Ten Statements About....BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (1973)

"Yep...I'm you're villain, and I'm a dumbass...deal with it...."

"Aldo will make the future--with THIS!"

"Well then, Aldo may very soon be in the past."

1) There is just something pure-D weird about John Huston's voice coming out of an ape's mouth...although I suppose if anyone is going to be Lawgiver, the central figure who is diefied in Ape society, we can do a lot worse.

2) Even though I am sure the budgets were cut on the last two movies, this is the first time we've seen it onscreen. The make-up is stiffer (in some cases, like with Claude Akins' General Aldo, you can see the actor's skin behind the masks), the sets look thrown together and the music...ouch. Instead of the subtle, witty and sparingly used music of previous entries, this one has a truly obtrusive, bombastic score.

3) The problem with the make-up being said...I find it fascinating how McDowell--prolly due to his tenure with the series--is able to make those masks move in such a way that you can see Caeser thinking and working things out in his head. He's the one actor who makes his status as a primate believable.

4) Imagine my pleasure at seeing Sevren Darden's Colp--now Governor of the mutants of L.A.--giving a performance that's somewhat different from the one he gave in Conquest, this one with a touch of humor and weariness that gives his character added depth. And even though he is one of two unreasoning villains in this film, the way he literally cannot bring himself to say 'Los Angelos' brings a tiny bit of pathos to him.

"Yes, I'm a mutant and I still have my hair...but this goggles
and swim cap combo makes me look suave, damnit!"

5) It took me a little bit of time...but I actually found myself warming quite rapidly to Paul Williams' Virgil. It makes me wonder what kind of career as an actor he would have had if he pursued it more vigorously and looked for more than films where his height made him a bit of stunt casting.

6) Yeah, the script by John and Joyce Corrington is clumsy in a lot of spots...but I respect that these two manage to avoid one-siding this situation. There are asshats in both camps, and there are decent individuals who argue for not aggravating the first contact between ape and mutants into all-out war.

7) While he's no great shakes as an actor, I give Bobby Porter a lot of credit--his Cornelius is the first ape actor in this series who actually behaves physically like an ape. Just like McDowell's facial movements, the way Porter swings and shimmies through the trees to spy on Aldo's men convinces us that he is a primate and not a boy in a suit.

"Why would we write Hamlet if it's already...oooooh, okay."

8) Look--those silly swim caps made sense in Beneath because you could say they were part of the masks that the mutants used to conceal their true form. Here they make the mutants look like they're stumbling around looking for the short bus.

9) The film would prolly have been strengthened if Aldo...well, if he wasn't such a dumbass. If they allowed this character to be a little more scheming (somewhat like they allowed Tim Roth to be as Thade in the Burton version) and not have things go his way by literally stumbling through his own mistakes, a new level of richness would have been brought to the story.

10) While I did appreciate the implication that by their actions, Ape City has broken free of the oroborous that results in Earth's destruction...what the fuck is up with that crying statue? That's just dopey.

Overall...a decent, if not great, close to a series that, in retrospect, kept a pretty damn consistently high level of quality.

(Oh, and after watching these five flicks--Roddy McDowall is The Man)

Ten Statements About....CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (1972)

"Monkey See, Monkey Gon' BLOW YOUR FACE OFF!"

"How do you propose to gain this freedom?"

"By the only means left to us...revolution."

"But it's doomed to failure!""."

"Perhaps...this time."

1) Gotta say...I love how alien '1991 North America' looks, even though this one--like the one before it--must have been shot with existing locations and borrowed props to save money. It doesn't look too far from our world, but it does look different.

2)The script--like Escape, by Paul Dehn--displays a lot of subtlety. The way certain elements are introduced into this world is slow and almost graceful...so, for example, when we see Aldo, as Zira mentioned in Escape, saying his first words, we don't even notice it at first.

3) More so than when he played Cornelius, Roddy MacDowell is very smart in his performance as Ceaser. You definitely get the sense though his facial movements and body language that this Ape is constantly thinking, taking in the horror around him and processing them until he comes up with his own philosophy.

4) Since this series has been very comfortable with its position as a metaphor for race relations, the script goes full bore for the slavery card. Whereas in other series the scenes of apes being disciplined might seem exploitative, here it just stirs our indignation...prepping us for taking Ceaser's side once the revolution comes...and the fact that so many of the guards in charge of Ape Education are black only makes for a touch of irony.

"So you're saying in two thousand years, we'll ALL be
wearing snazzy jackets like that?"

5) It's totally understandable why Richardo Montalban's Armando has to die--his death is another brick in Ceaser's road to rebellion--but it's such a shame. Even here, where Armando is older and less bombastic, he brought a great deal of zest to that first half of the film.

6) If there is one problem, it's that Don Murray's Governor is, much like Ursa, a cardboard, one-dimensional villain. His blustery, over the top performance lacks the nuance of previous baddies in the series, and we never get the sense that he genuinely believes in what he's doing. It makes the film a bit one sided in a series that has managed to be rather multi-dimensional.

7) On the other hand...Sevrin Darden's Inspector Colp is absolutely wonderful. Never raising his voice, keeping every statement conversational, and yet keeping two steps ahead in the game, he's an excellent villain...and maybe should have been the main one. I can't help but think what a stronger film it would be if Colp was manipulating a weak Governer to achieve his goals.

8) Just has the first film's world had echoes of several cultures, so does this one--although the Nazi Germany and pre-Civil War south are fairly obvious ones, the most significant one is Ancient Rome...after all, just like in Roman Times, it is a Ceaser who burns down the old world....

You just know this isn't going to end well for the humans....

9) I think it's very smart that the ape rebellion incorporates some of the tactics we saw the apes use in the first two films. It's that level of detail that creates a real sense of continuity in this series as a whole.

10) You know...I didn't realize that Natalie Trundy, who played Dr. Branton in Escape, was playing Lisa. It's a real nice echo, and as with the element cited above, helps create a real consistency between these films.

Overall...a very good entry in the series that helps cement the oroborous nature of the whole cycle, it manages to bring the whole racial metaphor to a logical conclusion, paving the way for the sheer goofiness of the final entry....