Escape From The Planet Of The Apes was premiered in the USA fifty years ago today.
Starring
Kim Hunter (Zira)
Kim Hunter (Zira)
Roddy McDowall (Cornelius)
Bradford Dillman (Dr Dixon)
Natalie Trundy (Dr Branton)
Sal Mineo (Dr Milo)
Eric Braeden (Dr Hasslein)
William Windom (President)
Albert Salmi (E-1)
Jason Evers (E-2)
John Randolph (Chairman)
Harry Lauter (General Winthrop)
M. Emmet Walsh (Aide)
Roy Glenn (Lawyer)
Peter Forster (Cardinal)
Norman Burton (Army Officer)
William Woodson (Naval Officer)
Tom Lowell (Orderly)
Gene Whittington (Marine Captain)
Donald Elson (Curator)
Bill Bonds (Newscaster)
Army Archerd (referee)
James Bacon (General Faulkner)
Ricardo Montalbán (Armando)
and featuring John Alderman, Alan Baxter, Jack Berle, Paul Bradley, Karl Bruck, Jeff Burton (archive footage), Sam Chew Jr, Robert Cole,
Walker Edmiston, James Franciscus (archive footage), Sig Frohlich, James W. Gavin, George Golden, James Gonzalez, Joe Gray,
Robert Gunner (archive footage), Bob Harks, Linda Harrison (archive footage), Elizabeth Harrower, Robert Hitchcock, Shep Houghton,
Joseph La Cava, Robert Nichols, Ron Pinkard, Janos Prohaska, Tony Regan, Stephen Roberts, Hank Robinson, James Sikking,
Jack Slate, Arthur Tovey and William Tregoe.
A contemporary review by Roger Greenspun in the New York Times, 29th May 1971
Nobody is going to believe it, but I must say anyway that Don Taylor's Escape From the Planet of the Apes, which opened yesterday at the Astor, the Juliet 2 and the 34th Street theaters, is one of the better new movies in town, and better in a genre — science fiction — that at the crucial middle level where the history of movies is made, if not written, has recently been not so much bad as invisible. Escape From the Planet of the Apes takes place more or less in the present, 2,000 years before the end of the world by nuclear explosion set off during a battle between human beings and their masters, gorillas (Beneath the Planet of the Apes, 1970).
Three scientists, pacifist chimpanzees, escape the general destruction by travelling back through time in the very space ship with which Colonel Taylor had made his surprising journey forward not so long before (Planet of the Apes, 1968).They thus bring with them not only the knowledge of mankind's doom, but also its very seed, for Zira, the female chimpanzee, is pregnant with the child whose name will eventually appear in the sacred histories as the first in rise up against the tyranny of people and assert the supremacy of the apes.
As movie premises go, I think this is quite beautiful — though I am sure that in one variation or another it has been used before — and its development in Escape From the Planet of the Apes does it considerable justice. Allowing for certain probable impossibilities (the film is much stronger in fiction than in science — no drawback so far as I'm concerned) there is enough thought to support the kind of dramatic inevitability this particular form needs and allows. As in most monster movies, the subject finally is human guilt — but here rendered richly ambivalent, because the monsters are scarcely monstrous and the guilt is a function of unassailable strategic intelligence.
It follows that the heavy, Dr Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden), should be the US President's science adviser. Though sinister, he, like the other human beings in the film, maintains a degree of credibility unusual in the movies, or in life. As the chimpanzee Cornelius — agreeable, short-tempered, a bit too proud of his mind — Roddy McDowall seems to have evolved a performance designed as a tribute to the late Edward Everett Horton. Kim Hunter plays his wife, Zira, rather in the manner of your maiden aunt from Peoria, and like McDowall's, her characterization is hugely successful.
Don Taylor's direction seems composed in equal parts of efficiency and tact, and with this material alone he earns his place among the just for every easy irony he avoids. There are certain remarkable moments (for example, the first shot of the chimpanzees' hotel room, especially prepared for their welcome to Los Angeles), but more often there is a sense of decent professionalism un-attracted to spectacular devices.
By conservative estimate, the President of the United States turns out to be a weighty idiot in 90 per cent of all science fiction films — and he seems to be in almost 90 per cent of all science fiction films. But in Escape From the Planet of the Apes William Windom's President is allowed to be urbane, wise, articulate and astute. And though I'm sure I'll never see his like again, I'll remember him as not the least of this film's graces.
(NOT my watermark!)
Notes
(adapted from IMDb and The Sacred Scrolls.)
(adapted from IMDb and The Sacred Scrolls.)
The film's villain, Dr Hasslein, had been briefly mentioned in Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970).
According to actress Kim Hunter, makeup on the original Planet of the Apes took four and a half hours to apply. By the time the third film was done, the makeup department was able to do it an hour quicker.
All five original Planet of the Apes movies were No.1 at the U.S. box office when released. Escape from the Planet of the Apes spent one week as the No.1 top grossing film: the week of 23rd May 1971 it made $4,294,942.
One of the earlier scripts has the three "ape-o-nauts" viewing the dying Earth from their space capsule before going back in time. The scene was actually shot, but not completed (no FX through the view ports).
Cornelius: "We made it."
Milo: "So far. But one thing is for certain. Whoever wins the war, there'll be no place on Earth for us."
Zira: "Where are we going?"
Milo: "Probably to our death."
Milo: "The fools... they've finally destroyed themselves."
Cornelius: "My God, the Earth is no more!"
Zira: "And we've escaped."
Milo: "We have - if we survive the shock wave. The shock must have unbalanced the mechanism. I don't understand. We've been forced out of orbit."
Cornelius: "We're descending."
Zira: "But where?"
Zira's first line in the presence of humans, "because I loathe bananas!", is a reference to Kim Hunter's real distaste for this fruit, which originated during the filming of the first Planet of the Apes (1968). (The actors portraying apes were required to keep their makeup on during breaks in order to save time, so the rest of the crew often called them monkeys and offered bananas to mock them.)
Scenes of Zira mistaking a toothbrush for a hairbrush, and of Cornelius and Lewis playing golf, were in an early version of the script, but were not used in the actual movie.
With Beneath the Planet of the Apes doing well at the box office, producer Arthur P. Jacobs sent a telegram to writer Paul Dehn which simply said: "Apes exist. Sequel required."
Roddy McDowall and Natalie Trundy are the only cast members to appear in four of the five original Apes movies. Roddy McDowall appeared in all five except the first sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (although he is seen in archive footage from the first film). Natalie Trundy did not appear in the original but appeared in all 4 sequels.
In a 2010 interview with the Archive of American Television, Eric Braeden admitted that he did not really like the role of Dr Hasslein as he considered it to be a caricature. Nevertheless, he added that he had a good time making the film as he enjoyed working with Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and Don Taylor, who he described as a very good director.
This marked Kim Hunter's third time playing Zira, making her the only actor to play the same character in three films in the original Apes series.
Roddy McDowall (Cornelius) and Kim Hunter (Zira) are the only actors to reprise their roles from either Planet of the Apes or Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
Don Taylor would later direct The Final Countdown (1980), another science fiction film involving time travel.
For the death scene, Cornelius and Zira were originally going to be ripped apart by a pack of Doberman Pinschers led by Doctor Hasslein, but producers thought the scene would be far too gruesome so they were killed by gunshots instead.
The opening scene was filmed on the same beach location where Taylor had discovered the Statue of Liberty in the final scene of Planet of the Apes (1968).
Contrary to popular belief, this is the only one of the five Apes films that was deliberately written open-ended for a sequel. No sequel discussions for Planet of the Apes (1968) began until after its release. Beneath the Planet of the Apes was written to be the final entry. Conquest's original ending led to man's downfall without mercy. Battle was deliberately planned as the last. After Conquest, producer Arthur P. Jacobs was already considering the TV series; but Conquest's profits were just good enough to justify another entry.
Armando (Ricardo Montalbán) gives a Saint Francis of Assisi medal to Zira's new-born baby. Bradford Dillman (Dr Lewis Dixon) played the Saint in Francis of Assisi (1961).
Escape was given a $2.5 million budget, and filming began on 30th November 1970 and wrapped on 19th January 1971 (all four sequels were shot during the autumn and winter).
Kim Hunter recalled of filming, "Escape was then cut short, of course - budgets change when you're making sequels, don't they? That one only took a month or six weeks." This compared to her three months filming for Planet of the Apes and her brief appearance in Beneath.
The film-makers shot the opening scenes of the apes' splashdown in their renovated space capsule off the Malibu Coast.
Sal Mineo was offered the role of Dr Milo at the recommendation of his friend Roddy McDowall, and agreed to appear in the film because he hoped it would restart his career, much as the first Apes film had done for McDowall. It was reported in late November 1970 that Arthur P. Jacobs had added the new ape character in a casting switch. It has also been suggested that the script was later re-written to kill the character off earlier than planned because Mineo found the makeup so uncomfortable, but a screenplay dated 2nd October 1970 already included Milo and depicted his death as it is seen in the movie.
More than on the previous Apes movies, Kim Hunter felt a sense of isolation whilst in makeup: "It was very peculiar, because Roddy and I were the only chimps. John Randolph, an old friend of mine, was in it, and I grabbed him and asked, 'Am I being paranoid, or something?' He said, 'The problem, Kim, is that I know in my head that underneath all that makeup, it's you, but I can't keep that in my mind all the time!' For some reason the human actors tended to keep us at arm's length on that one because they couldn't quite ignore the barrier of the difference."
Accustomed as Hollywood residents were to watching movie crews at work on outdoor locations, the sight of an ape couple selecting fashions at Georgio's Dress Shop and Dick Carroll's Store for Men in the heart of Los Angeles was sure to cause problems. Surprised motorists were so rattled by the sight of an anthropoid duo promenading about the LA streets, that a several-car collision took place blocking traffic for many blocks.
In Planet of the Apes, as Taylor and the primitive humans are held in Zira's laboratory, Michael Wilson's script showed them being given building blocks in order to reach a banana hung from the ceiling of their cells. The scene was not included in the film, but the concept was recycled by Paul Dehn for Escape.
The young chimp playing Baby Milo was named Kelly, and was one of two chimpanzees imported to play the role, one of whom did not survive the trip, leaving the remaining chimp to play both parts. Of her chimp child, Kim Hunter recalled, "it was a she that was made into a he for the film. Originally when we started working together they got another woman - I don't know who it was - in costume like mine, and makeup like mine, to work with the chimp to get it used to what it would eventually have to deal with when it would be on film. She came with her brother from Africa only about six months before going into the film."
Aside from the Los Angeles Zoo and other environs, portions of the Signal Hill oil fields were utilized for the ape-hunt. The final showdown took place among the rusting derelicts in LA Harbor at San Pedro.
Escape received positive reviews similar to the original. All the other sequels received mixed to negative reviews.
Arnold Mesches had worked for CBS as a courtroom artist in Los Angeles, covering such trials as the Manson killings and the Robert Kennedy assassination, when director Don Taylor came to pick up his step-daughter from a class Mesches taught in LA. Taylor asked Mesches if he would like to play a courtroom artist in a movie he was making. During the four or five days he spent on set, Mesches used his free time to sit and draw pictures of the cast and crew of the film; everyone involved wanted a drawing and they would purchase the drawings from him on the set to add to their own collections. “It was just fun,” Mesches said about his experiences during filming.
(Severn Darden (Kolp in Conquest and Battle) is often mistakenly credited as playing the courtroom artist.)
This is the only Apes film that doesn't feature an orangutan.
Finally, the so-called "plot hole": "whilst in captivity, Cornelius explains that Dr Milo salvaged Taylor's space ship (which crashed and then sank in the first film) and rebuilt it, which allowed the three apes to escape from the Earth before it was destroyed and travel backwards in time. The apes in the 40th century did not have the technology to salvage the ship from the bottom of the ocean, let alone the knowledge to rebuild it and learn how to fly it." This anomaly is more than adequately explained in the 2011 novel Conspiracy Of The Planet Of The Apes by Andrew Gaska, and its 2018 sequel Death Of The Planet Of The Apes.
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