Review of Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) by Wesley P — 25 Dec 2017

The third film in the Apes series takes a new twist by not having humans crash land on a planet ruled by apes and instead has three apes crash land on modern day earth (or at least 1970s earth). The talking, intelligent apes become the toast of the town upon their arrival, but there are sinister government forces who fear them and believe them to be a threat to humanity.

After a lot of light comedy during the first part of the film, the apes go on the run from the government agents who want to kill them. Escape is one of the weaker Apes film, but it is interesting that the villains of the picture are actually correct (if you've seen the other films in the series) in that the apes do eventually take over the world, although it's humanity's fault, due to their own fear and distrust.

However, those more interesting of topics are not covered in this film and it is instead a fish-out-of-water comedy for the first and second acts and a not especially exciting of chase film for the final act.

The first "Planet of the Apes" film, written by Rod Serling, more interestingly addressed this idea of who's the real bad-guy in the original film's conclusion, where the villainous Dr.

Zaius is revealed to know the truth behind humankind destroying itself, and that intelligent humans would genuinely pose a threat to the Ape world, as unequal, backwards, and flawed as that society may be.

Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter return as Cornelius and Zira, and you also get Albert Salmi, M. Emmet Walsh, Ricardo Montalban in a nice cameo leading to sequels to come, and Sal Mineo briefly appearing as an ape (he apparently did not like the ape make-up and asked to be written out of the script).

Jerry Goldsmith also returns to provide the film an excellent rousing score. Overall, this isn't that good of an Apes film, but it is still entertaining.