BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (1973) It was a battle just to stay awake I just noticed, I never posted a review for this one, and I can't find my notes for it. I've long since taped over it, so I'm going on memory, so if you're the kind of guy who loves reading reviews to catch the writer getting his facts wrong, you might be in for a treat. (again) Last of this series, Battle For The Planet Of The Apes ends it all with a bit of a whimper, the battle in its title being the last act in the film, and everything before it all talk, basically rehashing the worst aspects of Beneath... and Escape... into a disjointed little film which is short on ideas as well as convincing execution. It's easy to see why it was decades before anybody wanted to go back to the Apes trough again. Actually, wasn't there a TV series? Taking place fairly soon after Conquest..., Battle... has humans and apes living in an uneasy but peaceful coexistence, with apes being somewhat dominant. Ape leader Caesar (Roddy McDowall, yet again) dares to go to the Forbidden Zone to find information about his parents, but inevitably, he finds a colony of angry humans who don't want to share, let alone be dominated. Thus ends the peaceful coexistence. Battle... has a similar problem to its most immediate predecessor - it isn't believable for a second. I mean, Caesar has successfully civilized all apes in the world. How civilized? Well, let me put it this way: they're telling each other jokes about time travel paradoxes. Caesar managed to do this in a short enough time that he's not even an old man yet. These aren't radiation-mutated super-apes, they aren't highly-evolved apes from the far future, they aren't apes with computer chips implanted in their brains, they're freakin' apes, pulled fresh out of the jungle! The climactic battle is fun, but not enough to redeem this movie's wind-baggery. ...and that's about all I remember. Good, now I feel like I'm free to forget the rest. BACK TO THE B's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE