One of my favorite episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer is "The Zeppo."* It's the story of Xander Harris, the only member of the self-described Scoobies without any kind of supernatural powers or abilities. He's just a good dude, and therefore he's often relegated to making a pithy comment before getting knocked unconscious while Buffy kicks some demonic ass. But "The Zeppo" is Xander's chance to shine, as he gets entangled with a group of Sunnydale jocks who have been resurrected from the grave and plan to blow up the school. Buffy and the gang are otherwise occupied trying to defeat some unspeakable horror somewhere off-camera, totally oblivious to Xander's struggle to protect his friends from this smaller but no less lethal threat. Occasionally the two plots intersect, but the episode brilliantly pushes the traditional A-story into the margins in order to focus on the awesomeness of a character that had never really gotten his due.
Ben-Hur is "The Zeppo" of the New Testament.
There are certain older, venerated films that have permeated pop culture and the collective unconscious to such a degree that we feel like we've already seen them, even if we've never actually done so. You might not have seen Citizen Kane, but you probably get a "Rosebud" reference or jokes about sleds. Most people are probably familiar with the image of Charlton Heston kneeling on a beach andscreaming at a wrecked Statue Of Liberty, but play the first 20 minutes of Planet Of The Apes and most people probably wouldn't know what they're watching. (In my generation, I attribute much of this behavior to topical humor of The Simpsons, which likely served as the first introduction to much of this older material for most of my peers.) It's marvelous to see that these Hollywood classics are still a part of our societal dialogue, but at the same time it seems as if there's a growing sense that there's no need to watch the actual film so long as you can "get the reference." I've been guilty of this cinema crime myself over the years, which was a big motivating factor for beginning this project in the first place and the exact reason I started out with a vintage title like Apes.
It's astounding just how far the pop culture perception can fall from reality. If say "Ben-Hur," the first two words that should jump into your brainpan are "chariot race" and with good reason. It's a thrilling piece of filmmaking, steeped in drama, violence and intensity all accomplished without bashing you over the head with a lot of dialogue or over-the-top music. What I hadn't realized until the movie started was that the phrase "chariot races" comprised the full extent of my knowledge about Ben-Hur. I didn't even know this was a heavily religious film, let alone the fact that Jesus himself shows up multiple times. Hell, the full title of the film is Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ! How did I make it this far without making that discovery?
Honestly, if I had known that this was essentially an elaborate fanfic detailing the backtory of the guy who gave Jesus water on the way to the crucifixion, I probably would have opted for Spartacus over Ben-Hur. I was all pumped up for some ancient Roman action, and instead I got a lot of leprosy and horse-whispering. Sure the chariot race kicks ass and the naval battle sequence is a masterclass in building tension, but the film is overly long and extremely slow at times. I'll always love older epics for their use of exotic, practical locations and endless crowds of extras, if for no other reason than because it's the kind of moviemaking you just don't see anymore in the age of digital effects. After all, why spend money traveling to the far corners of the globe and then recruiting a few hundred background actors when you can do all of that from the comfort of a cubicle in Burbank? Still, even the charm of old Hollywood isn't enough to overcome my biblical apathy.
"The Zeppo" is brilliant because it's lean and tightly plotted, which is pretty much the opposite of the sprawling, meandering Ben-Hur. I have no problem with sheer length of running time if the scope of the story demands it, but I'm simply unconvinced that such was the case here. In fact, the most frustrating part of William Wyler's epic is that most of the Jesus stuff feels downright extraneous; if this had just been a tale of ancient Jewish vengeance, I would have enjoyed it infinitely more. The other great thing about "The Zeppo" is the way it satirizes the standard Buffy story structure, playing on the melodrama of yet another world-ending crisis by examining it through the sardonic eyes of a marginalized character. It's little wonder that, while Ben-Hur is definitely not my cup of tea, I will love Monty Python's Life Of Brian for the rest of time.
The filmmaking is impressive to be sure and there's a reason Ben-Hur won every Oscar imaginable. I'm certainly glad that I finally watched this one, but I also seriously doubt that I'll ever revisit it again.
*The title refers to Zeppo Marx, the brother who traditionally played the straight man and never got the chance to play any of the truly zany comedy of Groucho, Harpo and Chico.
--------------------------------------- Title: Ben-Hur Director: William Wyler Starring: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Haya Haraheet, Stephen Boyd, Hugh Griffith, Martha Scott, Cathy O'Donnell, Sam Jaffe Year Of Release: 1960 Viewing Method: Netflix DVD
I'm not gonna dwell on the second Apes movie too long, because I suspect that it's not going to end up playing a huge part in the rest of the franchise. Why do I think that? Because it ends with the destruction of the planet.
Let's back up.
The movie opens in the last few minutes of the first installment, with Taylor and Nova riding off along the shoreline and discovering the remains of the Statue Of Liberty. They continue to ride silently across the Forbidden Zone through the opening credits...then we cut away to another spaceship crashed in the desert, identical to the one which brought Taylor and crew so far into the future. Two astronauts have survived the crash. It seems they were on a rescue mission to find Taylor, but much like their predecessor they also assume they're on some alien planet rather than the Earth of the future. It's here where we get our first inkling that something isn't quite right, as one astronaut who looks like Charlton Heston Lite remarks to his ailing partner that the computer says the current Earth year is 3955, which is about twenty years before the first movie. No reason, no explanation, simply a lack of research/continuity. This already does not bode well.
The older astronaut dies, leaving our Heston look-a-like, Brent, to fend for himself. That is until Nova rides up sans Taylor. Brent tries to communicate with her, but she's still unable to speak. He quickly notices that she's wearing dogtags identical to his own, and he asks her about Taylor. We're treated to a flashback of Taylor and Nova alone in the desert, with Taylor unsuccessfully trying to teach her how to say his name. The two ride on until they encounter a wall of fire, strange lightning bolts, and eventually a cliff face that appears out of nowhere in the middle of the desert plain. Taylor tries to investigate, giving Nova his dogtags and telling her if anything happens to go back to the Ape city and find Zira. Again, let's pause. Where the hell did the dogtags come from? He certainly never had them in the first movie, and it's not as if his tiny loincloth has pockets. Anyway, Taylor reaches out for the cliff face and immediately disappears.
Brent wants Nova to take him to Taylor, but instead she brings him to the apes. They observe a town hall meeting where General Ursus is rallying the crowd to send an army into the Forbidden Zone, as he believes there are humans living there that killed a scout squad. There are some peacenik chimps, marching in a circle with pickets signs espousing peace, but the crowd is largely amped for war. Brent and Nova quickly find Zira and Cornelius, now suddenly married, and Brent is quickly brought up to speed with the rest of the audience. Apes run the show, humans can't talk, desert wasteland, etc. Zira tells him that Taylor went off into the Forbidden Zone and Brent is determined to find him. Dr Zaius shows up and we get yet another really weird moment. Zira was helping to treat Brent's wounds and is unable to hide the bloody bandages when Zaius arrives. So, to explain them away she tells Zaius that Cornelius HIT HER because she disagreed with the warmongering crowd at the town meeting. But it's okay because, as she tells Dr. Zaius, "I don't resent it, but his nails need clipping." No big deal. WHAT THE FUCK? Later on they make a whole point about how apes don't shoot other apes, but slapping around the lady apes is a-okay? This scene makes Taylor's previous chauvinism seem downright charming.
Anyway, after spending a little time in an ape prison with other mute natives, Brent and Nova escape into the Forbidden Zone, with the ape army not far behind. They stumble upon an cave that leads to an underground passage and then things start to get REALLY batshit. Brent finds himself in an abandoned New York City subway station, having his own mini-State Of Liberty moment. (Seriously, he even echoes Taylor's words, saying "My god, did we finally do it? Did we finally, really do it?") Further exploration of the underground reveals a buried New York Public Library, New York Stock Exchange, city buses, and even Radio City Music Hall. Here's where I really started to get excited. The ape stuff is all kind of a retread from last time, but this felt like we were pushing into new territory and really expanding the ape world. Plus, underground New York just flat out looks cool as shit.
My excitement quickly dissipated as Brent discovers a lone man dressed like Jor-El who's not only talking, he's praying. To a nuclear missile.
Confession: at this point I realized that I had actually see part of this movie when I was a kid. The missile has the Greek symbols Alpha and Omega on the fin, which identifies it as a doomsday bomb. I've always had an affinity for the Greek alphabet, so suffice it to say that ten-year-old Daley thought this was tremendously clever. Somehow that particular image stayed with me, but really nothing else from the film. I didn't even remember it being from a Planet Of The Apes movie. How is that possible? Because from this point out, the Apes are largely absent. WHICH IS TOTALLY FUCKING DUMB. Brent discovers a whole civilization of people with strange psychic abilities who have been living underground and worshiping "the glory of the bomb and the Holy Fallout."
Oh but wait, it gets better. These people are apparently defenseless in their underground cave, using their mental powers to project illusions of fire and lightning throughout the Forbidden Zone. They attempt scare off the advancing ape army, but Dr. Zaius sees through the ruse and pushes the troops forward. The nuclear disciples conclude they have no choice but to detonate the bomb and, gathering for a final religious ceremony that is chock full of creepy hymns, they reveal their true selves unto their god: they each peel off their faces to reveal that they are actually irradiated mutants that look like this:
Yeeeeaaaaahhhh......
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS MOVIE? Where the hell are the damn, dirty apes?
Brent is soon locked away with...Taylor! He's alive! The reunion is quickly spoiled when the mutant guard uses his mind control power to make the two men fight each other to the death. We basically get a lamer version of the classic Kirk vs Spock duel, albeit this time it's a cage match with spiked clubs. Luckily Nova distracts the guard by shouting out Taylor's name (Progress!) and they're able to escape. FINALLY the apes show up to wreck the joint, looking to literally smash any trace of humanity. Unfortunately an ape shoots Nova in the back, which finally pushes Taylor right over the edge. Apes, mutants...he's ready to do away with the whole lot of them. By now the apes have slaughtered the baldies and are attempting to pull down the doomsday bomb, so Brent starts shooting up the room while Taylor goes for the bomb controls. The distraction isn't so successful and Taylor gets shot in the chest. He begs Dr. Zaius to help him, but the ape refuses saying, "Man is evil, capable of nothing but destruction."
So Taylor shows him a thing or two and blows up the world. Just to drive the point home, the screen cuts to black and a monotone voiceover kicks in and says, "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium size star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead."
So...FUCK YOU AUDIENCE!
This is easily one of the most misguided sequels I've ever encountered. First of all, it totally feels like this started off as a completely unrelated movie that was co-opted into the Apes franchise. The new creative team clearly had no understanding of what was appealing about the first movie. I'll give you a hint: it wasn't the biggest asshole in the history of space travel. Spending the first half of the movie trapped in a watered down rehash of the first one is an unfortunate misstep. Not only that, but the apes themselves are a bit of a let down. Roddy McDowell was unavailable so they pull a makeup assisted bait-and-switch, recasting Cornelius for the two scenes he appears in. (This move would become famously litigated when Crispin Glover was replaced in Back To The Future Part Two.) Along with a lead who looks like Charlton Heston's actual stand-in, it's hard not to feel like we're watching the JV team. To add insult to injury, the reduced budget meant that many of the ape extras are actually wearing rubber masks rather than the extensive makeup that so impressed audiences in the last go round.
Then they completely overcompensate by abandoning the apes almost entirely in the second half. It's a pretty fatal blow, one that the movie never really recovers from. The idea of underground survivors is fine and all, but they're so cut off and separate from the apes that we never get any kind of meaningful connection to the rest of this world which had such intriguing potential. Really I want to hear more about the history and culture of the ape civilization. Other than the hippie protestor apes, the only fresh clues we get here are a few more references and statues to the Lawgiver ape and a nonchalant attitude towards spousal abuse.
Charlton Heston's very presence in the movie also feels really off. He's got two scenes, disappears for the next hour, then shows up at the end solely to try and kill his successor and then avenge the death of his mute concubine by literally destroying the world. While watching it I joked that the only reason they probably convinced Heston to return was the promise that they'd shoot him out in a week. Hilariously, IMDB seems to confirm this.
Oh yeah, also they BLEW UP THE EARTH. Now I'm extra fascinated to see how they managed to keep this franchise going for three more movies.
Look I'm all for really weird, out-there sci-fi that wants to play with big ideas, but everything about Beneath The Planet Of The Apes feels downright lazy, especially the doomsday ending. It plays almost like some kind of Monty Python sketch where they don't know how to end it and just cut away to an explosion. It was kind of fun, but I'm not sure I see myself revisiting this one very frequently.
Well, not sober at least.
--------------------------------------- Title: Beneath The Planet Of The Apes Director: Ted Post Starring: James Franciscus, Linda Harrison, Maurice Evans, Kim Hunter, Charlton Heston Year Of Release: 1970 Viewing Method: Digital Copy
-To sart with I'll follow the shoreline and my nose...
I decided to start with a classic film that, by all rights, I should have seen decades ago. Planet Of The Apes felt like a natural fit, especially since I had purchased the boxed set on blu-ray months ago but hadn't actually gotten around to watching any of them. Some of you must be thinking, "How is it possible that you're such a big movie fan and you got all the way to thirty without having seen Planet Of The Apes?"
Here's my upfront attempt to explain all the gaps in my movie watching history. The easiest way to sum it up is that my parents aren't big movie people, or at least they never collected movies the way I do. Granted a large part of that tendency is a product of the times we live in: when I was a kid, VHS wasn't quite as all pervasive or cheap as DVD is today. While we had a VCR and a decent shelf of movies, my recollection is that they were mostly movies for me and my younger brother and sister, i.e. Disney cartoons. In fact, the only movies I recall being in the house that really belonged to my parents were Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and Dirty Dancing. Sure, we frequented our local Blockbuster, but to be honest I was always so focused on whatever movies had just come out that I rarely had time to go back and watch older movies. My folks never really sat me down and said, "You like movies? This is a great movie. Sit down because you have to watch this." (Well, to be fair, that did happen a few times, specifically with Slap Shot, *batteries not included and I think Raiders Of The Lost Ark.)
Without any older siblings to pick up the slack, my movie discovery bell curve was generally limited to new releases and whatever movies my friends would expose me to. As I got older, I quickly discovered the folly of trying to watch a movie (especially an R rated movie) on broadcast television. (As I'm typing this, my wife is watching a movie on TV where they are literally cutting to commercial at the climax of a scene for the third time.) I therefore became somewhat of a viewing purist, not wanting to watch movies that were hamstrung by awkward TV editing, dubbed over profanity and the dreaded pan-and-scan. This meant there were piles of movies that, by the time I was old enough to realize I needed to watch them, I wasn't willing to watch unless I could sit and watch them properly. And until Netflix (and Netflix Instant) came around, that meant that I was once again limited to whatever movies I could borrow from friends and roommates.
To be fair, my only laziness also comes into play here. As I said in my prologue, the problem of access hasn't really been a credible factor for the last five years or so. My Netflix queue has been filled with piles of old flicks I should have watched long ago, but I tend to get distracted by shiny new things and the classics often fall by the wayside. That's part of the reason I started this project.
SO.
I fucking loved Planet Of The Apes. It's far from perfect and obviously the iconic final image was spoiled for me years ago, but it was hard for me not to fall in love with this late 60s gem. Yes, Charlton Heston is kind of an unrepentant dick and yes, there are a myriad of production issues, but it's got just the right combination of far-out sci-fi, intellectualism, and hokey charm to fall right in my wheel house. (For the record, I saw both Tim Burton's remake and Rupert Wyatt's prequel in theaters and found them to be misguided and inspired, respectively.)
Kicking off the movie in the cockpit of a spacecraft immediately puts it in my good graces, and the quasi-first-person POV of the Icarus crashing into the water is actually fairly well executed. Taylor (Charlton Heston) and his crew (minus female member Stewart, who died in cryo-sleep) actually make a pretty decent scientific effort to make sure that the planet is habitable before they evacuate the ship (more so than I imagine many of their cinematic peers did in 1968) and then the SLOW BURN begins. We're treated to long sequences of the three astronauts floating down the river in their inflatable raft, hiking along the canyons and skinny-dipping in a pond. Much of this happens in silence, although when there is dialogue it's mostly Taylor being a total asshat and insulting his fellow crew members. He also tells them that they've landed a few hundred light years from Earth on a planet in the constellation Orion which, since he doesn't consult any charts or readouts before abandoning the Icarus, seems to be an outright and baseless lie.
Things start to get interesting when they encounter a group of native humans who awesomely stalk them, site unseen, atop a canyon and then steal their clothes while they're swimming. (My wife had a similar experience with monkeys in Malaysia.) That leads to an incredible awkward shot where all three men stand naked looking at footprints in the mud, (Not to be too sophomoric, but it absolutely looks like they're all staring at each other's dongs.) and then a naked safari to find their stolen supplies. Upon seeing the mute natives gathering food, Taylor remarks that, "If this is the best this world has to offer, in six months we'll be running this planet," articulating the classic conquering European mindset and further cementing him as one of the most unsympathetic protagonists of all time.
It's at this point that the apes make their first appearance, over 30 minutes into the movie, riding in on horseback and brandishing rifles. Talk about an iconic moment! They don't even speak for another five minutes or so (when the apes are having their picture taken standing over the bodies of slain humans like big game hunters) but that imagery is simply stunning and it's no wonder that makeup artist John Chambers (portrayed by John Goodman in last year's Argo) would go on to win an honorary Academy Award, presented by Walter Matthau and a chimp in a tuxedo. In a thrilling hunt sequence, the apes (who seem to love using extremely ineffective nets) capture a number of the humans, including Taylor and his fellow crewmember Landon while Dodge, the black guy, is unsurprisingly killed. ("I've seen this movie, the black dude dies first.")
Taylor actually gets shot in the neck before being captured, which renders him unable to talk for the about the next 25 minutes of the movie. This serves two functions: first off, Taylor becomes INFINITELY more likable when he's not constantly spouting off conceited macho bullshit. Secondly, we get a great sense of how the apes treat humans when they don't yet realize the extent of Taylor's intelligence. This clever role reversal, with apes treating humans like savage animals who are barely intelligent and utterly disposable, probably struck a particularly resonant chord in 1968, when the animal rights movement and indignation over animal testing first started to enter the public zeitgeist. Taylor meets Zira, (Kim Hunter) an animal psychologist who is intent on proving that the mute humans have the capability for thought and speech. She quickly discovers that Taylor, who she calls Bright Eyes, is not like the other natives. He proves that he can write and communicates thusly with Zira and her fiance Cornelius (Roddy McDowell), an archeologist who has been pursuing a heretical theory that there was some sort of ape civilization that predates their own history.
At this point I'd like to discuss the historical progression of this ape culture. Considering only the information made available in this movie, some things doesn't quite add up. The apes ride horses, but don't yet have any sort of automotive transportation. They wear clothes of crafted leather and fabric and they reside in simple stone (and perhaps clay?) structures, but they also brandish automatic rifles and keep humans in cages, which implies an understanding of metallurgy. They clearly exist in a pre-industrial society, and yet when they encounter mass manufactured objects later on in the movie like the human doll, no one seems surprised or impressed. And when Cornelius displays a map of the area, it's of a shockingly small area of land. This is a civilization that has existed for approximately 1200 years. It seems strange that they would have been around for so long without exploring and expanding beyond what amounts to a few days traveling time. Moreover, it feels as if this culture is bizarrely advanced in some ways but stagnated in others.
Back to the story. Taylor, who's been paired with a native female he's dubbed Nova, attempts to break out of his prison when he overhears the guards saying that he's been ordered to be neutered by Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans), who serves as head of both the scientific and religious order in the ape city. Taylor's escape attempt proves both fruitless and somewhat boring, with Heston essentially running in circles around the ape village, crashing a funeral and hiding in a museum filled with taxidermied humans, including the corpse of Dodge. The chase culminates in Taylor, strung up in a net, stunning a crowd of apes by shouting out the now infamous line, "Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty apes!"
Here is where the film shifts gears once again. First of all, once Taylor regains his speech he immediately turns back into an asshole. He tells Nova about his doomed space mission, referring to the deceased Stewart as their "most precious cargo," saying that she was to be their "new Eve, with [their] hot and eager help." While the particulars of their deep space mission are left purposefully vague, it strikes me as a bit of a logical flaw if they were intending to populate some sort of space colony with three guys and one woman, all Taylor's sexist attitudes aside. His ape handlers quickly split him and Nova into separate cages and turn the hose on him, culminating in Heston famously screaming, "It's a maaaaadhouse!"
We're then thrust into what's probably the best part of the film, Taylor's trial and subsequent prosecution by an ape tribunal. Had I discovered this movie when I was thirteen or fourteen it would have become a regular staple of my cinematic diet, mostly because of the last half hour of the movie. Here is where we discover that the real heart of the ape civilization is built around a fanatical devotion to the "Articles Of Faith" and anything that doesn't conform to that faith is deemed heretical. So even though Taylor can plainly speak and reason just as well as any ape, Dr. Zaius and his ilk refuse to acknowledge the facts that are plainly presented to them because they don't fit in with the apes' pre-established worldview. (At one point the ape tribunal literally adopts the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" pose as Zira argues in Taylor's defense.) The ape prosecutor even rails against the "perverted and insidious theory of evolution." Again, had I seen this movie in middle school, as I was just shaking off the yoke of my Catholic elementary education in favor of the logical embrace of science, I would have eaten this shit up. In many ways, it reminds me of some of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, using some alien civilization to demonstrate an important point about our own humanity.
Once the tribunal rules against Taylor and threatens to charge Cornelius and Zira with heresy, the group stages a prison break and flees to the caves of the Forbidden Zone where Taylor first crashed and where Cornelius first uncovered evidence of an ancient civilization. (Again, to drive home Taylor's asshole sexism, he insists on bringing Nova along solely in order for him to get laid. If there's any doubt, Dr. Zaius even remarks that he didn't think humans could be monogamous, to which Talor replies, "On this planet, it's easy.") After Cornelius presents Dr. Zaius with clear evidence of an intelligent human civilization, Zaius refuses to admit the truth. After Taylor and Nova depart on horseback to "follow the coastline and [his] nose," Zaius goes back on his word let Zira and Cornelius off the hook for heresy and actually blows up the cave to keep others from discovering its contents and threatening their ape culture. Taylor and Nova then stumble upon the ruins of the Statue Of Liberty, showing that it was, of course, Earth all along.
I mentioned some issues with production quality and they are indeed hard to ignore. First of all, while the ape makeup looks fantastic and is certainly memorable, the actors have serious trouble with some of the prosthetics. Often times their mouths barely move at all when speaking. There are also great swaths of time that pass off camera, which you'd never know if the characters didn't explicitly say it out loud. Seriously, one scene cuts to another and I'm thinking it's a few hours later, or maybe the next morning, and then suddenly Taylor says, "It's been weeks." WEEKS? If you're not paying close attention, you'd think the story takes place over the course of a few days, when in reality it's probably more like a month or two. Most egregiously, there's a tremendous amount of shooting day for night. In fact, there's not a single night time scene that was actually shot in darkness, forcing me to wonder if there was some kind of strange production scheduling issue that necessitated this decision.
I'm SERIOUSLY looking forward to watching the rest of this series. Heston doesn't appear again in any of the other movies and honestly I'm not surprised. Perhaps I'm unduly influenced by viewing the movie nearly half a century after it was made, but Taylor comes across as an incredibly unlikeable hero, the kind of lead character that would never survive today's prescreening focus groups. At the end, when Taylor tells Zira he wants to kiss her, (because he's a MAN dammit!) she practically laughs in his face and says, "Okay, but you're so damn ugly." I literally cheered out loud just to hear a woman take him down a peg. I have no desire to see the further adventures of Taylor and Nova riding across the Forbidden Zone, but I'm TOTALLY down to explore new corners of ape civilization. It's little wonder to me that audiences gravitated to the endearing ape makeup and wanted to see more of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter. I certainly do, but rather than blow my wad all at once, my plan is to watch an Ape film every Friday night for the next few weeks.
One down, 364 to go.
--------------------------------------- Title: The Planet Of The Apes Director: Franklin J. Shaffner Starring: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans Year Of Release: 1968 Viewing Method: Digital Copy (On TV)
