Sunday, August 11, 2019

Planet of the Apes the road movie



Most people have seen the classic science fiction flick “Planet of the Apes” from 1968, featuring Charlton Heston. The entire franchise includes additional films, but also two TV series (one of them animated). This is the second episode of the “Planet of the Apes” series from 1974. The series was apparently cancelled after just 14 episodes due to low ratings – the irony!

Unfortunately, only the second episode (“The Gladiators”) is ripped on YouTube, and I haven´t seen the others. The series seems to be made in the typical “road movie” style, with the main characters crisscrossing America, experiencing various disconnected situations, and being constantly chased (but never quite apprehended) by the bad guys. 

The plot is set about 30 years after the events in the first film, when another group of astronauts cross the time barrier and find themselves on a future Earth ruled by smart apes, with humans in subordinate roles. (In the second film, Charlton Heston destroys Earth by a nuclear explosion, but I doubt anyone cares about this continuity error.) 

As usual, the chimpanzees are clever scientists and philosophers, while the gorillas are soldiers and generals. No orangs are featured in “The Gladiators”. A difference with the 1968 film is that the humans can speak and live in villages rather than in the wilderness. The villages are controlled by chimp prefects and gorilla guards, while the humans are relatively primitive farmers. No high technology seems to exist. One of the chimpanzees is baffled by a human-made golf club found during excavations!

The two surviving astronauts are aided by a renegade chimp scientist, and experience various adventures in a village somewhere in California, where the prefect organizes annual gladiator games to keep the humans happy. When one of the astronauts is forced to fight in the games but (surprise) refuses to kill his beaten opponent, pandemonium breaks loose! 

The message of the episode is strongly pacifist, and although the criticism is directed at “war” in general and implicitly at nuclear war, I´m sure the viewers had a very concrete war in mind at the time of airing. Yes, the Vietnam War obviously, and it´s interesting to note that the son of the main gladiator is a pacifist and by implication therefore a draft dodger…

Not the most interesting production around, but if you like 1970´s TV series, this might be worth a sneak peak or two.

PS. On YouTube, “The Gladiators” have been divided into two clips. You can easily find the second one if you start watching the first. 

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