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The zoologist, now aged 97, is about to unveil Time Flower, his fantasy-fuelled film in which he pursues a woman called Ramona – who gave such a brave performance leaping off the bonnet of a car that he proposed to her

In the opening scene of Time Flower, a surrealist film by the zoologist Desmond Morris, a woman is lying facedown on the ground, clutching the grass with manicured hands and shaking her head. She is about to start running across a Wiltshire moor in elegant black heels, chased by Morris in a shirt and tie, her eyes wide, her lipstick dark, the angle of the shot emphasising her perfect, parted, panting mouth. Just before she trips and falls, a wild rabbit will stare straight at the camera – and flee.

This 10-minute black-and-white film, which Morris made in 1950 while he was a 22-year-old student at Birmingham University, has lain untouched in his archive for nearly 75 years.

Recently, I had the great pleasure of talking with the legendary Ron Perlman, who has two movies open at the moment – Absolution with Liam Neeson and Day of the Fight, co-starring Michael Pitt and Joe Pesci. While teasing his new films, Perlman, a great guy, was thrilled when I brought up the fact that, when I was in high school here in Montreal, our history teacher used to show us Quest for Fire to teach us about early man.

Made in 1981, this movie happened to be Perlman’s first, and in it he plays Amoukar, one of a tribe of cavemen sent to find fire, as they do not have the knowledge needed to create fire themselves. Shot entirely without conventional dialogue, Quest for Fire is an amazing movie that’s ripe for rediscovery, and Perlman was happy to give us a little insight in to the making of the film.

The Rise of the Planet of the Apes blockbuster reboot is out next week. To celebrate, we revisit the strange and complicated history of primate films – and ask whether we've lost our enthusiasm for simians on celluloid

"Monkeys," said the Hollywood mogul Arthur P Jacobs, "make good movies. They always have." Such certainty was earned: Jacobs produced the first Planet of the Apes film in 1968 – the same year as another chimpy classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. So immediate was Planet's success ($33m from a budget of $5m) that Jacobs knocked out four sequels before his sudden death in 1973. Once unleashed, the Apes were unstoppable, spawning two TV shows, a comic book, a tonne of merchandising, a remake and a reboot, which is out next week.

Since cinema began, apes have been in on the action – evidence, says Variety's Stephen Gaydos, of the movies' debt to the carnival: "Primates were always an integral part of showbiz,...