Time of the Apes

There are bad movies, very bad movies and horrible movies. This movie goes a step beyond even those classification, Plan Nine from Outer Space bad. The story is about three present day humans who just happen to be in cryogenic chamber when an earthquake a underground research center. When they come to its five hundred years in the future and apes have taken over the planet. Any plot similarities between Time of the Apes and Planet of the Apes is completely intentional although it seems like cinema heresy to compare the two films. There is a flying saucer that keep appearing for no apparent reason and an ape shoot out that doesn't make any sense. All of these plot holes stem from the fact this movie is edited from a Japanese TV series that was never aired. I will not give away the ending, but it is the sort of thing that could result in a failing grade in most high school creative writing courses.

In this American TV-movie version of a 1970s Japanese scifi TV series, three visitors from modern Japan -- a woman, a boy and a girl -- find themselves in a future which is almost exactly like our time, except that intelligent gorillas are in charge. They meet a lone man who struggles to carry out a solitary existence, and there's a flying saucer that shows up occasionally to act as Deus Ex Machina.

How did they get there? It's unclear. How will they get back? No idea. What can they do to survive? Well, not much, except the boy occasionally helps to divert attention while the man sneaks around to clobber them. There's a subplot about the military ape leader wanting to kill the human man because he thinks the man killed his wife and son. Otherwise, the only noteworthy thing about it is the sheer number of ape costumes on display. Even for the kid's adventure show it apparently was at some point, awful.

This film is very boring and somewhat confusing. It centers around a woman, a kid, and an "Indiana Jones" type character named Johnny. They are cryogenically frozen and awaken in a land of where apes rule the world. (Sound familiar?) Well of course they are captured by the apes and Johnny (who acts like a complete jerk) tries to free them, etc... The movies only interesting character is a young monkey who helps the humans, and even the monkey is annoying. The only way this movie should be seen is along with the *Mystery Science Theater 3000* gang. The episode, number 306, appeared in their third season and was hilarious.

A Japanese tv series is cut apart and put together to form this semblance of a movie. Obviously a "Planet of the Apes" rip-off, the movie seems the end about 3 different times, Each more dragged out than the last. The apes are also dressed in bizarre Colonel Sanders-style clothing. As a dubbed movie it's hard to comment on the acting, but the "film" is edited so poorly that the plot is nearly incomprehensible to follow. More of an oddity than a purely terrible movie.

For about the last week, I've been watching the KTMA episodes of MST3K. tonights episode was this, er, masterpiece. Let see what we have so far-- Humans in nothing but ape heads that aren't even finished around the neck. Then we have the apes driving 1970 era pontiacs, jeeps and toyotas. They also use weapons. but with all of the cars, guns and other technology they show no evidence of any industrial production capabilities.

It is clear that this piece of junk was edited from more then several episodes of a series. The editing is so abrupt that it startled me at one point. I can only assume that the series is equally confusing and poorly produced. This movie was done twice by MST3K. First on KTMA and again in (I think) season 3. Both versions are unreleased but are available from mst3kvideos.com.