|
| Foocha! is a non-profit Web site. We do it for kicks, not for cash. If you're interested in writing for the site, click here |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
| TV,
Justin Harries,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F5
|
|
| |
| |
|
This Saturday Channel Four invites you to reacquaint yourself with the cycle of Planet of the Apes movies. And what with the media being so fixated on the concepts of evolutionary psychology at the moment, there isn’t a better time to ‘Go Ape’.
The series of Planet of the Ape movies is perhaps the most perfect cycle of time travel bonce scratchers in the history of cinema. It’s quite simple really. Astronauts land on planet ruled by apes – discover its Earth in the future and so promptly blow it sky-high. However, two rather likeable simians go for a joy ride on said astronauts spaceship just in the nick of time, winding up in the present. They produce a son who leads a rebellion against their human oppressors – and so ape settles down to a planet waiting for a certain spaceship to arrive
Unlike the duo of Terminator movies the loop is never breached, and so Earth is continually doomed to a self-perpetuating endless end. Thus not only are they the most cyclic of series, but also the most Seventies. Man is an unremitting brute of a species, one who ends the world for the second time because he doesn’t favour the way it turned out. These films were so couched in the ethics of brutality they displayed a truly grim vision of the human condition to be positively Artuan in their nilility. I mean, what other cycle of films depicts the Earth being destroyed not once, but twice, with the last utterance of humanity being the immortal line "You
Bloody
Bastard.’ The ape movies were well ‘ard, with the only sentimentally afforded to the two simians stranded in our god forsaken time during the third movie ‘Escape from
’ In fact the films openly support the acts of arg – bargy that lead to revolution. Witness the chip pan action in ‘Conquest of
’ to see just how far the ape movies go in the cause of freedom. The final movie ‘Battle for
’ does sort of attempt to bring a peaceful closure to the proceedings
however, we all know that spaceship’s just over the horizon
Catch the documentary beforehand, where Roddy McDowall displays some of the weirdest merchandise ever produced. Of the first two movies (Planet and Beneath the Planet
) shown tonight, even though it’s the cheesiest, ‘Beneath
’ pips Planet as my preferred, most probably for the scarred telephatic mutated remnants of humanity who live underground and sing to a still active planet destroying bomb. Welcome to the all too subtle world of Ape.
Channel 4 Saturday
Top Home |
|
|
|
|
