Review of Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) by Guest1 — 25 Apr 2020

If you like dogs or cats, this franchise isn’t for you.

"Escape from the Planet of the Apes," like much of its original film series ('68-'73) is one of the most dishonest, slimy, unforgivable piles of garbage in movie history. This isn't because it kills off two "peaceful" chimpanzees in its last 5 minutes. It's because it spends the preceding 90 minutes trying to cuddle us up to these two rotten monkeys who are literally responsible for destroying the world. The fact that audiences kept falling in love with these ugly freaks is beyond pathetic. (And spare me the argument about humans being more evil: when you have smelly chimp protagonists who unleash a pet-killing virus--and who consider themselves better than humans *and* other animals/apes--it's easy to see the true villains.).

The premise of this installment: Cornelius and Zira, snotty ape couple of the future, travel back in time to escape a monkey-vs-human nuclear war that they themselves set off, by committing heresy and triggering political unrest. Their time-traveling spacecraft had in fact belonged to a human, Col. Taylor (Charlton Heston) whom they supposedly loved even though they abandon him and steal his ship to boot...

Anyway, after their bumble into present-day Earth, it's confirmed (by the next film) that these dirty monkeys are spreading around some mystery plague that soon wipes out the whole dog-and-cat population. This is what clears the path for apes to dominate society: first as cutesy pets, then as annoying slaves, and finally as idiot revolutionaries. Until this happens, though, ol' Corny and Zira are happy to keep smugly wasting time in "Escape...", evading responsibility while being coddled and pampered by a bunch of incredibly stupid humans who aren't worried about the intentions of two English-speaking, human-detesting apes from the future.

On top of that, our alleged pacifist heroes end up killing and/or fatally endangering various other characters. These include: a fellow chimp who is strangled by a gorilla (after Cornelius and Zira provoke the gorilla with noise); a well-meaning orderly whom Cornelius kills just for saying "monkey" (and whose death is greasily insisted upon as being an accident)...and let's not forget that innocent ape baby, whom Zira and Cornelius fatally jeopardize to save their own.

I repeat: an innocent ape baby whom they fatally jeopardize to save their own.

Even if "Escape..." were at least half-decently written, directed, scored or acted, it'd still never make up for this grossly offensive plot point alone. The viewers who adore these two disgusting fleabags should be ashamed.

As I suggested before, the killing-off of Corny and Zira is the one thing that makes all this trash remotely worth watching. I don't even care that their real baby survives at the end, and grows up in the next two films to become just as ratty and despicable as his parents. At least he gets his own karma too, ultimately.

Good riddance to those pet-murdering, planet-ruining chimpies--and good riddance to Disney's reboot plan(?!) for this entire franchise. I hope it tanks harder than the careers of Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter.