It’s a mid-September Tuesday in 1979. Even though Halloween is a month away, my sugar-addled 10-year-old brain is currently marooned on the post-apocalyptic Earth of 3955. It’s “Apes Week,” and it just might be the best week of the year.
In the dark ages before my family had cable TV or a VCR, the Four O’Clock Movie was this cinema-loving kid’s best friend. A weekly, themed collection of syndicated films, like Charlie Chan mysteries, Abbot & Costello comedies, or Tarzan flicks, ran Monday through Friday, 4 to 6 p.m. on my local independent channel.
Screw Tarzan, this is Apes Week! All five Planet of the Apes films, in order. Let me assure you, dear reader, no homework will be done this week.
Primates are my jam. I adore Lancelot Link and revel in the fight between the Bionic Man & Bigfoot. The late ‘70s are the glory days of ape content. Even so, I am unprepared for the existential dread of watching Planet of the Apes (1968) for the first time. We blew up the world? What?
Knowing my suburban home is well within the circle of “total devastation” on the nuclear fallout maps of Washington D.C., my fears of atomic annihilation are already on a hair-trigger. The attraction/repulsion mechanism in me is in overdrive and I’m instantly obsessed.
Now it’s Tuesday and I race from the bus directly into my parents’ bedroom. I flick on the TV, ready to see more, to know more, about this wonderful, awful world of ape overlords.
I am absolutely not ready for the soul-shattering nihilism of Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970).
After a quick recap of the first film’s lunatic ending, we meet James Franciscus’ astronaut Brent (a smaller, cuter version of Charlton Heston’s Taylor) who has also crash landed in the future, essentially repeating beats from the first film. He meets Taylor’s mute girlfriend Nova, is captured by Apes, and rescued by scientist-chimpanzee Zira, who tells Brent that his compatriot, Taylor, is on this planet somewhere, having wandered off into the Forbidden Zone.
So the plot is “find Taylor.” I’m a little let down. There are still apes on horseback shooting guns, so I’m still in, just with lowered expectations.
But when Brent and Nova actually go to the Forbidden Zone, the film transforms, and I’m lost in the fever dream.
Because beneath the molten rock of the Forbidden Zone lay the devastated remains of New York City, complete with lush matte paintings of bombed-out NYC landmarks like The New York Stock Exchange and Radio City Music Hall.
But shit gets super-weird when we arrive at St Patrick’s Cathedral and discover Telekinetic Mutants worshipping a massive, nuclear missile! Fuck yes. This is what I’m craving. This is the good stuff!
When these Mutants pray “Glory be to the bomb, and the holy fallout, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen,” my little Catholic heart leaps with sacrilegious glee. The taboo is thrilling. But it keeps getting better when they declare “I reveal my inmost self unto my God” and they… PEEL THEIR FUCKING FACES OFF!?!
What kind of madness is this? I recoil from the TV. The Mutants’ fleshless faces reveal a snarled mass of muscle and nerves and… I’m covering my eyes. This is too much. Right when I think I can’t take it anymore, the Apes invade New York.
Shit! I forgot all about the apes! How could I forget about the apes? It’s fucking Apes Week!
As the Apes begin to massacre Mutants, Brent is tossed in a cell that happens to be occupied by Taylor! Caught between enemies, the men realize that the Mutants would rather blow their bomb than let the Apes win. That’s when Taylor tells us that the nuke they worship is a Doomsday bomb capable of burning the planet to a cinder. Fuck.
Ever the hero, Brent wants to save what’s left of this world. They escape and try to stop the Mutants from blowing the nuke. But… the Apes shoot the shit out of Brent. He’s the hero! You can’t kill the hero, can you?
Just moments later the Apes shoot Taylor too and I lose it. What the shit is happening? They can’t end a movie like this! I look to the clock, hoping there’s more time left but no, it’s 5:58 p.m. This movie is about to end.
Just then, as my mom is calling me down for dinner, a wounded Taylor coughs out his dying breath saying, “It’s doomsday. The end of the world,” and to my horror, ignites the bomb! The screen goes white and an emotionless voice-over says:
“In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium sized star. And one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.”
And so am I. How are there three more movies this week?
I didn’t know that the film’s success would essentially create the Hollywood sequel-machine as we know it. That it would launch a long-lasting franchise that sees its 10th installment, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, reigning over May 2024’s box office charts.
I also didn’t know that I’d never get over it.
I think about Taylor’s final deed and wonder, would I do it too? Do we deserve to survive at all? Forty-five years later and I’m still not sure.
