8/25/06: Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (1971)First, to recap:
Planet of the Apes has Charlton Heston discovering that primates of the future will rule over man.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes has Heston doing us all a favor by destroying Earth with a doomsday weapon. Loveable apes Cornelius and Zira, however, escape death by taking Taylor’s spaceship back in time. In the process,
Escape From The Planet Of The Apes retells the original story in a modern liberal setting.
Cornelius and Zira—played by Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter—think quickly when their space capsule lands in 1970s America. They don’t talk, and it’s assumed that they’re test subjects of some sort. The chimps are sent off to a government center, where they decide to keep playing dumb. It’s a smart way to avoid questions about how apes treat men of the future. “There’s a time for truth,” says wise fellow ape Dr. Milo, “and a time—not for lies—but for silence.”
Unfortunately, Milo gets himself killed while trying to make friends with one of his ancestors. It isn’t long before Cornelius and Zira are chatting away with their captors. The charming chimps quickly become popular media figures. A remake would have them as perpetual guests on
The View and
Real Time with Bill Maher.
The happy couple is so busy promoting women’s lib and decrying boxing that they forget how people might be suspicious about their background. Zira gets particularly careless, with a tendency to settle down every night with a bottle of vintage “Grape Juice Plus.”
But who’d be offended by their big secrets? Any logical person would expect a prominent species to engage in things like animal experimentation. There’s your first clue to the chimps’ true enemy. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden) works in the White House as a senior scientific advisor. He uses Grape Juice Plus to get the truth out of Zira. Dr. Hasslein is drastically alarmed to discover that Zira is pregnant, and that Earth will be a different place in the year 3955.
Like any good activist, Otto decides it’s his duty to save the planet. He wants to start by killing Zira’s unborn child. “This is not an interracial hassle,” assures the good doctor. Don’t go calling him a religious nut, either. Otto has plenty of doubts about God.
Cornelius and Zira find themselves off the talk-show circuit and back in confinement. Things get worse after Cornelius overreacts when an orderly refers to Zira’s fetus as “a little monkey.” One dead orderly later, they’re on the run.
This is when we meet the film’s conservative role model. A friendly animal psychiatrist brings Cornelius and Zira to circus owner Armando—played by Ricardo Montalban. This old-fashioned immigrant is happy to hide them away. As he later explains to Zira, “I did it because I hate those who try to alter destiny, which is the unalterable will of God.” Ricardo Montalban speaks like that, you know.
Meanwhile, a government thug assures Otto that the fugitive apes will show up sooner or later. “That’s what I’m worried about,” says Otto. “'Later.'
Later, we’ll do something about pollution.
Later, we’ll do something about the population explosion.
Later, we’ll do something about the nuclear war. We think we’ve got all the time in the world. How much time has the world got?
Somebody has to begin to care.”
Al Gore will use that speech at the next Democratic convention, if Joseph Biden hasn’t already swiped it.
By the end of the film, Cornelius learns the value of owning a handgun before he and his wife end up dead. Their baby survives in the care of Montalban. And we get two more sequels that are fairly inconsequential. That’s okay, since
Escape offers plenty for debate and discussion. We can start by wondering what was happening with Sal Mineo’s career. The guy barely lasts 10 minutes as Dr. Milo. He’d get more screen time as the murder victim in a
Columbo episode.
Make it your own: Escape is
easily found, as any classic
Planet of the Apes film should be. Just don’t go wasting your money on some big collection of the whole series—unless it’s
something like this.
