Time of the Apes

This was appalling. My neighbour made me watch it and believe me I begged him to turn it off!

What have we got here? A totally disjointed Japanese-made film poorly dubbed into English.

Nothing really made sense and to be honest I have no idea what the thing was about, except to say a woman and some annoying kids get trapped in an alternate reality where apes rule the planet. (No, I didn't seen Charlton Heston ride past crying, "You maniacs, you blew it up!")

It's so bad, I recommend you get a copy for when unwanted visitors drop by. "Yeah, sure you can come in. I'm watching Time of The Apes. Take a seat!" Guaranteed they will leave within 15 minutes!

As a matter of fact, I'm looking for a copy of this film myself.

TIME OF THE APES (known as "Sara no gundan" in its native Japan) is a shoddily-produced sci-fi/fantasy yarn apparently edited from an unaired television series. I would say that it's trying to cash in on the success of PLANET OF THE APES, except that it was made about twenty years too late.

The pretentiously overcomplicated storyline involves a woman and two children who accidentally freeze themselves in cryogenic chambers (that's right-- they *ACCIDENTALLY* freeze themselves!) and are transported to an unknown period of time where hostile apes rule. Several ludicrous, time-wasting subplots seem to pop up out of nowhere, mostly involving imprisonment, booby traps, and flying saucers. Trying to actually make sense of the onscreen bedlam is a useless and unrewarding task, so just sitting back and enjoying the silly costumes and awful dubbing is highly recommend.

Fortunately, TIME OF THE APES is extremely difficult to come across (only bootlegs and out-of-print VHS transfers exist in the US), but if you ever get the chance to see it featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, you're in for a real treat. It has got to be one of the funniest episodes ever.

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 ****.

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.

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.