Escape from the Planet of the Apes

1971

Action / Sci-Fi

45
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 76% · 29 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 53% · 10K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.3/10 10 38660 38.7K

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Plot summary

The world is shocked by the appearance of three talking chimpanzees, who arrived mysteriously in a spacecraft. Intrigued by their intelligence, humans use them for research - until the apes attempt to escape.


Uploaded by: OTTO
July 06, 2023 at 06:06 PM

Director

Top cast

John Randolph as Chairman
Roddy McDowall as Cornelius
Ricardo Montalban as Armando
Sal Mineo as Milo
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
898.93 MB
1280*540
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 37 min
Seeds 3
1.8 GB
1912*808
English 5.1
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 37 min
Seeds 27

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by BandSAboutMovies 8 / 10

Darker than a nuke!

"Apes exist, Sequel required."

With those words, sent in a telegram from producer Arthur P. Jacobs to writer Paul Dehn, a sequel was set in motion to Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

But hey - didn't everyone die in a nuclear bomb blast at the end of that movie?

They sure did.

Doesn't matter.

Dehn decided that Cornelius and Zira - along with an inventor ape named Milo - would go back in time with Taylor's ship. He also consulted Pierre Boulle, writer of the original Planet of the Apes novel, to add more satire to the story. Originally titled Secret of the Planet of the Apes, the results are rather genius, as only three ape actors allowed for a smaller budget while selling director Don Taylor (Damien: The Omen II and The Final Countdown) on the idea of making the film more humorous.

Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), Zira (Kim Hunter) and Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo!) have escaped the ruin of future Earth and landed back in 1973, where they are taken to the Los Angeles Zoo, where Dr. Stephanie Branton (Natalie Trundy, the wife of producer Jacobs and the only actor to portray every single race in the Apes universe) and Dr. Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman!) are set to examine them.

In private, the apes elect to not to let the humans know that they can speak. They also can't tell them that, you know, they once dissected humans and that everyone else died in the Ape War. But man, those humans act so condescending to Zira and she flips out and shows them just how smart she is. And then she starts talking. And then, well, a mishap allows a zoo gorilla to kill Dr. Milo. Luckily - and in spite of this - Lewis ends up friends with the chimpanzees.

Meanwhile, a Presidential Commission has been formed to investigate the return of Taylor's spaceship and determine what these apes are all about. Cornelius and Zira become celebrities over night and everyone loves them.

That's not sitting well with President's Science Advisor Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden, Titanic, Colossus: The Forbin Project), who discovers that Zira is with child and therefore fears for the future of humanity. He gets her drunk - dude, she's pregnant! - and she reveals all, which means that now it's time for the government to really interrogate them. After some truth syrum, Zira reveals that yes, she has dissected humans before and yes, she knew Taylor before he died.

Hasslein takes his findings to the President (William Windom), who must agree with the council that Zira's pregnancy is to be aborted - guess he's not a Right to Lifer - and that they must both be sterilized. After his child is called a little monkey by an orderly, Cornelius goes wild and accidentally kills the man before they escape.

Branton and Dixon help the apes to escape, where they hid out in the circus run by Senor Armando (Ricardo Montalban!), where an ape named Heloise has just given birth. Zira also gives birth to a son, whom she names Milo in honor of their deceased friend.

Hasslein is more animal than the apes, tracking them to a shipyard. The couple do not want to be taken alive, which suits him just fine. He fires numerous shots into Zira and her baby to the horror of all watching. Cornelius kills him in retaliation before being shot by a sniper. The couple crawl toward each other, touching one another one more time before dying.

Meanwhile, at Armando's circus, we learn that Zira switched children with Heloise and Milo has survived. As the ringmaster walks away, we hear his first words as he cries for his mother.

Somehow, each Apes film tops the previous one for total downer endings.

It could have been worse - Cornelius and Zira were originally going to be ripped apart by a pack of Doberman Pinschers!

James Bacon shows up here - the only actor to be in all five of the Apes films. He also would go on to write numerous books about Hollywood, including the Jackie Gleason biography How Sweet It Is: The Jackie Gleason Story. This is the only movie in the series where he plays a human being.

Detroit TV announcer - he was mostly on WXYZ-TV - Bill Bonds plays a TV newsman. John Randolph plays a councilman, a role he'd also play in the next film, and he's in another monkey movie, the 1976 remake of King Kong. M. Emmet Walsh also makes an appearance. And Albert Salmi, who is in Superstition, is here as well.

Sal Mineo found the makeup process very uncomfortable and tiring. Kim Hunter would later say that she and Roddy McDowall had to hug Mineo a lot to console him. He had hoped that this movie would restart his career, as it did McDowall's, but due to how much he hated the make-up, he was killed off earlier than originally planned. Escape from the Planet of the Apes would be Mineo's final theatrical film before he was murdered on February 12, 1976 at the age of 37.

Reviewed by BA_Harrison 8 / 10

Where do chimpanzees keep their babies?

Having narrowly escaped the destruction of Earth in the year 395something A.D., intelligent chimpanzees Zira (Kim Hunter), Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Milo (Sal Mineo) are thrown back in time, crash landing off the coast of Southern California in the year 1973. Picked up by the U.S. army, they are taken to a zoo for observation, where Dr. Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman) and Dr. Stephanie Branton (Natalie Trundy) discover that the apes can talk. Milo is tragically killed by a captive gorilla, leaving Zira and Cornelius to be questioned about the events leading to their arrival on Earth inside a spacecraft originally manned by American astronauts.

Successfully satisfying the enquiry with their answers, the chimps are moved to a fancy hotel and given a tour of the city (during which Zira announces she is pregnant!). However, when suspicious Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden) gets Zira gets drunk on Grape Juice + (Champagne), he learns details about her work as a scientist and information about Earth's future that give him cause for concern. Convincing the authorities that the chimps should be questioned further, Hasslein has them taken to an army base where Zira is administered a truth serum. She admits that apes will one day become a threat to the human race, and so a commission decides that Zira's baby should be aborted and that both chimps should be sterilised, leaving the hairy couple no choice but to escape.

This second sequel to the 1968 sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes could easily have been a repetitive cash-grab (like Beneath the Planet of the Apes before it), but in setting the action in the present day, the intelligent script raises a couple of thought-provoking moral dilemmas that make it a very interesting watch. Should we judge another species for its inhumanity when humans treat other animals with the same lack of respect? And does the human race have the right to ensure that it remains the dominant species or should we allow natural selection to decide what happens next? These clever conundrums, coupled with fine performances from McDowell, Hunter, Dillman, and Ricardo Montalban as kindly circus owner Armando, plus a wonderfully silly twist ending, go to make this a very entertaining entry in this much-loved franchise.

Reviewed by MartinHafer 6 / 10

a "hard to imagine HOW they came up with a sequel" sequel

As fans of the series know, the Earth got blowed up good at the end of the second movie. So, you might ask, how did they make a sequel? Hmm, well they did something unique in film history--the sequel was also a prequel!! Here's how they did it: At the end of the last movie the Earth blew up, but somehow our favorite apes, Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) and Zira (Kim Hunter) both escaped the explosion in a space ship and traveled back in time to 20th century Earth!!! Now this was no small feat, as the apes in the previous movies had progressed up to perhaps the 18th century in technology and no others possessed a space ship, either! Well, this gaping plot hole is one of the reasons this movie only gets a 6. The other is that this movie, for the first half of it, has absolutely no controversy or excitement. If you like seeing the two apes being wined and dined and interviewed on TV, then this movie is for you--but zilch as far as controversy goes.

However, later, under the influence of a truth serum, Zira tells the humans that they are from Earth in the future and that humans are either treated as slaves or killed! Well, the narrow-minded humans want no part of that and decide to sterilize the apes to prevent this horrible future. The problem is that Zira is already pregnant (never mind that it seems hardly likely that Roddy McDowell could be the father) and they don't want their baby killed! I'm not sure why no one thought about letting the child be born and then sterilizing the three--this could have worked out and prevented a fourth movie.

Well, our two beloved apes don't want to be sterilized or lose their baby, so they escape. While in hiding, Zira has the baby and when the human thugs catch up to them, they are killed--but not before a DIFFERENT baby is substituted for theirs--meaning that they actually planned on making a sequel to this movie.

Decent story writing (though with HUGE plot holes), good acting and a fun script make this a worthwhile film, but certainly weaker than movies number 1, 2 and 4.

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