A Review of "Escape from the Planet of the Apes"

"But your honor! I humbly request a continuance on the fact that my client and I are talking
apes from the future and have no idea how your back-ass justice system works!"

Happy Friday! It's time for part three of our Apes movie franchise anthology series of reviews. I didn't give this series of reviews a dumb, punny name. I thought about "Gone Apey" but that was too lame even for me. "Apeshit" was just too edgy and insinuated every movie we'd talk about would be garbage. "Go Bananas" is just childish. So this one just doesn't have a name? I guess?

"My cage beds are made with rich,
corinthian leather!"

Anywho. We've seen astronauts crash land on an unknown planet only to discover they had time-traveled to a dystopian future in Planet of the Apes. The sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes wrapped up the story for certain characters as we saw the planet Earth destroyed by a cataclysmic explosion of a cobalt-cased nuclear bomb. What is next? Well... what if not everyone who was on the planet died? What if... there we some "escapees" shall we say? Now, we follow their journey! This is 1971's Escape from the Planet of the Apes. A movie that teaches us that stories ending doesn't mean shit if we can just take some characters who didn't die on screen and start telling a radically different story, diverting from the previous story's ending and creating a new line of stories altogether! Whew... I just rattled that off of my head; what did you do with your day? So Planet of the Apes is a stellar film, even to this day. Beneath, to be pun-tastic, fell "beneath" my expectations, but ultimately was still enjoyable. Will Escape rebound and start pulling in my interest again? Well... let's find out...

Escaping Earth prior to its destruction at the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the chimpanzees Cornelius (The returning Roddy McDowall), Zira (Kim Hunter), and Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo) salvage and repair Taylor's spaceship from their timeline. The shock wave of Earth's destruction sends the ship through a time warp that brings the apes to 1973 Earth. Most specifically, the Pacific coast of the United States. Kind of weird, this whole temporal spaceflight dilemma these characters seem to be having. It seems that there's only two endpoints in this broken time-flow. It'll dump people from the 1970's into the ape-ridden future of 3970's... or it'll take talking apes who rule our planet and dump them in the 1970's, America's most cocaine-and-sexually-experimental era. Fasten your seatbelts, kids!

"Hey Cornelius, nice monkey suit!"
"... wise ass..."

The apes are transported to the Los Angeles Zoo, under the observation of two friendly scientists, Dr. Stephanie Branton (Natalie Trundy) and Dr. Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman). During their stay there, Dr. Milo is killed by a zoo gorilla in a ruckus. A Presidential Commission is formed to investigate the return of Taylor's spaceship and its inhabitants. During their interrogation, Cornelius and Zira deny knowing Taylor (played in the first two films of course by Charlton Heston, though he is absent here). They reveal, however, that they came from the future and escaped Earth when a war broke out. They are welcomed as guests of the government. The apes secretly explain to Stephanie and Lewis how humans are treated in the future, and tell them about Earth's destruction. The scientists are shocked but still sympathetic, and advise the couple to keep this information secret until they can gauge the potential reaction of their hosts. Yeah, you know, don't let two sentient talking apes divulge secrets that would alter the course of time. Why would Cornelius and Zira want to do that? They'd retroactively wipe their future out. But it would save the human race! Conundrums, conundrums.

"Am I hallucinating? Three talking apes?"
"I guess we can call your pharmaceutical study
a colossal failure."

Lavished with gifts and media attention the likes of which even the Kardashians would get sick of, the apes become celebrities. They come to the attention of the President's Science Advisor Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden), who discovers Zira is pregnant. Fearing for the future of the human race, Hasslein insists that he simply wants to know how apes became dominant over men. Cornelius reveals that the human race will cause its own downfall and that Earth's destruction is caused by a weapon made by humans. Zira explains that the gorillas started the war, but the chimpanzees had nothing to do with it. Hasslein suspects that the apes are not speaking the whole truth. What he's basing that on, I have no idea. During the original hearing, Zira accidentally reveals that she used to dissect humans. THAT cannot bode well for her or Cornelius. Hasslein orders Lewis to administer a truth serum to her while Cornelius is confined elsewhere. As a result of the serum, Hasslein learns details about Zira's experimentation on humans along with her knowledge of Taylor. Ope, I guess that cat's out of the bag on that one.

Zira joins Cornelius in confinement while Hasslein takes his findings to the President, who reluctantly abides by the council's ruling to have her pregnancy be terminated and that both apes be sterilized. Oh... JOLLY this movie took a turn. In their chambers, Zira and Cornelius fear for their lives. When an orderly arrives to offer the apes food, his jokes about their unborn child make Cornelius lose his temper. He knocks the orderly to the floor, before escaping with Zira. It turns out Cornelius mistakenly forgot the feats of his own strength, as they assume the orderly is merely knocked out, but he is actually dead. Hasslein uses the tragedy in support of his claim that the apes are a threat. He calls for their execution, but is ordered by the President to bring them in alive, unwilling to endorse capital punishment until due process has been served. 

This movie seriously skipped a beat with the
whole "NASA sends monkeys into space" thing.
I mean think of the tagline: NASA once sent chimps
into space, but now SPACE has sent chimps BACK!

Branton and Dixon help the apes escape, taking them to a circus run by Señor Armando (Ricardo Montalban), where an ape named Heloise has just given birth. Zira gives birth to a son and names him Milo, in honor of their deceased friend. Knowing that Zira's labor was imminent, Hasslein orders a search of all circuses and zoos, and Armando insists the apes leave for their safety. Lewis arranges for the apes to hide out the Los Angeles harbor's shipyard for a while. He gives Cornelius a pistol as the couple does not want to be taken alive. Tracking the apes to the shipping yard, in a radically Shakespearean way to close out this opus, Hasslein shoots and mortally wounds Zira and then KILLS THE INFANT she is holding like a true douchebag. Cornelius shoots down Hasslein, and then dies at the hands of a sniper perched over the shipping yard. Zira tosses the dead baby over the side and crawls to die with her husband, witnessed by a grieving Lewis and Stephanie. However, it is later revealed that Zira switched babies with Heloise before leaving the circus... and Armando is aware of this and prepares to leave for Florida. Milo then begins to talk. Roll credits.

What did we learn today? Escape from the Planet of the Apes had a lot going for it, with a brilliant first entry in the series followed by Beneath which took the story in wayward directions. But Beneath ended the story pretty much with the destruction of the whole of Earth. Escape did a tricky-yet-wise thing by re-routing the story now to follow escapees from off-screen of Beneath. Now it's branched out and developed into a story worthy of future sequels! Besides, anything that brings back Roddy McDowall for more performances is something I can get behind. I also liked the inclusion of Ricardo Montalban as Armando, the zookeeper. He's also one of my favorite actors, known for playing Khan originally in the Star Trek franchise. I also loved the story that like talking apes become celebrities but it is also ultimately their downfall, as certain members of society distrust them to the point they hassle and disgrace them into hiding as possible bringers of the collapse of modern society. Cornelius and Zira weren't wanting to take over the Earth, they were only looking to take refuge somewhere away from their dying planet. I like that twist on the story.

Oh God, APE love. *Gag*

The only problem? It's SO goddamn boring! I'm sorry, but Escape from the Planet of the Apes tells a good story in the most boring of manners. There's hardly any action, it's a lot of un-gripping dialogue scenes that unfold slowly over time. It's only a ninety-minute movie but it sure felt like two hours. Probably longer, I only watched it for the first time a week ago. By the time the ending rolled around and the shootout occurs, I was so taken aback 1) for what was happening but 2) that something was actually happening. I zoned out in the second half of the movie because my brain couldn't focus on listening for story details anymore. This movie definitely is missing some action beats. Like a lot of them. Today's youth or moviegoers may have trouble sitting through this one. It also unfortunately as far as I've read ahead marks the final appearance of Kim Hunter and her character Zira, you know, being shot dead and all. I don't think Zira makes appearances in future stories, but she'll be a character sorely missed.

To sum up, Escape from the Planet of the Apes is a noteworthy follow-up to Beneath because of the ideas it has for telling its own story, but its execution is so dull and not very gripping. Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter of course command the entire screen every time they're on, but everybody else lacks that power and average viewers will tend to zone out. I know I did, here and there. I had to look up some plot details I missed afterwards when the movie's rapid conclusion occurred and I still had questions. Again, I'd say if you truly want to know what happens to Cornelius and Zira since they were hardly in Beneath and died off-screen, supposedly, you can watch Escape. Otherwise I'd say hold off. It's one that, to me, is ultimately "meh".