Escape From The Planet Of The Apes

Title: Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (12)

Year: 1971

Running Time: 98 minutes

Director: Don Taylor

Cast: Roddy McDowall (Cornelius), Kim Hunter (Zira), Bradford Dillman (Dr. Lewis Dixon) Notes: None.

Rating: 8

Thoughts:   The world is shocked when a spaceship is found containing three apes. They go on to become very popular although one man believes them to be a threat to the human race.

With the world destroyed in the last seconds of the previous film, this sees three of the chimpanzees having made the reverse journey of the two space trips shown in the other two films, that is back in time to modern-day Earth.

For some reason, they play it for laughs to begin with, with Bilko-style army brass shocked to see apes, all fuelled by the fact that the ape astronauts don't speak initially.

The two apes that survive the early scenes are played well, as they discover the good and bad of earth. But the laughs begin to fade as they find a darker earth, their roles a sort of reverse of Taylor from the first film.

It's all fine as a stand alone but there are some series issues. Firstly how did the apes, who have limited technology, manage to repair Taylor's ship? Actually, how did they even raise it from the bottom of the lake? (although the limits to their technology in the first film were due to budget constraints so strayed from the original book).

Secondly, they reference the scrolls, in so much as they tell of the apes taking control from humans, yet in earlier films we were told the scrolls specifically stated that man couldn't speak.

Take this outside of the franchise, and this is a good film. It explores ideas around prejudice very well and slowly builds into something quite tense.

Once the bumbling army officers are aside, and some cliched roles discarded, this turns into a mild thriller that turns into something much more serious. It also plants the seed for the films that follow.