You may look at the poster and wonder, “Who is still using the mosaic filter on Photoshop in 2019?” These guys. That’s who. These guys.

Many of the reviews that I’ve read for this movie wonder why it was ever made. It somehow tops the original for poor editing, horrible font choices, costumes that were made in an elementary art school class, music that made me want to defecate myself and yes, scenes of apes spanking the hottest Hot Topic third key managers to ever work at the Johnstown Galleria.

Of all the horrific things that have happened to me in late 2019, this movie may be the worst of them all. CGI stock shots of buildings. Ben Cooper masks. Strobing lights. Dialogue that makes a Jess Franco movie look like a Woody Allen film. And yes, long scenes of apes laughing at their own jokes. And dirt bikes.

I worry that I’ve made this movie sound way better than it is. Please don’t watch it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

J. Lee Thompson had wanted to be involved with Planet of the Apes since the original film, but scheduling conflicts had kept that from happening. For this, the fourth film in the series, he shot much of the film like a news broadcast, influenced by the many civil rights changes over the past few years.

Screenwriter Paul Dehn thought that this would be the last movie in the series and saw this as the closing of the circle that began with the first movie. For inspiration, he also went back to the original novel, where apes took over as pets.

After a 1983 pandemic that wiped out all dogs and cats, humanity has taken on apes as slave labor. In fact, if it feels like slavery, that’s kind of the intention of the film. By 1991, the world has almost become a police state, which was foretold in 1973 when Cornelius and Zira came back in time.

However, their son Milo — now Caesar and played by Roddy McDowall — has evaded capture by being raised by Armando (Ricardo Montalban, returning from the last film) as a horseback riding performer. Almost a father to the young ape, Armando warns Caesar not to be upset at what he’s sees and definitely not to speak. However, the young ape can’t contain his anger.

While his “father” goes to jail, Caesar is sold into slavery and bought by Governor Breck (Don Murray, Bus Stop), where he is put to work by the African-American chief aide MacDonald (Hari Rhodes, Detroit 9000), who is against the slavery of the apes.

Armando is interrogated by Inspector Kolp (Severn Darden, who would help form Second City and was also in Saturday the 14th and comes back for the next Apes film), whose machine The Authenticator can get out any truth. Rather than cause the death of his son, Armando leaps out a window to his death.

Caesar loses faith in humanity and begins to teach the apes how to fight. He’s even captured and nearly killed — MacDonald saves his life — before escaping and inciting his revolution. He sets fire to most of the city and his apes murder nearly every cop that tries to fight them. He marches into Breck’s command post, kills nearly everyone and marches the leader out to be killed.

MacDonald begs Caesar not to become as bad as humanity and asks hm to spare his former master. Caesar howls back: “Where there is fire, there is smoke. And in that smoke, from this day forward, my people will crouch, and conspire, and plot, and plan for the inevitable day of Man’s downfall. The day when he finally and self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind. The day of the writing in the sky, when your cities lie buried under radioactive rubble! When the sea is a dead sea, and the land is a wasteland out of which I will lead my people from their captivity! And we shall build our own cities, in which there will be no place for humans except to serve our ends! And we shall found our own armies, our own religion, our own dynasty! And that day is upon you NOW!”

This is where the movie splits, depending on what version you watch.

In the theatrical version, as the apes raise their rifles to kill Breck, Caesar’s girlfriend Lisa becomes the first ape other than our hero to speak, yelling “No!” The apes lower their weapons as Caesar says, “But now… now we will put away our hatred. Now we will put down our weapons. We have passed through the night of the fires, and those who were our masters are now our servants. And we, who are not human, can afford to be humane. Destiny is the will of God, and if it is Man’s destiny to be dominated, it is God’s will that he be dominated with compassion, and understanding. So, cast out your vengeance. Tonight, we have seen the birth of the Planet of the Apes!”

After a negatively recieved preview screening, the producers reworked the film, even though they did not have the budget to do so. After all, this film had the smallest budget of any of the Apes films.

Seriously, this was made on the cheap. The jumpsuits worn by the apes saved on the cost of fake fur and were leftover costumes from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Other props and sets came from The Time Tunnel, City Beneath the Sea and Land of the Giants. Finally, Breck’s throne at the ape auction came from Taylor’s spaceship in the original film.

After all, the Apes were keeping 20th Century Fox in business after flops like Cleopatra, Star! and Hello, Dolly! They kept doing so even with lower and lower budgets.

So how did they accomplish this new ending? Roddy McDowall looped in a new speech, which was done through editing tricks — notie that you only see Caesar’s eyes — and the guns are raised back up by playing the footage backward. The blu ray release of this has both endings. Obviously, I prefer the one where the humans get what they deserve.

This is the only film from the original Planet of the Apes series without a pre-title sequence. That’s because that scene — where a night patrol kills an ape and learns that his body showed signs of abuse — was too much for the MPAA. All of the other movies had been rated G, after all. So this scene — and several others that were quite bloody — were all axed.

“Apes exist, Sequel required.”

With those words, sent in a telegram from producer Arthur P. Jacobs to writer Paul Dehn, a sequel was set in motion to Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

But hey — didn’t everyone die in a nuclear bomb blast at the end of that movie?

They sure did.

Doesn’t matter.

Dehn decided that Cornelius and Zira — along with an inventor ape named Milo — would go back in time with Taylor’s ship. He also consulted Pierre Boulle, writer of the original Planet of the Apes novel, to add more satire to the story. Originally titled Secret of the Planet of the Apes, the results are rather genius, as only three ape actors allowed for a smaller budget while selling director Don Taylor (Damien: The Omen II and The Final Countdown) on the idea of making the film more humorous.

Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), Zira (Kim Hunter) and Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo!) have escaped the ruin of future Earth and landed back in 1973, where they are taken to the Los Angeles Zoo, where Dr. Stephanie Branton (Natalie Trundy, the wife of producer Jacobs and the only actor to portray every single race in the Apes universe) and Dr. Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman!) are set to examine them.

In private, the apes elect to not to let the humans know that they can speak. They also can’t tell them that, you know, they once dissected humans and that everyone else died in the Ape War. But man, those humans act so condescending to Zira and she flips out and shows them just how smart she is. And then she starts talking. And then, well, a mishap allows a zoo gorilla to kill Dr. Milo. Luckily — and in spite of this — Lewis ends up friends with the chimpanzees.

Meanwhile, a Presidential Commission has been formed to investigate the return of Taylor’s spaceship and determine what these apes are all about. Cornelius and Zira become celebrities over night and everyone loves them.

That’s not sitting well with President’s Science Advisor Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden, Titanic, Colossus: The Forbin Project), who discovers that Zira is with child and therefore fears for the future of humanity. He gets her drunk — dude, she’s pregnant! — and she reveals all, which means that now it’s time for the government to really interrogate them. After some truth syrum, Zira reveals that yes, she has dissected humans before and yes, she knew Taylor before he died.

Hasslein takes his findings to the President (William Windom), who must agree with the council that Zira’s pregnancy is to be aborted — guess he’s not a Right to Lifer — and that they must both be sterilized. After his child is called a little monkey by an orderly, Cornelius goes wild and accidentally kills the man before they escape.

Branton and Dixon help the apes to escape, where they hid out in the circus run by Senor Armando (Ricardo Montalban!), where an ape named Heloise has just given birth. Zira also gives birth to a son, whom she names Milo in honor of their deceased friend.

Hasslein is more animal than the apes, tracking them to a shipyard. The couple do not want to be taken alive, which suits him just fine. He fires numerous shots into Zira and her baby to the horror of all watching. Cornelius kills him in retaliation before being shot by a sniper. The couple crawl toward each other, touching one another one more time before dying.

Meanwhile, at Armando’s circus, we learn that Zira switched children with Heloise and Milo has survived. As the ringmaster walks away, we hear his first words as he cries for his mother.

Somehow, each Apes film tops the previous one for total downer endings.

It could have been worse — Cornelius and Zira were originally going to be ripped apart by a pack of Doberman Pinschers!

James Bacon shows up here — the only actor to be in all five of the Apes films. He also would go on to write numerous books about Hollywood, including the Jackie Gleason biography How Sweet It Is: The Jackie Gleason Story. This is the only movie in the series where he plays a human being.

Detroit TV announcer — he was mostly on WXYZ-TV  — Bill Bonds plays a TV newsman. John Randolph plays a councilman, a role he’d also play in the next film, and he’s in another monkey movie, the 1976 remake of King Kong. M. Emmet Walsh also makes an appearance. And Albert Salmi, who is in Superstition, is here as well.

Sal Mineo found the makeup process very uncomfortable and tiring. Kim Hunter would later say that she and Roddy McDowall had to hug Mineo a lot to console him. He had hoped that this movie would restart his career, as it did McDowall’s, but due to how much he hated the make-up, he was killed off earlier than originally planned. Escape from the Planet of the Apes would be Mineo’s final theatrical film before he was murdered on February 12, 1976 at the age of 37.

Based on the 1960’s TV series that starred Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, this 2002 remake unites Owen Wilson as Special Agent Alex Scott and Eddie Murphy as boxer Kelly Robinson. Together, they must bring back a stolen spyplane from arms dealer Arnold Gundars (Malcolm McDowell).

Plus, you also get to see Famke Janssen as Special Agent Rachel Wright and well, that’s pretty much worth watching this movie for.

Evil arms dealer Gundars is sponsoring Robinson’s next match and using the event to auction off the stolen plane called the Switchblade. The agency has assigned Robinson as the civilian cover for Scott’s mission to get the plane back. Gary Cole, a long-time favorite of mine, also plays Carlos, the agent that everyone else wants to be.

This was directed by Betty Thomas, who was also behind Only You, The Brady Bunch Movie, Private Parts and 28 Days amongst others. It was written by Cormac and Marianne Wibberley, who wrote The 6th Day, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Boys II and both National Treasure movies. They were joined by Jay Scherick and David Ronn on the scriptwriting duties. They both worked on the Baywatch theatrical film and Zookeeper.

There’s a cute cameo when Robinson speaks to George W. Bush, as that’s Will Ferrell doing the voice.

I Spy is a strange show to remake, as I don’t know anyone that would be clamoring for a new version of the show. That said, it’s a fun movie and Murphy and Wilson mesh well together.

This has just been re-released by the great people at Mill Creek Entertainment. Check out their new blu ray release right here.

DISCLAIMER: This was sent to us by Mill Creek.

Somewhere past our galaxy, in a land where special effects can be downloaded from the web and inserted in After Effects, three female convicts find themselves stranded on a world of warlike apes. They must battle these gorillas and the warden that comes after them or face become concubines for these brutal primates.

Mark Polonia has been making movies since the 1980’s with titles like Amityville Death House and Sharkenstein. While Tubi may be a magical place where you can discover all manner of movies, you can also find movies like this, shot on digital video with credits that look like the PowerPoint that your family made to show off photos at some gathering like an anniversary party.

If the jungle looks like Johnstown, good news. It is Johnstown.

It does, however, answer the question of “What happens when a human does some Planet of the Aardvarking with one of the Planet of the Apes apes?”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Nothing succeeds like, well, success.

After Planet of the Apes, producers considered several treatments before finally hiring Paul Dehn to write the movie, making him the primary writer for the films.

They didn’t use the sequel suggested by Pierre Boulle, author of the original novel, whose Planet of the Men script had Taylor as a messiah leading humans against the apes.

However, he eventually agreed, only if his character died and all of his salary went to charity.

Dehn altered the script to center on a new character, Brent, played by James Franciscus. And with original director Franklin J. Schaffner unavailable, as he was making Patton, Ted Post was hired. He’d go on to make one of my favorite movies ever, The Baby.

Immediately after Planet of the Apes, Taylor (Heston) and Nova (Linda Harrison) ride through the Forbidden Zone. Suddenly, fire emerges from the ground and Taylor disappears into a mountain.

That’s when a second ship — looking for Taylor — emerges. It crash lands and only Brent (Franciscus) survives. He soon meets Nova and sees that she wears Taylor’s dog tags. She takes him to Ape City, where he watches General Ursus (James Gregory, who went on to play Inspector Luger on Barney Miller) rally his soldiers into conquering the Forbidden Zone. Brent is discovered and wounded, which brings him to the home of Cornelius (David Watson takes over for Roddy McDowall for this installment, as the star was in Scotland directing a movie) and Zira (Kim Hunter).

Orson Welles almost played Ursus. I wish that had happened. Plus, Gregory Sierra, who played Verger, was also on Barney Miller as Detective Sergeant Chano Amenguale. And for some real ape trivia, while Normann Burton played a human and an ape in the films (he was the Hunt Leader in Planet of the Apes and an Army Officer in Escape from the Planet of the Apes), only Natalie Trundy (who was the wife of producer Arthur P. Jacobs) played all three groups across four sequels. She’s the mutant Albina in this movie, then plays Dr. Stephanie Branton in Escape and then finally the ape Lisa in Conquest and Battle.

Soon, they’re back in the Forbidden Zone, where psychic voices tell Brent to kill Nova, voices that come from telepathic mutants who worship an atomic bomb. Either this is going to make you check out — as many critics did — or love this movie as much as I do.

In the ruins of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, these humans who survived the bomb and became mutants are ready to go to war with the apes, ready to use their Divine Bomb as a last resort. Then, you get to witness their religious ceremony where they remove their faces to reveal their true form — skinless faces praying to a nuclear god. This set is reused from Hello Dolly! if you can believe that.

Oh yeah — Victor Buono shows up too!

Brent is separated from Nova and taken to a cell where the mutant Ongaro (Don Pedro Colley, who would later play Sheriff Ed Little on The Dukes of Hazzard) forces him to battle the still-alive Taylor to the death. Nova utters Taylor’s name and the humans kill the mutant. 

Just like Shakespeare, everyone dies. Seriously, most of the mutants commit suicide, Nova gets killed, Menedez is shot, Taylor gets gunned down and Brent gets murked, too. Luckily, Brent took out Ursus and Taylor says screw it and nukes everyone and everything. The end of this movie is amazing, so astounding that Electric Wizard used a sample from it on the song “Son of Nothing.”

“In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead”.

An alternate ending was written where Taylor, Brent and Nova escape and return to Ape City. With the help of Zira and Cornelius, they release the humans from the cages and a new order of peace begins. Hundreds of years later, the Lawgiver is teaching a group of ape and human children when a mutated gorilla appears and shoots a dove.

Before Richard Zanuck was fired as studio president during production, he is the one who gave the thumbs up to using the bomb to end this series. It was another Charlton Heston idea, who really didn’t want to be in these movies it seems. That said — this isn’t the end. Not at all.

How many movies keep going after the entire world gets blown up?

La Planete des Singes is where Planet of the Apes gets its start. It’s the story of three humans who travel from Earth to the star Betelgeuse, where apes are the dominant species. So many of the ideas that appear in the movies come from this book, save the shock ending that all surprise endings yearn to emulate.

Let me tell you — Planet of the Apes is beyond Star Wars for some folks. How many other franchises have had so many sequels, two reboots, a TV series and a cartoon?

Boulle’s literary agent, Allain Bernheim, sold the novel to film producer Arthur P. Jacobs, who once said, “I wish King Kong hadn’t been made so I could make it.” Luckily, he had just the ape project to sell him.

Jacobs spent over three years trying to convince someone to make the movie. The screenplay, from Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, went a long way toward making that happen. He added themes from the Cold War and added the aforementioned twist ending. But with production costs at $10 million — $70 million today — no studio wanted to make it.

Jacobs and associate producer Mort Abrahams kept at it and once they got Charlton Heston on board, things started to get rolling. Heston brought director Franklin J. Schaffner (Patton, The Boys From Brazil) on board and for a screen test.

This screen test featured Heston, Edward G. Robinson appeared as Dr. Zaius and two then-unknown Fox contract actors — James Brolin and Linda Harrison — who played Cornelius and Zira.

It worked and convinced 20th Century Fox to make the film for $5.8 million, which paid off — the film made $22 million.

Astronauts Taylor (Heston), Landon and Dodge awake from hypersleep as their ship crashes into an unknown planet. A malfunction has already claimed the life of their crewmate Stewart. As they leave their spacecraft, Taylor notices that they are 2,000 years in the future and on a planet that appears to be a wasteland.

Soon, they’ve been attacked by not only primitive humans but militant apes. Dodge is killed, Taylor is injured and Landon is knocked out. Animal psychologist Zira (Kim Hunter) and surgeon Galen (Wright King, Invasion of the Bee Girls) save Taylor and place him with Nova (Linda Harrison, who for some time renamed herself Augusta Summerland thanks to her spiritual advisor), a gorgeous primitive human.

The apes live in a caste system, with gorillas serving as the muscle, orangutans handling religion and government and chimpanzees being involved in medicine and science. Humans are seen as nothing more than animals to be herded and hunted.

This all changes for Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Zira when they learn that Taylor can speak. After all, how else would we get such classic lines like “Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”

Of course, a visit to the Forbidden Zone — a trope that would come back in nearly every post-apocalyptic film ever — we learn that this isn’t another planet. It’s Earth. It’s also the best ending to probably any movie ever made.

Two months after this came out, they were already talking sequel. Stay tuned all week — we’ll be covering every single film in the series.

Want to learn more? Check out the official Planet of the Apes site.

The Man Who Saved the World is the true name of this movie, although nearly everyone refers to it as Turkish Star Wars.

Murat and Ali crash their ships on a desert planet that is no way Tatooine. That said, the footage of their crash is from Star Wars and footage of both the US and USSR space programs. Ali thinks that only women live on this planet, so he does a wolf whistle because in a galaxy long ago and far away me too does not exist. The whistle backfires and they fight skeletons on horseback before they are forced into the gladiator pits.

Our villain is a thousand-year-old wizard who has been stopped from destroying the Earth by a “shield of concentrated human brain molecules” or, as George Lucas would call it, the Death Star.

Our heroes escape to a cave where zombies attack and turn the children into the living dead, which gives the wizard more power, so our heroes and a girl go to a bar that is not in Mos Eisley. The villain gets them back and offers them all sorts of power and women to help destroy the Earth. He already has a golden brain and now all he needs is a real human brain.

There are more monster battles and escapes and then Murat finds out about a sword made by the 13th clan from a melted down mountain that is shaped like a lightning bolt and protected by ninjas. Ali goes nuts though and for some reason, tries to steal the golden brain and this awesome sword and then gets milled by Turkish cinema.

Grieving for his lost friend, Murat melts down the sword and the golden human brain and forge them into a pair of gloves and boots. He uses the Force, err, beats the unholy monster dung out of skeletons and beasts and even karate chops the villain in half. Then he does what you or I would — he flies away in the Millennium Falcon.

Making this movie even better is the fact that it shamelessly steals music from every movie that you love. It’s main theme is “The Raiders March” by John Williams. However, it also lifts themes from Moonraker, The Black Hole, Ben-Hur, Flash Gordon, the Giorgio Moroder’s remix of Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes and Silent Running.

The decision to just steal the footage from Star Wars was a necessity. Supposedly, there were elaborate spaceship sets made on a Turkish beach that was destroyed by a storm and the studio refused to pay for new ones. Director Cetin Inanc bribed a guard at a Turkish film distributor and got the footage from a print of Lucas’ film. However, all of the footage was spliced in from an anamorphic print — while this movie was shot in a different aspect ratio — making the Death Star look positively tiny.

It gets even sillier. The evil wizard has a wife who transforms into an old hag and a spider. There’s a yellow vortex that turns men into zombies. Plus a man turns into a hairy ogre. All of these moments are also stolen from Bert I. Gordon’s The Magic Sword.

Hey, you know how it goes. After all, Lucas stole quite a bit too. Ask Jack Kirby, The Dam Busters and Kurosawa. Maybe this movie brings balance to the Force.

You can watch this at the Internet Archive or just use the YouTube link attached right here.