Battle for the Planet of the Apes ** (1973, Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy) – Classic Movie Review 5749

Director J Lee Thompson returns in 1973 to helm the fifth and final cinema outing in the original series for the intelligent, distinguished sci-fi franchise, in which, after a nuclear war, the apes are the main dominant survivors, and they start to fall out into factions in the wake of attacks by human mutants.

Roddy McDowall stars again as the civilised simian Caesar, but it is a surprise to find esteemed film-maker John Huston going ape here as the Lawgiver. Also in the cast are Natalie Trundy, Severn Darden, Lew Ayres, Paul Williams, Austin Stoker, Noah Keen, Richard Eastham, France Nuyen, Paul Stevens, Heather Lowe, Bobby Porter and Michael Sterns.

Written by John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington from a story by Paul Dehn, based on the characters by Pierre Boulle, the movie is a bit muddled, and obviously struggling for credibility and human comparisons.

But, nevertheless, there is a satisfying attempt to provide a climax to conclude the saga for those with the patience and enthusiasm to follow the whole epic. Good cinematography (by Richard H Kline) and special effects, and scenes from other episodes, help to give it credibility as a sci-fi action movie.

It follows Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).

The series continued on TV in 1974 as the Planet of the Apes series that only ran for 14 episodes before Planet of the Apes (2001) was revived as a one-off by Tim Burton, and rebooted in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, followed by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5749

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