Review of Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) by Harry W — 31 Jul 2013

Escape from the Planet of the Apes does feature a stylish intro, but once the background to the story is all explained the believability to it drastically drops as the time frame the preceding events supposedly took place during is too minuet to accept as credible and so Escape from the Planet of the Apes is built on the foundation of a sequel to a film which ended with a nuclear war between talking apes and deformed underground human beings with psychic powers, and so in desperation the story was changed to somehow take place 2000 years in the past by a point 2 years after the original spaceship flown by Taylor was sent into space. The explanations behind it are all too cheap which the filmmakers attempt to ignore to merely get on with another story.

Of course, as the story gets on we see the apes from the film's 2 predecessors reveal to humans that they can talk, but the humans react with poor acting and so it's easy to assume that Escape from the Planet of the Apes will have strange credibility to its plot dynamics and a sub-par cast.

Yet once that technicalities of the story have been finalised, Escape from the Planet of the Apes becomes a strongly character driven science fiction film with an interesting plot which takes the political look at apes living within a society that is totalitarian in its rule by humans. It looks at them on the level of humans since they have evolved to a state similar to humans, and the film itself is somewhat a prequel as time travel changes the chronology of the story to take place before Planet of the Apes in time.

The science fiction themes in Escape from the Planet of the Apes are significantly downplayed to make way for political drama, and although this deviates from the sci-fi fun of the series, it does stand to be a strong political statement even as it journeys into some of the comedic elements of evolved apes being honoured lot humans, yet distrusted for their understanding of the future.

Plus, Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter give strong performances as Cornelius and Zira respectively, and they ensure that the side of the story from the perspective of the apes is told well and that its allegorical moral points are valid.

Don Taylor essentially directs Escape from the Planet of the Apes into being a compelling drama with science fiction roots, and he does it well. Even though it deviates away from the usual scale of the Planet of the Apes films and doesn't strongly justify how the characters have ended up where they are, it makes a good political statement which you wouldn't normally expect, yet pleasantly receive.