memory getting fuzzy on which scenes came from Conquest and which scenes came from Battle over time), and tip your cap to the four directors who had to pickup where someone else had left off almost every time, but don't subscribe a lot to a franchise that ran out of gas so quickly only to become a basic footnote in the modern day.
Starring: Roddy McDowall, Natalie Trundy, Claude Akins, and Austin Stoker. Directed by: J. Lee Thompson. |
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