Going Ape

 

 

 

 

 

This is my entry in the So Bad It's Good Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room

 

Star Wars people are bonkers. I've heard that quite a number of Star Wars fanatics will buy a ticket to a movie that is going to have a preview of the newest Star Wars  movie during it's opening previews, watch the preview, then leave the movie without watching the movie they paid good money to enter the theater. That's just nuts, if you ask me.

And yet, I paid good money in 2001 to go to see Swordfish, a movie I had no desire to see, in actuality. I paid my admission with the express intent of seeing the preview of Tim Burton's new movie, Planet of the Apes. The difference is I actually stayed to see the movie. (I'm a fanatic, but I'm not insane...) Swordfish, BTW, is a terrible movie, and the only highlight, for me, was seeing Halle Berry topless. Swordfish might be someone's idea of a good entry for the So Bad It's Good blogathon, but definitely not for me.

On the other hand, the preview of Planet of the Apes was a success. that is if it was meant to attract me as a patron. Having been a fan of the older five movies, and having great hopes for the advancement of technology to make the apes look even more realistic than those of the 70's Apes  movies, I have to say I was totally entranced by that brief three or four minute preview.  And, of course, I was first in line to buy a ticket to the first showing when the movie finally hit the theaters... Literally, I was there about 30-40 minutes before the box office even opened.  

The road to this remake was a bit rocky. It had originally been slated to be produced in 1988. The original idea was to produce a sequel to the first 1968 Planet of the Apes, apparently ignoring the four sequels that followed that first movie.  The story would have taken place in a future of that timeline, with a character named Duke, who was a descendant of Charlton Heston's character, Taylor, leading a human revolt.  Thankfully we were saved from having Tom Cruise in the lead role of that pre-production. It was ditched because of a shakeup in the studio executives of 20th Century Fox Studios.

Future tries at creating the movie went through some interesting changes. Both Sam Raimi and Oliver Stone were interested, and one of the more intriguing ideas about a plot involved everything having been predicted, including the rise of the apes to power, through some kind of interpretation of a Bible Code. (Remember the popular 1997 book by Michael Drosnin, The Bible Code? Apparently this plot drew some inspiration from that book...) This version would have had Arnold Schwarzenegger in the lead role.

Through the various tries at getting the film off the ground, both Roland Emmerlich and James Cameron were in talks to direct. Eventually the director became Tim Burton. The script itself, however, was not completely set in stone. According to wikipedia the script was still being hashed out even as sets for the movie were being built. The good thing is that Rick Baker, makeup genius extraordinaire, had been on board from even the earliest tries at the remake. Having been a fan of Baker ever since An American Werewolf in London, I personally had high hopes for convincing prosthetics.

 

 

 

Planet of the Apes  (2001): 

Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) is the liaison between the experimental chimpanzee trainees for the space program. Basically, he works with one chimpanzee, Pericles, training him how to operate the controls of the scout ship of the space program. He has an affinity with  Pericles, much more than he really has with his co-workers, or even his commanding officers. On the space station Oberon, Leo is the connection with his charge and is Pericles' guide.

When a strange anomaly appears in the vicinity, Leo's superiors tell him to send his chimp out in a space pod to investigate. Leo objects, insisting that he be the one sent out instead of the guinea pig chimp, but is overruled. Pericles disappears. Ostensibly to do some work to try to figure out what happened Leo goes to another pod, but ultimately takes command of the situation and launches the second pod. And he too ends up losing contact with the Oberon.   

When Leo gets out of the space anomaly he has somehow been sent some 3000 years into the future. He crash lands in the jungle on a strange planet. "Strange" is the key word. He finds himself caught up in a chase as native humans are running in terror. What are they running from? Why, militaristic apes of course.

Leo

 

Leo, along with several others, ends up being captured. Limbo (Paul Giamatti), an orangutan who is a slave trader, is the ape in charge. He is not impressed with this new collection, and is especially not impressed with Leo, who doesn't seem to be as fatalistic towards his capture as the others. 

Limbo

 

Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), a chimpanzee with a decidedly liberal "all species should be treated equally" attitude, buys both Leo and a native girl, Deanna (Estella Warren), to work in her house. Ari is the daughter of a political bigwig, Senator Sandar (David Warner).

 

Deanna

Ari

 

Sandar

 

 

 

Ari is also the source of attraction for the military bigwig, General Thade (Tim Roth), although she has no love for him. Politically they are on opposite ends of the spectrum as Thade hates all humans, and would be entirely at home with the idea of exterminating every human from the planet. 

Thade

 

Leo. independent soul that he is, works at trying to escape from his captivity. He eventually succeeds, in the process taking Ari and her friend, General Krull (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), as hostages. Leo finds a device from his own time that seems to indicate that a rescue party from his old ship is somewhere nearby. It turns out that that somewhere is also the location of the legendary "Calima", the place where the religious sector of the ape society believe life began.

Chased by Thade and his adjutant, Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan), Leo heads to the remote area. There he does not find the hoped for rescue party; instead he finds the remains of the Oberon which seems to have been there for thousands of years. And the source of the name "Calima"... 

 

Ultimately, it turns out that the Oberon tried to follow Leo into the anomaly, but this anomaly is some kind of unstable wormhole that transports people through time, but cannot be controlled enough to say where the people will end up.

 

In the end, many humans come to follow Leo, whom they think is some kind of hero, and do battle with the entire ape army. That is, until Pericles arrives in his space pod.

This film was disparaged viciously on it's release. Right wing political stooges like Rush Limbaugh got in the fray by claiming the film was anti-American. At least one report I heard made a big deal out of the ending of the film. (Spoiler alert! If you want to watch this film first stop reading and come back after you've seen it.) 

You see, at the end of the movie Leo manages to escape and pilot the space pod back to his own time. Or so it would seem. But when he crash lands on Earth, he ends up near what looks like the Lincoln Memorial. Only instead of Lincoln, it is General Thade.  The ending was made a bit confusing (like how did Thade escape from his "prison" at the end and somehow also travel back in time?) But the big whine that I heard was from those same right wing stooges, like the aforementioned Limbaugh, who howled bloody murder over making their hero, Lincoln, into an ape.

The ending was the only part of the movie that was in tune with the original novel, however. Every one knows the iconic ending of the 1968 movie, but in the Boulle novel the main character also escaped from the planet, only to arrive in his own time to find that the apes were in charge there, too. I think the ending of the film was supposed to be meant as a cliffhanger, and the next film in the series would have explained what happened (as in how Thade escaped from the planet to go hrough his own time portal and create another alternate universe). . However, due to the negative reception of the first one, a follow up movie was trash canned.

There are several callbacks in this film to the original, including a cameo (uncredited, by the way) of Charlton Heston, who plays General Thade's father. He utters a line: "Damn them! Damn them all to Hell!". And Attar gets to be the center of another callback when he tells Leo "Get your stinking hands off me, you damn dirty human!"

The film, believe it or not, was actually a success, financially. It made about $250 million more than it's budget. Which means it cracked the top 10 of money makers for 2001. Not bad, considering that this year's output included the first installments of both Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, the top money makers for 2001.

But critical reception sunk the film. Most critics gave it negative reviews, and John Wilson and co, at the Razzies named it the worst sequel or remake of the year. The Rotten Tomatoes rating for the film stands at 43%, but admits "this remake...can't compare to the original...but the striking visuals and B-movie charms may win you over." And that basically is how I feel. The plot leaves a little to be desired, but it was effective as a visual form. Until the CGI enhanced trilogy of recent years came along, it was a fairly good presentation of apes. Thanks to Rick Baker for his work there.  

Well folks, time to fire up the old Plymouth. Hopefully I won't run into some time portal on the way home, but just in case, I think I'll stop at the store and buy some bananas...

Quiggy

 

 

In the Name of Science

This is my first entry in the Movie Scientist Blogathon hosted by Christina Wehner and Silver Screenings

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra  is an homage to, and a parody of the science fiction movies of the 50's.  If you haven't seen a lot of the sci-fi and horror movies from the 50's and 60's that were made on the cheap, such as The Brain that Wouldn't Die and Teenage Zombies (both reviewed on here at an earlier date), much of the humor may escape you.  Suffice to say, the stilted dialogue and over-exposition done in this movie is a direct parody of what happened often in such movies of the earlier era.

Larry Blamire and the rest of the cast may or may not be recognizable to the average viewer.  With the exception of Blamire, however, most of the actors have been active in the film industry, and if you are like me and have a good memory for faces, you might even remember some of them.   Fay Masterson, for instance, who here plays the scientist's wife, appears in Cops and Robbersons (a Chevy Chase comedy),  The Quick and the Dead, Eyes Wide Shut  and Fifty Shades Darker (the sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey).  Brian Howe, you might remember as one of Clint Eastwood's sons in Gran Torino.  He can also be seen in Catch Me if  You Can, The Pursuit of Happyness, and The Majestic.

Blamire himself is not a prolific director.  He only has a handful of credits to his name, mostly in the area of the same genre as this, witty parodies of 50's style movies.  (One being a sequel to this one, The Lost Skeleton Returns Again).

The Lost Skeleton  of Cadavra (2001)

Filmed in the exciting new innovation of "skeletorama" (the jokes start early here...), the film pans down on Dr. Paul Armstrong (Larry Blamire) and his wife Betty (Fay Masterson).  They are looking for a recently landed meteor which Paul theorizes may contain significant  amounts of that rarest of all elements, "atmosprerium".  In the exposition leading up to them driving to a cabin in the woods we find that Paul is a scientist and wants to experiment on the atmospherium, because it means a lot to "the  field of science".  They stop to ask a farmer who is just standing by the side of the road and ask directions to the cabin.

Meanwhile, another scientist, Dr. Roger Fleming (Brian Howe)  is hiking through the woods seeking Cadavra Cave.  He encounters a ranger standing by the side of the road just hoping for someone to come along who needs help, and gets directions to the cave. (People seem to just stand by the side of the road waiting to be of help in this movie...)  When he arrives at the cave, Roger finds the "lost skeleton of Cadavra" and begins laughing maniacally at his fortune.  Eventually the skeleton begins talking to him and says it needs atmospherium to be able to come to life and take over the world, and induces Roger to help him.

At the same time, a space ship lands (it's only a model...), and two of the most naive and dim-witted aliens ever emerge, Kro-Bar (Andrew Parks) and Lattis (Susan McConnell).  They reveal two of the additional plot devices that drive this movie; 1) that their pet mutant has escaped and is a danger to the people of Earth, and 2) that they need a special ingredient to be able to repeair their ship. what's the element?  Can't you guess...?

The aliens overhear Paul and Betty discussing the meteor and it's contents of atmospherium.  They use their "transmutatron" to change themselves into normal humans  and show up at the cabin, where they pose as two Earthmen, choosing the names Bammin and Tergasso.  Of course, even despite the obvious, Paul and Betty are clueless that something is amiss with their visitors, and invite them in.



A short while later, Roger shows up with a girl that he has made using the transmutatron to change four forest animals, one he has named "Animala" but introduces as his wife, Pammy (Jennifer Blaire).  There are some rather funny scenes here as all of the visitors try to convince the Armstrongs that they are legitimately who they claim to be while each group tries to figure out how to steal the meteor.  To that effect, Roger engenders a deal with the aliens to share the atmospherium if they are successful.  (He knows the truth about the aliens, of course, having seen them use the transmutatron.

Of course, Roger has no intention of actually sharing, and when the plan works he reneges on the deal and takes all the atmospherium for is own purposes.  He brings the skeleton to life, and the skeleton turns out to have some rather strong abilities such as controlling people psychically. The last part of the movie is a rather funny attempt to foil the plans of the skeleton, which includes marrying Lattis in a ceremony.  The mutant plays a role in this, which is enhanced by the fact that the mutant has fallen in love with Betty.

Once again, if you are a devotee of these old grade Z movies which Blamire and crew are skewering, you will see a lot of the tropes that appear in them.  But you don't have to recognize the tropes to be able to enjoy the movie.  The best way to do so if this is your first time is to suspend your expectations of quality Oscar-worthy performances and just watch it as if it were a cheapjack film, which it most certainly is.

Well folks, time to climb back in my spaceship and head home.  Drive safely.

Quiggy