Time of the Apes

A movie about talking monkeys that have taken over the world....maybe it's my imagination. Anyways, this is a really bad movie. Maybe it was better in Japanese without the dubbing, but the dubbing is so mind-bindingly shrill and annoying that it's hard to watch this with the sound on. The direction is really quite terrible, using the technique of constantly zooming in and out fast for dramatic effect. The apes aren't that bad looking, but they did have a major flaw. Their mouths don't move when they talk, so it's impossible to tell which monkey is saying what. The film is in every way unoriginal and doesn't really make very much sense at all. Though I was entertained, this is just a terrible "Planet of the Apes" knockoff.

My rating: 1/2 out of ****.

I think I can describe this wretched film in one word: "HUH??"

I cannot recall ever seeing a movie as crappy as this one. I will admit that the English translation may have been reason for horrific dialogue, but I cannot recall any semblance of plot, or storyline. Watching Johnny and Carolyn's madcap romps running from simian masked men with the crappiest makeup in cinema history, my brain cells began to implode one by one as I tried to find the answers to so many questions I had about this film. You will get dizzy (especially the pre-Matrix rotoscope camera shots towards the end), nauseous, and possible amnesia may set in after this tour de crap which also includes an adorable weird ape girl name Pepy(????). Good way to experience temporary insanity.

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.

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.