Fuga dal pianeta delle scimmie

Having narrowly escaped the destruction of Earth in the year 395something A.D., intelligent chimpanzees Zira (Kim Hunter), Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Milo (Sal Mineo) are thrown back in time, crash landing off the coast of Southern California in the year 1973. Picked up by the U.S. army, they are taken to a zoo for observation, where Dr. Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman) and Dr. Stephanie Branton (Natalie Trundy) discover that the apes can talk. Milo is tragically killed by a captive gorilla, leaving Zira and Cornelius to be questioned about the events leading to their arrival on Earth inside a spacecraft originally manned by American astronauts.

Successfully satisfying the enquiry with their answers, the chimps are moved to a fancy hotel and given a tour of the city (during which Zira announces she is pregnant!). However, when suspicious Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden) gets Zira gets drunk on Grape Juice + (Champagne), he learns details about her work as a scientist and information about Earth's future that give him cause for concern. Convincing the authorities that the chimps should be questioned further, Hasslein has them taken to an army base where Zira is administered a truth serum. She admits that apes will one day become a threat to the human race, and so a commission decides that Zira's baby should be aborted and that both chimps should be sterilised, leaving the hairy couple no choice but to escape.

This second sequel to the 1968 sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes could easily have been a repetitive cash-grab (like Beneath the Planet of the Apes before it), but in setting the action in the present day, the intelligent script raises a couple of thought-provoking moral dilemmas that make it a very interesting watch. Should we judge another species for its inhumanity when humans treat other animals with the same lack of respect? And does the human race have the right to ensure that it remains the dominant species or should we allow natural selection to decide what happens next? These clever conundrums, coupled with fine performances from McDowell, Hunter, Dillman, and Ricardo Montalban as kindly circus owner Armando, plus a wonderfully silly twist ending, go to make this a very entertaining entry in this much-loved franchise.

Despite a conclusion showing the planet's destruction, 20th Century Fox requested another sequel, turning the films into a franchise.

Arthur P. Jacobs recruited Paul Dehn to a new script with a brief telegram: "Apes exist. Sequel required." Dehn immediately started work on what became the third film titled Escape from the Planet of the Apes. The film would once again change directors, Don Taylor was hired to direct and had a greatly diminished budget of $2.5 million dollars, which required a tight production schedule.

In the film, Zira and Cornelius are initially accepted by American society, but human fears that their child will bring about the destruction they predict to lead to their dates.

Compared to it's predecessors, Escape dwelt more heavily on themes of racial conflict, which became a primary focus through the rest of the series. The film opened on May 21, 1971, less than a year after the previous film and was well received by critics. It also performed really well at the box office, though not as strongly as the first two. Fox ordered a third sequel.

The story is just great, especially after the second film's poor story and the writer did a great job with creating this sequel's story. The direction and action is just amazing and cool. The film is really quick and amazing, but I just ran along with it.

The acting is just amazing in this one and the actors are just amazing. Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall are good in there roles. Natalie Trundy is really good and is fantastic in her role. Bradford Dillman, Ricardo Montalban and Eric Braeden are really good in their new roles and they are fantastic and amazing.

Overall, ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET of the APES is really amazing and fantastic and it is one movie that definitely makes up for the previous film.

8/10.

After "Planet of the Apes" was completed, its star, Charlton Heston, argued strongly that there should not be a sequel. The original film was complete in itself, and any sequel would only dilute its impact and tarnish its reputation. In the event, a sequel was made and Heston was reluctantly persuaded to appear in it. He suggested, however, that it should end with the destruction of the Earth, a denouement that, he hoped, would put paid to any attempt to extend the series beyond two films.

In one respect Heston was to be proved right. "Planet of the Apes" is a classic, one of the best science-fiction movies ever made and one that combines an exciting plot with philosophical depth. It is frequently said that sequels are generally inferior to the original films, but seldom is this is as true as in the case of "Beneath the Planet of the Apes", a hopeless mess of a film. Neither its lack of artistic merit, however, nor its explosive ending dissuaded the filmmakers from making a third "Apes" film. An ingenious device was found to avoid the problems posed by planetary destruction; it is explained that shortly before the Earth was destroyed three of the apes found the wreckage of Taylor's spacecraft, repaired it and used it to travel back in time to 1970s America.

Although one of the apes is killed in an unfortunate incident shortly after arrival, the American public take to the two survivors, Cornelius and his wife Zira (both of whom played important parts in the first two films). The two intelligent, talking chimpanzees become media celebrities, and the early scenes are much lighter in tone than the two earlier films, at times even comic, as the two apes become after-dinner speakers and discover the joys of alcohol. The tone, however, gradually darkens. Figures in the government become alarmed by talk of a future in which men are dominated by apes, and Dr Hasslein, the President's sinister Germanic adviser, (based on Henry Kissinger?) is convinced that Zira and Cornelius represent a threat to the human race, especially after it is discovered that Zira is pregnant.

My disappointment with "Beneath...." had hitherto dissuaded me from watching any more of the later episodes in the "Apes" canon, so I was pleasantly surprised by "Escape.......". Although it lacks the depth and brilliance of "Planet of the Apes", it is considerably better than its immediate predecessor. The reason for its relative success lies with the fine contributions of its two stars, Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter. Their characters played important supporting roles on the original film; here they take centre stage. The original had Heston's character Taylor at its centre, a human in danger from the apes. In "Escape......" the roles are reversed, with two lovable, and deeply human, apes in danger from humans. There is, however, a difference between the two films. The danger to Taylor came largely from ignorance; the apes, particularly Dr Zaius, saw him as a brute beast, like the other humans of their planet, and refused to listen to the evidence that suggested that he was, in fact, an intelligent being like themselves. Cornelius and Zira are in danger because of both their human and their non-human characteristics. Hasslein knows that they are intelligent beings who seem human and yet are not, and hates and fears them for precisely that reason. Just as they pitied and befriended Taylor, so they are in their turn befriended by two human scientists who try and save them from Hasslein.

There are a couple of inconsistencies between this and the earlier films, where the apes' society is shown as being technologically less advanced than ours, on a par with sixteenth or seventeenth century Europe. It is not explained how individuals from such a society could have succeeded in repairing and operating a spacecraft. Another inconsistency is that Cornelius and Zira know how the apes came to seize control of the Earth from humans and even state that this story is told in the Sacred Scrolls, the holy books of the apes' religion. In "Planet of the Apes" we are to understand that the Scrolls explicitly deny that humans ever had the powers of speech and reason, which is why Zaius is so reluctant to admit that Taylor can speak. These inconsistencies, however, are not really plot-holes as such and are unlikely to worry those who come to "Escape......." without having seen its predecessors. "Escape......." can be seen as a film in its own right rather than as a mere sequel, a film which starts out as a comedy and then turns into a serious thriller as the apes try to escape from their human enemies. Although it is less philosophical than the first film, it can perhaps be seen as an allegory of racism as Hasslein's paranoia leads him to treat as enemies those who bear no ill-will to him and his kind and whose only crime is to be different from him. It is significant that his name is derived from the German for "hate". 6/10

I've always had mixed feelings about ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES. As a kid forty-five years ago, I saw all five original films on television and I loved them all. ESCAPE I enjoyed because I had a huge little boy crush on Kim Hunter, and I thought Dr. Zira was so brave, funny, and even sexy. On the other hand, this is the one movie in the series with no battle scenes, no gorillas on horseback, and no epic excitement or adventure. So on that level I'm sorry to say this was my least favorite Apes film . . . Forty five years ago.

So the other day I got all five films on Blu Ray for about 15 dollars. And when I watched ESCAPE as a 55 year old I was very impressed. It's not really a kid's adventure film, or even a science fiction spectacle. This movie is a tragedy, in the most profound sense of the word. In spirit it's much closer to CHINATOWN than the original PLANET OF THE APES.

Everyone remembers Zira and Cornelius as a cute, fun couple. That's how I remembered them too. But when you actually watch the film you see that they are really tragic heroes. When they flee the hospital with their baby there are Biblical overtones. (The President actually compares himself to Herod!) But what's still more disturbing is the way Zira herself owns up to the savage things that went on in her own laboratory in the future world. Her self-knowledge is a grim component of her eventual tragic fate. Her insistence on truth only makes her more admirable after she reveals some truly terrible secrets.

It's a waste of time to point out that Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowell both give career best performances as Zira and Cornelius. But what astonished me after forty-five years was the incredible intensity of Eric Braeden as Dr. Otto Hasslein. (He was just as spectacular as the doomed werewolf in a classic episode of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER.) Dr. Hasslein is clearly meant to remind us of Nazi scientists and doctors who did unspeakable things in World War II. But at the same time he's like the tormented Christian heroes in THE OMEN movies, searching for the Anti Christ before the earth runs out of time. Each chilling thing he does is made more chilling by the fact that he's sincere in trying to stop what he thinks of as real evil. On the other hand, William Windom is surprisingly affable and humane as the President of the United States. STAR TREK fans will remember his epic meltdown in "The Doomsday Machine," but here he plays the voice of reason, a decent man who refuses to become hysterical in the face of mankind's doom.

Superb script, intense, haunting drama, beautiful tragic characters . . . All that's missing is the action, excitement, and gorillas on horseback!

In a brilliant solution for continuing the storyline after the ending of BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES, three intelligent chimpanzees from Earth's future take off in Charlton Heston's salvaged spacecraft just prior to Earth's destruction; they wind up hurled backward in time to 1973 California and - in an interesting twist on the original theme - now find themselves the strange visitors in a strange world ruled by bombastic human beings.

Lovable simians Zira and Cornelius (expertly played by Kim Hunter and Roddy McDowall) lose their friend Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo!) early on in a tragic accident, and find themselves in a strange situation when mankind first welcomes them as celebrities and garnishes them with gifts, but ultimately begins to fear when it is learned that Zira is pregnant with an ape offspring that could grow to overtake humanity.

We really grow to sympathize with the plight of the chimpanzee couple, and we fear along with them and the safety of their child when they become hunted fugitives later in the story. Eric Braeden is very good as the quintessential villain out to kill the ape family at any cost.

Some people enjoy picking on the APES sequels as they continued, but I've always felt this series consistently remained very intelligent and had something powerful to say about race relations and prejudice. People want to know how apes could ever manage to send Taylor's ship into orbit; I say that if you can suspend disbelief long enough to accept the notion of intelligent apes, then it shouldn't be that far a reach to accept that Dr. Milo was the genius of his time who just could pull it off; the Thomas Edision of his type, if you will.

The timeline in the five apes films is often admittedly contradictory, but there are ways that fans of the Apes movies have been able to make them work. For example, in this film Cornelius seems to talk about Ape History and Evolution in a way that actually doesn't follow suit during the next two installments. That's because the very arrival of Zira and Cornelius onto present-day Earth of 1973, and the subsequent birth of their baby, will accelerate the procedure from how Cornelius remembered it, as we'll see in the next two chapters. The circumstances for the future will be sped up and changed, and the apes will evolve at a much quicker rate.

Some of the other dubious complaints are aimed at the "lesser budgets," or supposed "TV Movie Look" of the sequels from this point on -- but this story in ESCAPE does not require mind-numbing special effects or hordes of CGI-rendered ape figures swarming Los Angeles to make it effective. It's got a lot of heart and good writing with characters we care about, and that's all it needs. ***1/2 out of ****