Escape From The Planet Of The Apes

The Great [esc]Ape

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes
USA 1971
Directed by Don Taylor
20TH Century Fox
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Yeah, there’s an ending spoiler on this one too. Sorry. 

So the first sequel to the original film, Beneath The Planet Of The Apes (reviewed by me here), was a guaranteed franchise ender... or so the film makers thought. What with them blowing up the entire world at the climax and all. What they hadn’t banked on, I guess, was that (terrible or not) the second film was a roaring success with the general public and a sequel was required. So how do you go about fixing that?

Well, quite creatively, as it happens.

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes is, for my money, the very best of the original sequels (just slightly better than then next movie in the series, which is also quite excellent). There was no way that the storyline could be continued any further forward in the future so the writers took the other direction and sent three apes, Cornelius, Zira and a character called Milo, back in time. This was Roddy McDowell’s second time playing Cornelius after having to stand out of the last film due to directing commitments (having somebody else copying his delivery in the role) and Kim Hunter’s third and final performance as Zira.

The film opens strongly with a brilliant sequence that would have been a whole lot stronger if people didn’t know this was supposed to be a Planet Of The Apes movie but... how do you get an audience to go to a movie without telling them what it is? So the really nice thing about the opening is that it starts off with a shot of a beach not dissimilar to the one on which Charlton Heston has his big, final moment in the original movie. It keys into the expectations of the paying customers that they are watching a scene about to unfold in Earth’s far future... like the previous two movies. Then the film nicely crashes that expectation when we realise we’ve got the noisy uproar of a helicopter on the soundtrack before seeing it come out from behind a cliff. We are in contemporary times, it seems. Well not really because the film was released in 1971 and I believe the time frame in which the film is set is two years later so, to offer up a cliche, we are in the 'near future'.

A space ship which we all recognise from the first two films is floating in the sea near the beach and the military have recovery operations well in hand... although I still don’t see how the insides of the craft as seen in the first film can even be possible, bearing in mind that the scale of the outside of the ship looks incredibly small in comparison and certainly not enough for one, let alone three passengers. As the astronauts, in full spacesuits, emerge from the capsule they are lined up on the beach and a military emissary from the US government offers his hand in friendship. It’s then that all the humans on the beach find out, by way of a sting, what we in the audience presumably knew all along... bearing in mind the title of the movie. The three apes, Cornelius, Zira and Milo, are revealed inside the space suits and Jerry Goldsmith’s awesome main title music kicks in as we see the apes escorted by the military as the credits play out.

It’s a bold move for the writing team as they try and do a reversal of the 'fish out of water' aspect of the original apes film, this time with the apes being treated as dumb and locked up... until they finally reveal their powers of speech and make obvious their already apparent intellect. It does so, however, with a lot of humour which is undercut by a quiet sense of menace as the human “bad guy” of the story, Dr. Hasslein, played by Eric Braeden (a character which is mentioned by both sets of humans in the previous two movies) tries to find out the facts about the apes' future civilisation that they are keeping to themselves while the 'good' Doctors Dixon and Brantan, played by Bradford Dillman and Natalie Trundy, try to make sure the apes are protected and not exploited, or worse, at the hands of contemporary, human society. Interestingly, like McDowell, Natalie Trundy was in four of the five original apes movies (all the sequels) but she played both apes and humans in different movies.

The film makes a lot of the natural comedy hijinks which ensue when, for example, the apes dress themselves in front of the unknowing humans and, when being presented with three oranges, set the table with plates and use knives and forks. Other comedy moments come from Zira outwitting all the ‘pet psychiatrist’s’ intelligence tests in a few minutes, leading into her solving a way to reach the banana which is being dangled for her as a reward. When she just sits on the steps and ignores the food offered, she becomes annoyed by her captors’ lack of ability to understand why she is leaving the morsel and exasperatingly shouts at them... “Because I loathe bananas!” The effect of the apes first words in the presence of humans is priceless and a nice comical counterpoint to Heston’s own speech revelation, “Take your hands off me you damn, dirty ape!” of the first movie.

The film plays the comedy route for quite a while with the apes becoming celebrity figures and using their reactions to the segments of human society they are exposed to in a critical, satirical  and often truthful way... such as Cornelius’ shock at the exploited barbarism of a boxing match or Zira’s strong, guest speech on the liberation of women. There’s nothing particularly innovative in the movie but it is immensely entertaining and a lot frothier than any of the other entries in the series. That being said, when Dr. Hasslein gets the now pregnant Zira drunk on “grapejuice plus” aka champagne, he begins to uncover the truth about life in the future and aims to get more information.

Its then that the film’s dark heart comes into play and the last act of the movie is much bleaker and distressing in tone. Under sodium pentathol, Zira spills all the beans about dissecting humans, using them for target practice and the war which destroys the planet... which has the government running scared. Meanwhile, the back story that Cornelius gives of apekind’s rise to humanity is, frankly preposterous in terms of continuity of the series. In the first film, set a very short time after the previous and, again, hardly any time at all in terms of ape chronology, from this installment, it’s made clear that the apes mostly know nothing at all of their evolution from man. What limited knowledge there is in that direction is kept secret and repressed by such officials as Dr. Zaius. So when Cornelius starts telling the story of the day the talking ape Aldo stood up to his human masters and said “No”... it’s a great story. However, when he says te day is celebrated by all ape kind it makes no sense because, frankly, the apes of the future depicted in the first and second installments have absolutely no idea that mankind was ever a thinking, intelligent animal.

However, the consequences of Zira’s revelations about ape/human interaction in her time and the ultimate destruction of Earth is what the last part of the film are about. It’s ordered that Zira’s pregnancy is to be officially terminated by the government and the apes sterilised. Meanwhile, Cornelius accidentally kills one of their captors and so the manhunt... err... ape hunt begins. Doctors Dixon and Brantan hide Cornelius, Zira and their new young son named after the doctor who landed with them (and who didn’t survive to this point in the film) in the circus with their friend Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! Sorry, I meant their friend Armando, played by Ricardo Montalban. However, it’s not long before our family of three have to move out again, to an abandoned ship in a disused harbour.

And then the bleakness engulfs the movie with a grim finale full of death which is actually extraordinarily downbeat. It’s another great ending but it’s the post finale scene back at the circus with Armando which really hits home. I’m pretty sure I saw this in a cinema as a double bill with the next film in the series at some point in my childhood and the end was certainly one which stays with you. Armando and the circus are preparing to move on to the next location and we see the young ape who was the offspring of another ape in the circus... but it’s wearing the amulet that Armando gave Zira and Cornelius’ son. We realise that Zira pulled a switch with the child, before leaving the circus, leaving Armando with the care of her offspring This is made more implicit as the ape starts yelling “Mama. Mama. Mama” over again as the film finishes. The delivery of it and the way it’s treated in the sound design, even when backed up with a crude visual loop of a real young chimpanzee mouthing the line, is quite chilling and the writers and producers were obviously not thinking they were going to make the same mistake as last time... leaving a pretty big sequel thread hanging for the scriptwriters to tug on next time around.

The film is entertaining but, for the most part, not very innovative in either its content or in terms of the 'work a day' practical nature of the competent but not overly creative cinematography. It zooms along though and it also has what is a classic and extremely fun Jerry Goldsmith score. The composer skillfully does his thing and delivers a score which is completely different to what he was doing in the first movie but, at the same time, keeping the orchestration within the same basic arena as the musical syntax he developed for that first outing and which was, it could be argued, supported stylistically, somewhat, by Leonard Rosenman’s score for the second. It also has some nice sequences where the composer pitches a very strong, jaunty melody line which is not unlike something he might have composed for the Flint movies and throws in kettle drums and sitars all playing together in the mix. It’s quite a phenomenal set of cues. My one criticism of this particular movie score... and it’s very rare that I would ever criticise the great Jerry... is that there seems to be room for a lot more in the movie. Goldsmith was a master of working out where music should and shouldn’t go and this score has around a half an hour of music for the whole 98 minute movie... which is fine. However, watching the movie again, I felt it was devoid of some good sequences which would have been lifted a little more by having some scoring in them... it would have been nice to hear what the composer would have done with certain situations. Still, Jerry knows best and it is what it is... a very enjoyable score absolutely on a level with the longer score he composed for the first movie. It doesn’t really break any new ground but it is appropriate to the film that’s been made.

And that is pretty much it. Although it lacks a certain panache I thought the first movie had in spades, it still easily the best of the Ape sequels and it wouldn’t take long before the writers would be tugging on those deliberately left sequel threads and bringing out another, very interesting entry in the series. So watch this space for my review of Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes. Coming soon to a review blog near you.

Planet Of The Apes at NUTS4R2

Planet Of The Apes 

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes

Planet Of The Apes TV Show (live action) - to be reviewed

Time Of The Apes - to be reviewed

Planet Of The Apes (Tim Burton)

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes  

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

War Of The Planet Of The Apes

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes

Simians And Serialism - A History and Analysis of 

Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Planet Of The Apes 

Mad Max - Beyond Thunderdome

Thunder Woman

Mad Max - Beyond Thunderdome
Australia 1985
Directed by George Miller & George Ogilvie
MGM Blu Ray Region B

So I finally watched the last movie in the original Mad Max trilogy... but this seemed like something completely different to what had gone before and, frankly, didn't seem nearly as sympathetic to the style of the previous two movies as it perhaps might have been. Turns out there’s a couple of good reasons for this which I was unaware of when I was watching this thing.

The first being that this was initially conceived as the story of a group of children in a post apocalyptic environment who would be found by an adult... which is pretty much the second half of the movie as it currently is. It wasn’t until a later stage of the script writing, however, that it was decided that the adult who finds them would turn out to be Mel Gibson’s, somehow strangely iconic, Mad Max character. So the pitch of the original story was never, in its original version, intended to follow on from the style of the first two films or even have Max in it... until it later took that direction.

Secondly, the producer of the first two films and friend of George Miller, Byron Kennedy, died in a helicopter crash scouting locations for this one. I guess this obviously had an effect on Miller and so he only handled the action scenes in this movie (and I can hazard a guess as to exactly which big sequence he did get involved with but I’ll get to that a little later)... the bulk of the film being directed by George Ogilvie.

Now, I don’t know for sure whether the film would have turned out radically different in style had Miller been directing the whole thing but, what I do know is that it noticeably doesn’t match the feel of the first two. Maybe because there was a bigger budget with American money in it... I don’t know... but it feels a heck of a lot more polished and, strangely and perhaps because of it, feels the most dated of the three films. You can tell just by looking at this one which decade of cinematic history it comes from.

The film feels different from it’s predecessors straight away because, as a standard credit roll starts, we have the first of two Tina Turner songs written for the film playing over these credits... which completely shifts the tone of this installment and pushes it into 'magical 1980s land' straight away... I’m surprised there wasn’t a load of break dancing inserted into this film somewhere, too.

After the credits we have another thing which took me out of the whole Mad Max feel of the saga... sweeping panoramic helicopter/plane POV style shots... this just seems totally out of place here. This is then followed by what is probably the strongest sequence of the movie, bar the final, obligatory chase scene and it’s a little scene of a vehicle being driven by camels followed by a pilot and his son disabling the driver with a dropped rock, stealing the vehicle and then heading into one of the two main locations of this film, Bartertown... where the Thunderdome of the title resides. When the driver of the camel towed vehicle wakes up he is revealed as Mel Gibson’s Max and he goes to the post apocalyptic town in search of the people who took his car.

Max now looks completely like the “star” version of Mel Gibson we all know and recognise but they’ve still kept certain elements of his look relating to injuries received in previous installments... they’ve also gone and given him the “full Elsa Lanchester” make over when it comes to a less toned down version of the double white hair streak in this one... as opposed to the single streak he had in the second movie. Gibson also carries a mauser for a few shots, which would have added greatly  to the whole iconic look of the character if he'd kept it all the way through but... this leaves his possession pretty early in the film. Which is a shame, really, because it’s a definite wink to Westerns like The Great Silence, which I suspect Miller would probably, judging from his directorial output in the trilogy, have been a big fan of.

Bartertown is a tough place to get into and looks vaguely like it belongs in a Conan movie but Max manages to cut a deal with the main leader of the town, Auntie (played by Tina Turner), so that he can get all the transport and gasoline he wants in return for killing half of a two man team that make up, together, the more powerful leader (although not in name) of Bartertown. The two in question are the midget Master (who runs the power in the community) and the giant henchman whose back he rides, Blaster (the two together make up... Master Blaster... this film is so 1980s).

Tina Turner is pretty iconic in herself, thanks to her costume, which hastwo  additional series’ of hoops circling through each ear.What this means is that, every time you see her looking straight on at the camera, the two sets of hoops on either side of her face form these striking, vertical patterns which are totally reminiscent of the headdress of an Egyptian queen or Pharaoh... which I thought was a nice touch with the costuming carrying an almost subconscious echo of her status as the official leader of Bartertown.

Max’s deal ultimately leads to a big fight scene, halfway through the movie, which may have looked good in the 1980s but really is just two geezahs in a big dome/cage (sorry... I meant the Thunderdome) trying to catch, punch, cut and mutilate each other while hanging from big bungee wires... this is so camp and laughable it’s unbelievable and I can’t imagine Gibson sitting still for this kind of thing these days but... hey... the 1980s.

All well and good but when Max holds back from killing Blaster, once he sees his face and understands a basic home truth about him, Max is thrown out of Bartertown into the desert with no food or water, to die... wearing something which largely resembles the exact same head masks that the Autons used in certain scenes of Doctor Who: Terror Of The Autons actually (reviewed here) ... so I’m guessing it must be a traditional mask design which has passed me by and not hit my radar anytime over my life (either that or George Miller is a closet Doctor Who fan).

And then the story goes somewhere completely different and this is another tonal jump for the saga because, in the second film which ties into the first, everybody is after the gasoline as a resource they need to survive and, although that particular carrot still holds true in this one... in this film it’s just a secondary driver to a more complex plot. That is to say, it’s not a single “do this to get that” mission kind of story... it goes all over the place. So when Max is rescued by a bunch of children who think he is the second coming, in the next half of the movie, the story almost splits into two separate things which the writers then try and tie back up in the end with an almost “tacked on” sequence where Max has to take a small group of them back to Thunderdome and then escape all over again, this time with various custom vehicles in hot pursuit. So the single mindedness and purity of the first two installments is jettisoned for something which is overly complicated and flashy... at least comparitively, in terms of being a Mad Max movie. It’s also a whole sequence of film which has a heck of a lot in common, both visually as well as in terms of the attitude of the content, with The Lost Boys from J. M Barrie’s famous story Peter Pan. I can’t help remembering an interview which Tina Turner gave at the time this movie was released. I probably saw this interview on something like Film '85 (as it would have been then) and Ms. Turner was asked what it was like working with Mel Gibson. I think the answer at the time was something along the lines of “Mel Gibson is a little boy/captures his inner child” etc and now, having seen the film, I wonder if she was latching onto the bizarre thematic element of the second half of the movie when she was contemplating her answer.

It’s during the last 20 minutes that the film finally starts looking, and feeling, like a Mad Max film again.... with the inevitable chase sequence involving a load of custom, weaponised and armoured cars chasing Max and whoever he happens to be with, this time escaping in a train which suddenly seems to have a bizarre track stretching out into the desert. I’ve got no idea what’s going on here or why this track would even exist but I’m not going to let logic get in the way when this is the only half decent part of the movie. I’m guessing, and it is only a guess so please let me know if I’m completely wrong here, that this is the sequence of the film which is well and truly directed by George Miller. The stunts and high speed shenanigans are reminiscent of the similar scenes in both Mad Max (reviewed here) and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (reviewed here) and the ending to the chase is typical in that it leaves Max more or less exactly where the endings of the previous two had left him... a lone cowboy wandering the prairie plains to fend for himself and be a force of righteousness in a lawless land. Actually, as if the Western metaphors aren’t enough in this one, there’s even a scene in the first half of the movie, in the Thunderdome, where Max is announced as... The Man With No Name... so the writers of this are still, very much, wearing their influences on their sleeve, it seems.

One other thing that keeps the tone of the movie straying too far into proper Mad Max territory is a change of composer. This one isn’t scored by Brian May as the previous two were and, of course, it therefore has a different feel. This one is, in fact, scored by Maurice Jarre and it’s very hit and miss, at least in the sound mix in the movie, but contains some nice “metal percussion” elements and it’s quite appropriate to the images it’s supporting... it just feels a little too polished, again, for a Mad Max production but, definitely, works for what it was written for... so that’s a good thing, at least.

And that’s about as far as I’m riding with this one. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome really didn’t feel like it was a Mad Max movie at all for most of it’s running time and certain scenes, like the silly bungee jump fight scene, really shouldn’t be seen on anything outside of old TV episodes of It’s A Knockout, as far as I’m concerned. A competently put together movie, for the most part, but nothing too special and certainly not up to the level of the first two in the series. The fourth installment, sans Gibson in the title role, hits British cinemas in less than a week, at time of writing, and from the trailers, it looks closer in tone to the spirit of the first two movies while, at the same time, also looking terrifically overpolished for something to sit comfortably, shoulder to shoulder, with any of the movies in the original trilogy. Still, time will tell on that and you can be sure I’ll be reviewing it on here as soon as I’ve seen it. Please come back and have a read... if you’ve got a few minutes.

Mad Max @ NUTS4R2

Mad Max

Mad Max 2 - The Road Warrior

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

Mad Max: Fury Road

Unfriended

Skype Casting

Unfriended (aka Cybernatural)

2014  Russia/USA/Poland/Germany/Puerto Rico

Directed by Levan Gabriadze 

UK cinema release print.

Warning: Possible slight spoiler in the third paragraph, 

depending on how well you know my genre definitions.

So this is a film I saw the trailer to at the cinema a few weeks back but which wasn’t really tempting me to take the plunge, to be honest. Also weighing against it was the fact that it looked like it was another teen slasher movie and they really are not my favourite genre, often mistaken by many as passing for horror films. However, I then started reading some enthusiastic word-of-mouth on Twitter and so, although I didn’t think I was really the intended audience for this picture, I decided to give it a go anyway. I have to say that, if the movie had been released over here with the first (of two) titles it was released with in the USA, Cybernatural, then I would definitely not have bothered... much as I love the occasional pun, that’s a real turn-off of a title. So it's definitely congratulations to the marketing team for at least giving the movie a moniker that was halfway appealing (I don’t belong on Facebook but I at least have a concept of “unfriending”... it’s like “unfollowing on Twitter, right?).

The film is almost, but not quite, unique in that the whole of the running time, apart from one shot I won’t shout out to here, takes place on the computer screen of one of seven characters... six of whom are friends and the seventh of whom... well... isn’t. Most of the action takes place as a Skype conference call with an unwanted person who is, in reality, controlling the situation and manipulating the other characters... and this is why I say this concept is not entirely unique. There’s a short film in part of the movie V/H/S (reviewed here) which plays with the same medium, although it uses it for a slightly different end result than what the final solution here turns out to be. That being said, it doesn’t stick to Skype completely and the lead character, Blaire (played by Shelley Hennig and with a character name that may possibly be a deliberate echo of one of the most famous “found footage” movies of all time, The Blair Witch Project), uses all kinds of cyber media to try and find out just what is going on and who is playing an elabourate game of death with her and her friends... including such online tools as internet messenger, facebook and a few others. That is to say, if I had to pick one of the six lead players as the main protagonist, it would be her... not least of all because it’s her screen and her actions we see play out before us. 

The film itself is, actually, a teenage slasher movie but, it turns out, it’s also a film that I would personally class as a horror movie too... and if you know my criteria as to what constitutes a horror movie then I guess that might be considered a spoiler of sorts... but by about half way through the film, if you’re watching carefully, you’ll figure out the exact nature of the “ghost in the machine”, so to speak, due to a logical deconstruction of what’s happening before your eyes.

Now, as I was watching the movie, the most interesting thing I found about it was the technique with which the director had allowed something which is supposed to be set in real time to be able to cut away from everybody at certain points so he can insert different takes, etc... and also allow himself places where he can either cut from one take to another and, in the case of the many “murder/suicide” sequences in the movie, allow himself time to change over to the mechanics of doing a practical effects shot. So there are moments where our main protagonist will fill her screen, accidentally, or on purpose, at different points with other tab views so that the takes of various actors being pieced together can be refreshed or whatever. I found this clever but, ultimately, a bit of a let down because, as I supposed, you could see the wet footprints of this particular technique hidden in the way the action was choreographed. No big deal but dissapointing for a movie which is supposed to be taking place in real time before our very eyes.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I found that the film had been shot in the space of just twelve days with different takes of the actors, all Skyping from separate rooms in a house, and that just a single one of these 'live' long takes of the film’s total running time were used for the final movie. Seriously? I already loved what the actors were doing. Nailing their “really annoying teens you wouldn’t ever want to hang out with” roles quite skillfully but... this was all done as one take? Phenomenal. They must have had a lot of dry run rehearsals I reckon. Still not fully convinced but happy to take them at their word on that, for now.

There are some seriously negative aspects to the movie... annoying teens I have no sympathy for being one of them. There’s also the fact that the film makers have a tendency to put... let’s call it “audio/visual intereference” over certain bits... just like you would normally get over a Skype connection (actually, if I were a head honcho at Skype I’d be dead annoyed at the amount of internet signal drop out shown in this film), even doing this to the Universal logo at the start of the movie. The fact is, though, it won’t take you long to figure out that when this happens, something is soon going to happen to one of the people on one of the Skype screens and the director is using the 'digital interference' to ratchet up the tension and suspense. Now, to be fair, and given the nature of the “slasher/stalker” in this picture, it could be something which also has a basis in the physics of how a particular character works but, ultimately, it’s an emotional tool to squeeze more hysteria from the audience, I think, and the trick kind of wears thin quite quickly... at least it did for me.

That being said, there are also some cool positives to the movie, especially over what you would get in a standard teen slasher picture, which do make it worth a watch. The obvious one being the uncanny and skillful 'Nancy Drew Investigates' tone of Blaire as you see her using all her technical skills to either vanquish their attacker or find out who it really us... which gives the audience a direct link to the mind set and progress of the character in a very visual way which rarely, though sometimes, devolves into backing it all up with explanatory dialogue. A kind of visual opening into a mental link, as it were. That’s pretty neat, actually, and could probably be used to take the action into another kind of place in the inevitable sequel, if the film makers decide to pull on that specific kind of thread. 

Another positive is that the film doesn’t try and cheat you in any way. It has a simple logic to the main premise and identity of the attacker and it sticks to the parameters it’s set up for itself... which is more than can be said for a few horror movies in recent years. The final solution to the mystery of the six friend’s attacker may be seen, by some, as less than credible but, ultimately, it doesn’t try and trick the viewer into another direction half way through. It sticks to its guns and, although I didn’t particularly find the final reveal to be all that interesting (because I love playing whodunnit games), you certainly can’t argue about the ultimate, blink and you almost miss it, last shot reveal. So it all makes sense and that’s a good thing.

Ultimately, the way I feel about this movie is a little like how I felt about Monsters: Dark Continent (reviewed here). It’s a very competently made film with convincing actors and actresses all doing their best to make you believe in what you’re seeing... the downside being, for me personally, that I would never want to be hanging out with any of these people anyway and, therefore, didn't really care all that much if any or all of them got killed. All that being said, however, I do think this movie could score well with teenage audiences and I think this is definitely a franchise spawner if the movie makers wanted to go that way. Horror addicts will probably enjoy it and I certainly would take a look at a sequel myself, if one ever came along. Not a big hitter like It Follows was earlier in the year (my review of that beautiful movie is here) but much more competent than a lot of teen horror in the overcrowded marketplace. If you like these kinds of films then you’ll proabably have a reasonably good time with this one, I reckon.

Monsters - Dark Continent

Continental Drift

Monsters - Dark Continent
2014  UK
Directed by Tom Green
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Slight spoilers in here.

Monsters: Dark Continent is a sequel to the Gareth Edwards movie, Monsters, from a couple of years ago and which I reviewed here and which, like this one, had big, Cthulhu-like monsters as part of its main narrative thrust. It’s not to be confused with the upcoming movie Dark Continents which, I understand, is based on five stories by Cthulhu creator H. P Lovecraft and which, I suspect, may also have Cthulhu-like Monsters in it. Hmmm... so I guess the point I’m making here is... why release this movie with that title if there’s a much more famous, because of the directors involved, movie coming out with more or less the same title a year or so down the road? That makes no sense.

Now, this film can’t have had too much pre-publicity, I’m guessing, because the first I’d heard that they’d actually gone ahead and made a sequel was when I saw this included in the listings for my local cinema this week... and even then I had to look it up to find out that it was a sequel to Monsters (the original director is listed as a producer but I’ve really got no idea how much involvement he had on this one). To make things worse, I went to see this on the first Saturday, early evening, screening of its opening in my local multiplex cinema, a night and time when it should have been packed out, and found that there were only two or three other audience members in there watching it along with me. So, sad to say, I predict that the box office on this film isn’t exactly going to be great... especially since it was released a few weeks earlier in the USA and, as a dedicated Twitter user and follower of people interested in film, I still hadn’t heard of it until it was in the listings for my local cinema a couple of days before I went and saw it. That doesn’t bode well for it.

Which is unfortunate in some ways because, although I wasn’t personally happy with it for reasons I will elaborate, it turned out to be a highly competently made movie with a certain edge to it and, whether I personally liked it or not, it certainly holds the attention of the viewer and you will probably be as gripped by some of the sequences as I was.

The film follows on from the first film only by the inclusion of the titular characters. It’s ten years on and the world is fighting a losing war against the Monsters who have left “the zone”. This film follows a bunch of new recruits in the army who join up and go to the Middle-East to fight the Monsters, which are not evil and are just following their alien nature. However, because the US army have ben bombing hell out of the titular creatures in various areas of that region, they also have to deal with a population of hostile insurgents who would much rather the army were driven from their land than the monsters. When the new recruits are sent on a rescue mission to find some of their unit who didn’t come back from an operation, they are forced to fight their way through hostiles in order to try and locate them and tensions and frustrations soar.

Now, I had three main problems with it and I’ll get those out of the way before I get to the positive stuff.

My first issue is that the film is much more a “horrors of war” kind of story with the monsters acting only as a catalyst and background decoration to the conflict of the stupidity/violence men do to each other... which is kind of an interesting tack but, ultimately, it felt like the film was way too busy pushing the writer’s own political agenda with not enough of the monster focussed mayhem I would have liked to have seen. Sure, there’s a heck of a lot more of the monsters in this movie than their brief appearances in the first but, still, they really were only there as a plot device more than anything else... at least that’s how I felt.

Secondly, none of the main protagonists had my sympathies as people at all... they were all portrayed as, pretty much, young thugs who’d joined the army to have a better life than dealing drugs in their ghetto and the first quarter of an hour where, I believe, the director was trying to get me to identify with these characters, was absolutely doing the opposite of what was required. I didn’t like these people who used harsh language and demonstrated really crude, almost violent, male bonding rituals. They alienated me right from the start. But the flip side of that is, of course, whether the language and attitude of these people are accurate to those of modern, young soldiers or not... the actors were all really great at convincing me these were real people. I might have hated them all but, at least, I could suspend my disbelief to the point where I couldn’t sympathise with them. So... great acting job here by a lot of the people who are in this movie.

The third problem in this is the fact that it’s a conflict movie which does tend to fall back on the crutch of constant, war movie clichés throughout. For example, in the opening montage of the buddies who have “joined up”, the writers and director (not to mention the cast) are working hard to get across the importance of one of these friends returning home from duty by showing him helping his girlfriend give birth and all his friends promising they’ve got his back while they’re on his tour of duty. For anyone who watches these kinds of films, of course, that’s an instant telegraph that something bad is going to happen to this character and, I have to say, I was quite disappointed when exactly that happens and this character is the first of the group to meet his maker in an extended scene while his friends are under fire and trying to save his life. It doesn’t get much more predictable than this.

Other clichés include the group leader and authority figure whose responsibility it is to keep his soldiers safe, losing nearly all of them and then suddenly going a bit ‘Captain Ahab’ about things and getting obsessed by his mission at the cost of his humanity and sanity. Well acted but... nah, seen it all before. And the one about the lone soldier who grows to a state of enlightenment and understanding about things, to a certain extent, because of what he’s been subjected to in his own personal battle and his ability to see the good in his fellow man? There’s that one in there too. But, of course, clichés like these work and I suspect people who haven’t seen a lot of war movies, or that kind of thing, might be sucked into the narrative a whole lot better than I was... so I cant really condemn it for this. It might be old school but it does its job and, it has to be said, it does its job quite effectively.

Everything else about this movie is great. The special effects are cool, the tension and suspense in the combat scenes is almost unbearably intense in certain places and, while not as harrowing as some of the great war films, it can still be a gruelling watch in some moments and the combination of constantly moving, hand held camera combined with some extremely competent editing really pays off for it. Once you can get over the ridiculously low values of the characters, it’s a joy to see a well oiled machine of a movie like this one at the local cinema. It also has an interesting correlation in a “dog fighting sequence”, something I really don’t approve of or condone (we all love dogs, right?) but switched out to be a dog fighting an infant alien, and using that to show us both the changes and commonality in the attitudes of the cultural backdrop of the world depicted in the movie. Nasty to watch but, nevertheless, good stuff to get certain points across in short hand.

And the surprising thing for a movie which is using a lot of “camera reaction” style photography is the fact that it has a very striking and entertaining score by composer Neil Davidge which, alas, is only available as a stupid download. When will record companies get it in their heads that we want these things on CDs please? A download is next to useless to me, frankly. They might as well just put it on vinyl... which is equally useless to me. Such a shame because I actually wanted to buy this score since it is so strong in the context of the movie and sounds like it would be a really great thing to listen to away from the venue it was created for. Such a shame.

All in all, the film is quite gritty and if you are able to sympathise with the main characters, then you should have a really good time at the cinema with it. Even though I can’t relate to characters who seem happy to behave like football hooligans rather than somebody I would personally like to hang out with, it can’t be denied that this is well put together, well acted and is quite compelling... even though it’s also quite predictable and there are not too many surprises in store, to be sure. Its a shame that a movie like this has been released into cinemas at this time of year when it’s going toe to toe with stuff like the new Avengers movie (my review of that one here) which will inevitably suck all the audience away from films like this... it perhaps deserves a better fate than I suspect it might have in store for it. Saying that, though, it’s a good bet it will do reasonably well on DVD and Blu Ray rentals through word of mouth with a young audience, I reckon... so good luck to it and if gritty, gruelling action movies are your thing... you might want to give Monsters: Dark Continent a look.

Mad Max 2 - The Road Warrior

Max Overdrive

Mad Max 2 - The Road Warrior
Australia 1981
Directed by George Miller
MGM Blu Ray Region B

So I finally, after all these years of being told to watch this film because it’s based on the Judge Dredd strip The Cursed Earth, caught up with Mad Max 2. Although, I have to say that, while it may be debateable that certain parts of it have possibly been stylistically informed by The Cursed Earth, this is in no way a steal or homage to the Dredd strip in either its content or intent, as far as I can tell. Excepting, of course, the intent of giving everybody a good time.

Now this film has a curious thing happening on the Blu Ray print I saw of it in that, on the box art (which is the individual sleeve of a three blu ray boxed set), the film is just called The Road Warrior... which is not how I remember it at the time and I think this title was only used in certain American territories where the first film was really not released or not as well known. I remember it as just being called Mad Max 2 and, regardless of what the packaging says here, this is how the actual print on the blu ray itself is titled. Also, I think, years after the fact, it came to be known by the combination title of the two so... that’s what i’ve gone with for the labelling purposes of this blog post.

Regardless of what it’s called, this is both at once a widening of the main character’s scope in terms of story situation while, at the same time, still remaining consistent with the first movie in both budget and attitude. The print of the film used here also lays to rest a question I was puzzling over in the previous film (reviewed here) by explaining the state of the world that Max is living in. It’s apparently not in the original Australian print of the film, although I suspect it’s probably on all home versions, but the film starts off here with a flashback to the events of the last story and then shows us the recent history of the planet... Mad Max 2 and, possibly the first film too, takes place after an unspecified apocalyptic event which leaves the whole world in a state where gangs took over the highways and everyone is after as much fuel as they can get to keep themselves able to travel great distances... presumably to widen their area for scavenging for food and the like.

This narration is provided by an off screen character with a final revelation towards the end as to his identity... although, to be honest, most people will figure out who’s telling the story pretty much as soon as that character is introduced into the main narrative here. It’s a nice touch though and I just hope that the last bit of narration at the end of this one isn’t contradicted, continuity wise, by the events that take place in the third film of the series (I guess I’ll know soon enough).

The opening “back story” all takes place in a 4:3 aspect ratio at the centre of the screen but, when the film starts proper... mid-chase between Max and a pursuing, aggressive gang... it immediately opens out into the 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio which is to be desired for a film of this nature. So within the first five or ten minutes, we have the preciousness and importance of gasoline made clear to us in a much more visual manner and we are also confronted with a slightly changed hero. Mel Gibson’s face is slowly getting less characterless and closer to the star we know now and the movie makers have added a white “Elsa Lanchester” style streak to his hair... possibly, I suspect, as a visual symbol of the character’s mental trauma (if you’ve ever been around someone who’s experienced sudden and overwhelming mental health issues, you might well know what I’m talking about here). He also has a leg brace and a torn sleeve, both of which are shout outs to the wounds he received in the previous installment of the Mad Max saga.

It’s not long, in fact, before we get the iconic image from this film which everybody either remembers or, in my case, was made very aware of at the time in that it kind of pervaded the collective public consciousness and was often referenced in other things... the shot of Gibson standing there on the open desert highway with his gun and his dog. Smooth stuff.

And then the story gets going, such as it is, involving the gang that gave Max so much trouble in the opening chase and a bunch of honest citizens who are protecting a vast complex of fuel and trying to hold their own against the gang that is pretty much inflicting siege conditions on their small community. Max also wants a helping  of their fuel when he is made aware of it by a character played by Bruce Spence, known as the Gyro Captain (simply because he has his own gyro-copter). The two take it in turns getting the drop on each other... like a mini version of the two hander between Toshiro Mifune and Lee Marvin in John Boorman’s Hell In The Pacific, but a bond grows between them and when Max finds himself taken in, so to speak, by the community under threat, he and the giro captain both end up staying to help out... although Max is much more ambivalent in that he doesn’t let black and white morality get in the way of what he wants.

In terms of making a world more to suit the picture, George Miller actually puts more thought into this one and gives extra details and clues as to the environment, even putting filters on the camera for the post-apocalyptic moods of the sky at certain points (something which it looks like he’s gone colour correction crazy with in the new one, if the trailers for the upcoming fourth installment are anything to go by). This all helps, of course, to place the action of the mini war between the gang of thugs and the small community of survivors in a place where it’s easier to suspend any disbelief. As an aside here... the character of the gang leader, who stays masked the whole film, was originally supposed to have been Max’s old friend Goose. His body now burned, he was to have surprisingly survived the events of the original Mad Max to become the villain in this one... although the film-makers changed tack and references were 'mostly' removed from the screenplay.

All in all, this film has a more epic scope and visually it gets quite detailed but, it has to be said, Miller still seems to make the film seem more modest and small rather than epic... although that's really not a bad thing. While there are three or four main action set pieces throughout the movie, including the final celebrated chase scene, it’s still more of a mood piece than an action piece and maintains the grubby look and long shots of static takes and slow moving camera mixed into the shot design to a surprisingly high degree. Miller is still making a 1950s or 1960s American Western here and it really comes through. And he’s still cutting away from most of the really nasty stuff and letting the audience's imagination do its thing... which works better in this one than it did in the first, I think. For example, a killing arrow hit to a dog and another to a raped woman both happen off camera and instead, we are left with reactions to these events to convey the casual horror of their fate.

One of the things I will say about this is that, despite its title and subject matter, I really wouldn’t say that this is a road movie. Oh sure, it takes place on a road at times but mostly, as far as I’m concerned, road movies tend to be a metaphor for a character’s inner journey and little parts of that journey are picked up on the constantly moving scenery from point A to point B... Wim Wenders did a bunch of movies like that, to a certain extent. Mad Max 2 doesn’t really have Max or any of the others going on a specific journey or reaching a state of mind where they are a better person and, since most of the movie is just darting backwards and forwards between, around about three, specific locations... I don’t get a feel for journey from this movie. That’s okay though... it doesn’t have to be.

Brain May’s score for this film is a lot more prominent that in the first one and has a much more epic feel to it than his previous attempt... possibly due to the fact that there just seems to be more of it and that, being that it’s not a wordy film (Mel Gibson himself apparently only has 16 lines in the whole movie), the music is given more room to breathe on the soundtrack when it is used. That being said, there’s a really odd moment when a kid Max has “befriended” has to climb out through the front windscreen of the big tanker Max drives at the end and the sound design goes completely old school... with Brian May’s score suddenly disappearing and instead the sound of a heartbeat takes over and is used to ratchet up the suspense. I really had no idea film-maker’s were still doing this as late as 1981 although, if I remember correctly, a slightly more subtle sound mix moment happens with a heartbeat in certain scenes of Stephen Spielberg’s Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom a few years later... although those particular moments in that film make a lot more sense when you see them in their visual context than the inclusion of this rawer usage of the same kind of thing.

Another weird musical moment comes after the end credits where the music just... keeps on going. It’s noted on the blu ray as being exit music, which is something I generally associate with the epic films that have them such as Ben Hur (reviewed here) and How The West Was Won, which generally go on for a good few minutes after... as opposed to the 30 or so seconds here. So that’s a bit of a puzzler. I’m wondering if maybe this isn’t really exit music at all and more a symptom of something having to be removed for a shortened end credits roll somewhere along the line in the history of the film’s release. Does anybody remember seeing this at the cinema at the time of its initial release and can let me know if, indeed, it did have exit music? I find this kind of trivia interesting.

Anyway, that’s Mad Max 2... a much more accomplished film than Miller’s first stab at the character and it works at its own level, that of an old style Western, very well... it being quite entertaining. It even has a nice little twist reveal of something at the end, to do with the tanker Max is driving, which seems completely obvious in retrospect but which, astonishingly, I didn’t see coming, for once. So the fact that Miller’s script and editing didn’t telegraph this particular thing impressed me a little bit. A great little movie which deservs to be on an all night triple bill with other "hard" classics of the genre like The Ultimate Warrior and Soylent Green as far as I’m concerned. All geared up now, if you’ll pardon the expression, to take a look at the third film in the series soon. A review will, of course, follow shortly after.

Mad Max @ NUTS4R2

Mad Max

Mad Max 2 - The Road Warrior

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

Mad Max: Fury Road

Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs

Bomb Voyage

Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs 
aka Le Spie Vengono Dal Semifreddo
Italy/USA 1966
Directed by Mario Bava
American International Pictures
DVD Region 1

Okay, so I watched the first film in this sequence of two, Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine, very recently and reviewed it here. I didn’t think a heck of a lot of it, to be fair, even though it’s just the kind of oddity of a movie I usually relish. However, I was really looking forward to this sequel because Mario Bava is one of those amazing directors who can make even the blandest of subjects look interesting and inject it with some inspiring photography, imbibing it a vitality all his own. So I couldn’t wait to see what he did with subject matter like Dr. Goldfoot and his ridiculous schemes for world domination. Well... hmmm... to say I was underwhelmed would be a little harsh but, it has to be said, it’s a terrible movie and I was really surprised that Bava had ended up directing it

The history of the movie is somewhat strange in that it turns out that it started off life as a sequel to a film I mentioned, completely by coincidence, in my review of Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine, namely the Goldfinger spoof Due Mafiosi Contro Goldginger, which starred a very famous duo of Italian comedians called Franco & Ciccio and this second Goldfoot film, also, features them quite heavily. However, to help secure funding, the producers got the help of American International Pictures and AIP would only come on board with the backing money if the film was a sequel to their own spy spoof, the aforementioned Doctor Goldfoot. So the plan was to have two completely different cuts of the film, one which would feature more of  Franco & Ciccio (as the Italian cut apparently does... although they’re all over this cut of the movie too) and one version which is a Dr. Goldfoot film... except in the UK where it apparently had to be released as Dr. G And The Girl bombs because a real Doctor named Goldfoot threatened legal action.

The other thing I learned, and I’m sure I knew all this before because I read Tim Lucas’ excellent Mario Bava bible, All The Colours Of The Dark, many years ago... is that Bava really didn’t want to be involved with this movie in any capacity and, frankly, it shows. He was, however, under contract so he... well... he did his best with it I guess.

The film opens up with a bizarre reminder of the first movie as the credits play out with footage from the previous installment with a voice over by Vincent Price, narrating what happened and bringing the audience up to speed. Except, it’s really weird because Price as Dr. Goldfoot is the only actor/character carried over from the first film and so footage of Franco, Ciccio and “singing sensation” Fabian from this movie is also inserted in the recap, to somehow try and fool the audience into thinking their characters were in the first movie too. Um... moving swiftly along...

Franco and Ciccio don’t dominate the movie as they apparently do in the Italian version but, it has to be said, they don’t seem to jell well with a lot of the surrounding story. I can kinda see the appeal of them actually and would love to see them in other stuff but, seriously, I suspect this movie is not a good vehicle for them. Their comedy is very broad, often slapstick in places, and with maybe a dash of the anarchic humour of the Marx Brothers thrown in... served up with a generous helping of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill comedy violence at the drop of a hat. They even throw in a version of the Harpo/Groucho mirror scene from Duck Soup, only performed with Vincent Price and one of these two in this one. So they really should have fit into this movie pretty well in theory... but the reality is it’s a clunker of a film they’re in and, sad to say, that if you think Frankie Avalon’s comedy performance in Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine was particularly bad (I know I did), well, lets just say that Fabian makes Frankie Avalon look like the funniest thing you’ve ever seen.

Price himself is enjoyable enough but, honestly, the tone of his performance in this one is at odds with what he did with the character in the first. He really hams it up even more and spends most of the film actually talking to the audience. He’s kind of brilliant but, honestly, he doesn’t just break the fourth wall, he torches it and then dances on its ashes. I think he probably spends as much time mugging at the audience and filling them in on what’s going on than he does interacting with the other characters, in all honesty. There’s some funny stuff here but, when you pitch it against the plot, it seems kind of out of place and unnecessary. He still has lady robots clad in gold bikinis, who explode when kissing their victims this time around but, they seem to lack even the intelligence of the gals in the first movie and somehow seem to be a bit unsteady on their feet, it seemed to me.

There’s some terrible Bondian references again... such as one of Goldfoot’s personal assistants being called Hard-Job, after Goldfinger’s Odd Job. There’s also an homage to the periscope spy scene in From Russia With Love but... with a ridiculous comedy periscope that extends wherever he wants it to go and follows people around, stretching around corners etc, without anyone seeming to notice it. Honestly awful. Maybe he should have just stuck to using the “magically seeing anywhere he wants to” cam he seemed to have invented in the first film, perhaps?

The film has not much of an excuse for a plot and, if you thought the overlong comedy chase at the end of the first movie was dull and monotonous... well you should try sitting through this one which, pretty much, lasts the entire last third of the movie and which is equally less than entertaining, devolving into a fight with fire extinguishers on an airplane.

Ultimately, I was expecting to see a lot of Mario Bava’s perfectly framed photography and trademark bright colours but, while there certainly is some in this movie at some points, I found myself wondering if Bava was even on the set half the time because... some of it looked like it had been directed by somebody else. I feel sorry for Bava having to direct this rubbish under contract and, looking at other reviews of this movie, I think it’s generally agreed that this is the worst film he ever put his hand to... something I didn’t know when I started watching this monstrosity.

There’s not much more to say about this. Lallo Gorri scored the Italian version of this film and I would certainly like to see that version and definitely hear his score. This American version of the film is scored, once again, by Les Baxter and I have to say that I liked this score a lot more than the one he did for the first movie. It’s a lot jazzier and bolder than that one, I think, and it reminded me a lot more of what other American composers were doing in spoof spy films at the time... which is honestly not a bad way to go with it.

One last thing. There’s an uncredited actor in this called George Wang who plays one of Goldfoot’s assistants. All the way through this I recognised him but couldn’t quite put a finger on where I’d seen him before. Turns out he’s the Chinese guy who gets killed by Ursula Andress with her bullet shooting bikini at the start of The 10th Victim (reviewed here) and he’s got quite a distinctive face. I also found out he died just a couple of weeks before I saw this film... which is kinda sad since he’s only just properly appeared on my radar. Apparently he used to turn up in a lot of spaghetti westerns also... so I’ll look forward to a bit of Wang spotting now as I watch more movies.

Dr. Goldfoot And The Girls Bombs is the weaker of two very bad movies. There’s a lot of potential entertainment value, I feel, in movies with villains who have ridiculous names and even more ridiculous plots for taking over the world but, alas, and much to my surprise, neither of the Dr. Goldfoot movies live up to that promise. I am, however, happy to have seen them because that particular box tick was a long time coming. If you are a fan of Vincent Price then it’s probably worth a watch. If, though, like me, you’re partial to a bit of Mario Bava, well... you might not like what you find here.

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes

Subterranean Apesick Blues

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes
USA 1970
Directed by Ted Post
20th Century Fox 
Blu Ray Region B

Warning: I need to talk about the ending of this 
movie so consider yourself warned for spoilers.

So two years after the awesome Planet Of The Apes (reviewed here) we got the first of the sequels which was, I have to say, somewhat less awesome. Of the five original Apes movies, I’ve always thought they made three really great ones and two clunkers. My least favourite of the bunch being the final of the five, Battle For The Planet Of The Apes, and this one running it a close second for worst Apes film ever, Beneath The Planet Of The Apes.

I didn’t know this the first time I ever saw this movie but there are some good reasons why this one is but a pale shadow of the former installment. For starters, the previous movie’s star, Charlton Heston, reportedly did not want to be in this one and so cut a deal where he was promised that he’d be working for only two weeks on the film... which is why he is not the lead character in this, instead appearing only at the start of the movie and then returning for his “final solution” of an ending to the story. He donated his paycheck on this one to a charity.

Another factor in this film’s lack of oomph must also be to do with the fact that, because of severe financial problems 20th Century Fox were suffering through at the time due to the box office failure of big projects like Hello, Dolly and Tora! Tora! Tora!, the budget was reportedly slashed late in the day from five million dollars to two and a half million dollars. That can’t have helped morale and I believe the decision to get Ted Post in as the director on this one was largely due to his experience in shooting a lot of television and dealing with low budgets. This kinda makes sense but one wonders, in hindsight, if the company would have been so quick to slash the funding if they’d have known the longevity of the franchise which, as you probably know, is still running to this day.

The main factor for me though, and I don’t know who made this decision, is that it’s not had any input from one of the key developers of the first movie, Rod Serling, who gave us that marvellous twist ending (just like he would have written for one of his Twilight Zone episodes) and who was a meticulous writer with a good attention to detail, in my opinion.* I think this film in particular suffers from not having him on board but... I can’t just blame that either because, as far as I remember, he wasn’t involved in any of the other sequels either... and some of those were great.

The film actually starts, pre-credits and then throughout the opening of the movie, with a cut down version of the last few scenes of the original film, ending with a slightly censored version of Taylor’s final outburst before moving onto the apes and then the new lead. Interestingly, of the three main apes who feature in the flashback scenes at the start of the film - Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans - only Evans and Hunter reprised their roles as Zira and Dr. Zaius for this second movie. Roddy McDowell was busy directing a film in Scotland at the time and so the role of Cornelius this time around, asides from those opening revisited scenes, is played by David Watson, finding himself in the unfortunate position of having to... um... ape McDowell’s mannerisms.

So, instead of our main man Charlton in the lead role as Taylor, we have Heston look-alike James Franciscus, taking over as crashed astronaut Brent, sent to rescue Heston and his buddies. We don’t see the crash, or at least an expressive camera movement like in the first movie, presumably due to the budgetary restraints. Instead we have a broken up ship on desert land... which makes you wonder how Brent survives the crash, to be honest. In Planet Of The Apes, Taylor and company crash land on water but the debris in Beneath The Planet Of The Apes shows a cracked open spaceship. After burying his fellow crew members, Brent stumbles across Linda Harrison reprising her role as Taylor’s love interest, the silent Nova. After spying Taylor’s dog tags around her neck, something which wasn’t established at all in the first movie, we get more of Taylor’s story in the mind of Nova as Brent tries to establish communication. We see Heston and Harrison surviving weird walls of fire and then... Taylor falls through a solid mountain in a special effect worthy of something with even more of it’s budget slashed than this movie apparently was. Seriously people... lets not go there. It would be an understatement to say that most of the effects in this film are... just not that special.

Nova takes Brent to meet Cornelius and Zira in a sequence which has none of the punch of Taylor’s first meeting with the titular apes and after that we get a load of scenes involving hiding Brent away from prying eyes in Cornelius and Zira’s pantry, and lots of humourous dialogue and action which is a little bit over the top and more appropriate for a bedroom farce in some places. While this kind of writing and performance works well in the next film in the series, if memory serves, it really undermines the gravitas of the situations the main protagonist finds himself in here, it has to be said. There’s also lots of captured, escaped, captured, escaped to-ing and fro-ing which seems to me, to be honest, to just be padding to keep the budget of the film down.

It seems the writers have also toned down Maurice Evans’ Zaius character substantially from the first film. Zira and Cornelius should either be dead or in jail but, instead, they are married now... even though the film can only have taken place a week or so at most since the first movie (must have been a hasty criminal trial followed by a quick wedding). Interestingly enough, when Heston reacts to Zaius at the end of the movie, calling him a “bloody bastard”, it grates in a way that it wouldn’t have in the first film. It’s like the character has changed but Taylor is still acting towards him like he would have in the first movie... I believe there were a lot of script rewrites on this one.

Technically the film is not very good and seems to want to solve everything with dodgy short cuts. I’ve already mentioned the not so special effects (don’t even get me started on those crude lightning forks) but you also have stuff like, for instance, the sauna scenes. Dr. Zaius and other apes are seen talking in a sauna and there is a small amount of steam in the room. Now I know those ape costumes were hot but, I’m pretty sure that whenever they cut to a close up of the apes talking, the steam has just been superimposed on over the shot. It just doesn’t look right. I’m guessing they used steam for the master shots but, when it came time to shoot the close ups, they just turned the steam off because it was playing havoc with the actors and the make up. That’s what I think, anyway, and there seems to be an air of cheapness about the whole production, it has to be said. Which is a shame.

Where the film really loses it for me, however, is when Brent and Nova stumble upon the buried remains of our civilisation in an underground cavern. Underground to this future time period, obviously, and not as it would be seen today (which puts paid to one of the so called “goofs” reported on the IMDB). After a revelation which is a little less stunning than the original movie’s Statue Of Liberty ending, due to the timing of it mostly, we have this place populated by deformed mutants who tend talk telepathically until Brent shows up so they start using their voices (even when they don’t have to at later stages of the film... since Brent isn’t in the same room with them), worship an atomic bomb and wear masks that make them appear more human. Even though they live in isolation and have absolutely no reason for wearing these ‘human masks’ within their society.

It’s here that Brent finally catches up with Taylor and, after the mutants interrogate him telepathically and force him via mind control to try and kill Nova, they then make Brent and Taylor fight with the sheer power of just one controlling mind... and it’s all nonsense. It also seems a little at odds with the society so cleverly worked out for the first movie. Certainly it’s more appropriate to an old Star Trek episode (which I think the idea might have even been partially inspired by) and trying to shoehorn this plot into a movie with enough of a high profile concept in it as it is... and it’s such a brilliant evolutionary idea that the apes films start off from... just seems very clumsy, ham fisted and generally superfluous to anything in the rest of the story. I don’t know at what point this script had this tribe of half rejects from The Omega Man (reviewed here) grafted onto it but I know it was worked on quite a few times before this version was made (I believe even James Franciscus himself worked on one draft of the screenplay) and the introduction of these mutants is a bold but totally awful idea. It doesn’t fit the tone of the series and sticks out like a sore thumb... just awful.

Rosenman’s score is quite good and he sticks with percussion propelled orchestration and somewhat atonal writing set up by the film’s previous composer as a kind of musical syntax for the apes. It’s not nearly as special or experimental, nor as memorable, as Jerry Goldsmith’s score for the first movie but... at least it fits the film okay. Honestly, though, those bloody tone pyramids he does really do get on my nerves (see my review of The Car here for further clarification).

The one good thing that this film has to offer is... its last five minutes. My understanding is that Heston favoured the ending as it was shot and, since he’d hoped there would be no more sequels made (from what I understand), the ending of this one is pretty final in its conclusion with all three human protagonists being shot dead, caught in the battle between the apes and the mutant humans - first Nova, then Brent and then, finally Taylor - and then, with his “bloody bastards” line, Heston’s dying character activates the doomsday bomb and the whole planet is wiped out. It’s a particularly good ending to a film that started off okayish, got very weak and then somehow managed to get us to a final solution that at least still packs a punch. So there’s that.

Still... with Heston and co thinking “End of world equals end of franchise” kind of sentiments... it’s at this point that I remind you that three more sequels were made and, despite the absolute leap of faith required for the reasoning behind the plausibility of the story in the next entry... I have to say that the third one, which also sees the return of Jerry Goldsmith as the main composer (Goldsmith and Rosenman each scored two of the Planet Of The Apes movies each with another composer being brought in for the fourth of the five movies), is a much better sequel and also manages to shift the story of the first one into a topsy turvy comic reversal of fortune plot, high on laughs, before delivering the final, strong, sucker punch of an ending in that one. More of that when I come to rewatch and review... Escape From The Planet Of The Apes. 

* It has come to light since I wrote this review that Serling did not come up with the idea for the famous Statue Of Liberty reveal. Click on my review link below of the book Simians and Serialism for more details.

Planet Of The Apes at NUTS4R2

Planet Of The Apes 

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes

Planet Of The Apes TV Show (live action) - to be reviewed

Time Of The Apes - to be reviewed

Planet Of The Apes (Tim Burton)

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes  

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

War Of The Planet Of The Apes

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes

Simians And Serialism - A History and Analysis of 

Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Planet Of The Apes