Interesteg What makes it different from others?
TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film
s Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Sparse Planet of the Apes (1974) is the first venture into television for Fox's once-lucrative Apes franchise, and despite the mixed results of some of their preceding attempts, managed to churn out an enjoyable albeit short-lived and somewhat mediocre series. It's not an allegorical powerhouse like the 1968 film, but it makes for some harmless fun nonetheless.The credited creator of the short series is Anthony Wilson, who recruited eight directors and sixteen writers to develop fourteen, forty-five minute episodes. Though you'll recognize one or two characters from this series (Zaius, and maybe Urko), it is part of a separate continuity and shouldn't be confused with the original five-film run. While watching this, I wasn't analyzing it intensely or taking pages upon pages of notes. I just had fun with it. This series can be campy, episodic, and often cliché. Bit it gets to the point. It doesn't beat you over the head with anything. It just enjoys itself.I didn't catch anything outstanding in the way of directing. It's competent given the material, but nothing that moved or impressed me beyond not being overtly bad. That being said, the cinematography is pretty good for TV, and you'll find some nice shots of the sets and nature scenes. The sets themselves are also well-made and do a decent job of implying a larger, more fleshed-out world. The prosthetics conceived by John Chambers are still generally holding up strong, though a slight decline in quality/care is apparent. The show is overall nice to look at, and complements the adventurous/lighthearted tone nicely.Among my favorite episodes are "The Trap", "The Good Seeds", & "Up Above the World So High". The first of which places Burke and Urko in an interesting dilemma, and it's cool to see them try to cooperate and figure their way out. It also feels a lot like an age-old fable, such as "The Blind Man & the Cripple". "The Good Seeds" and "Up Above the World So High" are entertaining by sharing interesting visual concepts and delightful humor.Like most television series this show shares several writers, but doesn't suffer from it very much as it was already episodic in format. This show presents nothing as profound as the original, but nothing offensive either. That being said, it doesn't completely ignore the franchise's core allegory for racism, and features interspecies friendships that explore this theme via metaphor. There's commentary on other things here and there, such as scientific experiments on animals and societal views of science, but nothing too substantial or overtly subtle. The show's meanings abide more so to moral lessons than complexly layered allegories. The series also has some interesting lore sometimes, and has a good sense of humor that's sometimes self- aware of its obscurity. Though, there are flaws.Pretty much every episode, someone gets captured or hurt and they find themselves in a predicament that they wiggle out of by the end of the episode. There's not much of an overall plot, and character development is generally kept to a minimum. Then there's the fact that the "astronauts crash-land on ape planet" trope is still the core premise, and the protagonists still take awhile to figure out they're on Earth (despite that everyone's speaking English, and that there are humans). The show still greatly benefits from its overall simplicity, so the predominant flaws don't detract much from the ability to enjoy it.As for the performances, Ron Harper and (especially) James Naughton are pretty funny as the astronauts Virdon and Burke. They're constantly spurting quips and remarks, that though cheesy, are very entertaining. I like McDowall's performance as Galen less than Cornelius, but a little more than Caesar. He certainly sets the air of a curious chimpanzee better than an ape revolutionary, and is a great companion to Virdon and Burke. Booth Colman is no Maurice Evans, but portrays a serviceable Dr. Zaius nonetheless. Mark Leonard is actually very good as General Urko, and keeps his campy villain role fresh. The various ing roles throughout the episodes are competent for the 70's, and keep the acting overall pretty solid.The series music is by Lalo Schifrin, Earle Hagen, and Richard LaSalle, with the main theme by Lalo Schifrin. The score overall is serviceable. Nothing too memorable, but it sets the tone and doesn't distract from the action on screen.The short run the Planet of the Apes TV series had was all it really needed, since its episodic format could have ensured redundancy fairly quickly. For what it's worth, it's a lot of fun. This is by no means a must-watch (except maybe for Planet of the Apes buffs), but if you've got some spare afternoons to kill, then go for it! Score: 7/10
poe426 While it may have been better suited to Saturday mornings, PLANET OF THE APES had its merits: the performances weren't bad; the sets were out of this world (wink, wink, nudge, nudge); and the makeup was absolutely FANTASTIC. As with most television (Past and Present), the greatest weakness lay in the writing (hence, my assertion that the show would've been better suited to the Saturday morning lineup). The basic concept was viable, but the overall approach gave it that "made-for-the-kiddies" throwaway feel. Just recently, I happened across a Titan book, PLANET OF THE APES: EVOLUTION OF THE LEGEND by Jeff Bond and Joe Fordham, that singlehandedly helped rekindle my obsession with all things Ape: it's a massive, beautifully done look at the series from original conception to the most recent movies, and it reminded me of just how much I love the original movies (which remain, for me, the Pinnacle of Fantasy Filmmaking); there are scores of color shots I've never seen before, many of them full page and begging to be framed. If you're an Apes fan, it's a must-have.
silverscreen888 The very popular film "Planet of the Aoes", (1968) was adapted to a television series format by Anthony Wilson in 1974. Under the executive leadership of Howard Dimsdale, more than a dozen episodes were produced. The show was canceled before its producers had completed a season's worth of episodes; it has since become one of the most-highly-regarded of all one-hour television series, sci-fi or otherwise. I suggest this is because all but one of the original series' episodes, which was rather good, are even better-than-good. The idea level of the scripts, the actors employed and the story-lines were all quite unusually strong. The premise of the series as developed involved three astronauts on a mission to Earth's nearest stellar neighbor Alpha Centauri. Encountering an anomaly in space, their chronometers told them when they awakened that they had arrived in the year 3085; the planet they found themselves arriving upon was a vastly-changed Earth. One of their number was dead, but the others, played by Ron Harper and James Naughton, were captured by the rulers of the strange future civilization--apes. In that society, orangutans were s, chimpanzees scientists and gorillas the police and armed forces, all intelligent species who kept humans as slaves. After they had been assigned to the care of Dr. Zaius and his assistant Galen, it was Galen who discovered that other astronauts had found the new world; Galen and Zaius opposed General Urko's attempts to do away with the pair. And when Galen killed one of their guards accidentally, who was to execute the pair for having tried to escape, the three had to flee, and search for two things--the other astronauts who might still be on that strange world, and some way to try to reverse the time effect and get home.. This brilliant series was directed by such TV veterans as Alf Kjellin, Ralph Senensky, Bernard McEveety, John Meredyth Lucas, Arnold Laven, Jack Starrett and Don Weis. Writers for the series included Howard Dimsdale, Walter Black, Robert Hamner of "Star Trek" fame, Arthur Browne Jr., Edward J. Lakso, Robert W. Lenski, David P. Lewis, actor Booker T. Bradshaw, Art Wallace, S. Bar-David, Barry Oringer, Joe Ruby, Richard Collins, Anthony Lawrnece, and Ken Spears. Among the continuing cast, Mark Lenard was towering and powerful as General Urko; Roddy Macdowall and James Naughton, noted ing actors, were very fine as Galen and astronaut Pete Burke. Booth Coleman, a classically-trained actor, brought Dr. Zaius to life; Ron Harper was very touching as astronaut Alan Virdon except for his lack of a classical accent. The show's theme was written by Lalo Schiffrin, with music composed by Earle Hagen and Richard LaSalle. "Star Trek" cinematographer Gerald Finnerman provided the lucid work for this series; the complex art direction for a strange civilization was the work of Arch Bacon; Stuart A. Reiss did the imaginative sets, and a team of makeup experts headed by Al Schultz and Dan Striepke did the complex ape makeup and more. Every week, guest stars were employed to play human serfs and apes; the list included Percy Rodrigues, Normal Alden, John Ireland, Zina Bethune, William Smith, Joanna Barnes, Sondra Locke, John Milford, Mikel Conrad, Joseph Ruskin, Beveryly Garland, Anne Seymour, Richard Devon, John Hoyt, Jane Actman, Jacqueline Scott, Roscoe Lee Browne, Jay Robinson, Lonny Chapman, Jerome Thor, Woodrow Parfey, Morgan Woodward and Royal Dano. This was a very fine production, with many values worthy of a feature film; a true collector's item.
mike-635 At the beginning of a new century, this series remains one of the finest shows ever produced for television. It's academic appeal, combined with it's superior scriptwriting, easily resulted in a classic work of art. Although action packed, the screenwriters always assumed that the audience had a high degree of intelligence. Typically, this show was cancelled after only 13 episodes. A sad comment on our society, who allowed FULL HOUSE to run over 12 years.
