Planet of the Apes redux

This video is a great follow up to our Planet of the Apes feature - I found the link via the excellent Space1970 blog from our old buddy, Christopher Mills.

Rise and fall of the PLANET OF THE APES

It’s been a long time since I’ve found myself excited by the Summer movie season – for the most part I find most modern film, especially of the big budget variety, to be uninvolving.  For all the incredible imagery filmmakers are able to put on screen these days there seems to be something missing – story perhaps, good acting , maybe. That’s the basic thing – no matter how good the CGI, how realistic, without story or character the end product is pretty bland and is quickly forgotten. However, one film I am looking forward to is Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but this is because I was such a fan of the series as a kid. I expect though to be disappointed just as I was with Tim Burton’s remake of the original movie.

Planet of the Apes was huge when I was a kid – we’d never had anything so populist, so accessible in SF cinema. Remember this was long before Star Wars played across cinema screens more used to grime streaked, realist cinema. I didn’t see the original movie when it first played at the cinema – being three years old I was probably sleeping – and it wasn’t until the 1974 TV series played on UK screens that the craze really started for me. The TV series, although short lived, kick started interest in the series with young viewers at the time. That same year we had Planet of the Apes comics in the shops and the UK went ape crazy with the shops full of apes merchandise. The TV series was not a success in the US where it was cancelled after only half a season, but in the UK it was massive and became one of ITV’s most popular programs. The original movie and its sequels were re-released to UK cinemas and I remember watching all of the apes movies in my local cinema, The Workingman’s Hall in Gilfach Goch. And Marvel UK brought out a weekly comic book based on the apes series – I still remember buying the first issue of Planet of the Apes, along with that other new title, Dracula Lives, which I think, was launched around the same time, and thinking these were the coolest comics ever.

I was now bananas about the apes – my trousers were held up by my Planet of the Apes belt, my school lunch was carried in my Planet of the Apes lunchbox, and the image on my Planet of the Apes T-shirt resembled my future (and now ex) wife. Planet of the Apes became the hot topic for schoolyard conversations – it was 1974 and it was great being a kid – we chewed bubblegum, listened to the Bay City Rollers, David Essex and Marc Bolan and couldn’t wait for each Friday night when a new episode of Planet of the Apes played on television. I remember once discussing how hot Zira was for a monkey -  a MILF indeed!

Ahh it was a better world back then – Elvis was still in Graceland and all was right with the world. Well, apart from the strikes, riots and escalating crime rates, but we were unaware of all that. Hey, who follows current affairs when they are nine years old? That stuff was for the news, which, quite frankly didn’t hold our interest in the same way as Planet of the Apes.

Of course nothing’s as good as you remember it and when I recently picked up the TV series on DVD, I found that it wasn’t quite as good as I’d thought. And after a few great episodes it pretty much adopts a formula and sticks to it. It’s the same with the original movie run but the first and last movies in the original series remain classics. I also think Beneath the Planet of the Apes is OK’ish.

And so I’m waiting now to see what they make of the new movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes but you know what.... I guess I’m not holding out too much hope

PLANET OF THE APES - THE TV SERIES

I saw this DVD box set of the Planet of the Apes TV series and I was instantly transported back to the days of my youth. When this show came on the TV, the UK was starved of genre television and I remember it being a reasonable hit. Well everyone in school seemed to be watching it in any case. The franchise was huge in those days - we had the movies, the TV series, a comic book, a cartoon series and I remember my Planet of the Apes belt buckle was the height of fashion. Well that and my patch pocket trousers, mullet hairstyle, home-made skateboard and tartan scarf - worn tied around the left wrist of course.

I had to pick the DVD up as I had such fond memories of the show - the summers were always warmer and longer back then, the winters filled with snow and TV was super cool. Or at least it seemed so. And besides the DVD box set only cost a tenner.

Nostalgia however, can be a dangerous thing and revisiting the shows of your youth never lives up to the rose coloured memories. After all this show only ran the one season - how good could it have been?


The DVD, of course contains all of the episodes, including the Liberator which was never shown as part of the original series. In the UK the show recieved high ratings but it underperformed in the US - aired on Friday evenings at 8:00 PM Eastern/7:00 PM Central it had to compete with ratings giants Sanford and Son (which was the US version of the UK powerhouse, Steptoe and Son) and Chico and the Man(the first US sitcom set in an American/Mexican neighbourhood). If memory serves me correct it was first shown in the UK on Sunday evening, at about 7PM.

"The series begins on March 21, 3085 with the crash of an Earth NASA spaceship, launched on August 19, 1980. The spaceship is manned by three NASA astronauts, one of whom has died in the crash. The other two astronauts are unconscious but are rescued by a human who carries them to an old bomb shelter. After the human opens a book containing historical text and pictures of Earth circa 2500, the two astronauts are convinced that they are indeed on a future Earth."

The show was cancelled after only half a season but in 1981, several episodes of the series were edited into five made-for-television movies. Though I was older then and not really interested in the Apes and I'm not sure if these telemovies were ever aired in the UK. Perhaps some Archive reader knows otherwise.


Watching the show now I found it reasonably entertaining and its best episodes are comparable to the best TV sci-fi of the time. The ape make-up is carried over from the films and is just as good. The pilot episode which follows the plot of the original movie, as well as the source novel, is especially good. And the pecking order of the apes, the structure of their society is identical to that set up in the book and movies. The one thing the TV series gave us that the movies didn't was the military leader, Urko, a gorilla with attitude who was always on the search for the two intelligent humans.

The DVD box set is disappointing in that it contains nothing but the original TV episodes, no documentaries, not even an episode of the cartoon series. Still if you're on a nostalgia kick and remember the original TV series then you may get a kick out of this one. It's certainly more entertaining that Tim Burton's 2001 movies based on the franchise.