Review of Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) by Connor G — 02 Apr 2014

This fifth and final entry in the original Planet of the Apes science fiction series produced by Arthur P. Jacobs is directed by J. Lee Thompson and it stars Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy, Severn Darden, Lew Ayres, Paul Williams and John Huston. I can see division between the fans and non-fans on this one! First ones will enjoy the story telling and the positive tones of this sequel, others will be bored to death! If you rely on action and you are not familiar with the previous films, please, stay away from this one!

First two parts are worth watching, from a fan view of point, but the third part must be a disappointment for everyone! Battle scenes were terrible, and you could almost feel the budget cuts there. Beginning was promising, and started as a flashback in the early 21st century, with a wraparound sequence narrated by the orang-utan Lawgiver (John Huston) set in "North America - 2670 A.D." He was telling a story of the ape leader, Caesar (Roddy McDowall), at least twelve years after he led the revolution in the previous film, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. In this post-nuclear society, Caesar tries to cultivate peace between the apes and the surviving humans. A gorilla general named Aldo (Claude Akins), however, opposes this and plots Caesar's downfall. Caesar is married to Lisa (Natalie Trundy), the female ape of the previous film, and they have a son, named Cornelius (Bobby Porter) in honour of Caesar's father...

Initially writer Paul Dehn who had provided the script for every previous sequel was hired to provide a story treatment for the fifth film in the series, but he withdrew from the project without completing the screenplay due to health reasons. Screenwriters John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington were brought in after the success of their film The Omega Man - but there was a problem - neither one of them had written any science fiction films and they had never seen any of the Apes films prior to being hired to write the script for "Battle". Dehn was hired to come in and do a final polish on the script making minor changes to the script that the Corringtons had written. Dehn was given a story credit despite an appeal to the Writer's Guild of America for shared credit on the screenplay. Dehn claimed to have rewritten 90% of the dialogue and he altered the ending. The original script by the Corringtons ended on a playground with ape and human children fighting. Dehn chose to go with a close up of a statue of Caesar with a tear falling from its eye which Joyce Corrington characterized as "...stupid. It turned our stomachs when we saw it." At the end The Writer's Guild of America ruled in favour of the Corringtons for sole screenplay credit. The director J. Lee Thompson was both unhappy with the script as well as the scope of the production, which he felt could have used a bigger budget to assist in the portrayal of the "Battle". Thompson had agreed to direct without a script in place and regretted that Paul Dehn couldn't have been on the project throughout the writing process.

This was a movie with good music scores composed by Leonard Rosenman... I am glad he was back for this film.

Watchable, but I will suggest, go fast forward through the fighting scenes!