Escape From the Planet of the Apes

Actors:  Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowell, Bradford Dillman, Natalie Trundy, Eric Braedon, Ricardo Montalban
Rating:  7 out of 10, The 1970s surely will go down in cinema history as the decade where sequels became commonplace.  Somehow Zira and Cornelius managed to find a rocket engineer and fix Heston’s spacecraft from the bottom of the ocean and achieve interstellar/time travel in the two days since we last saw them watching the gorilla army march off to doom their world.    All that being said, it’s fairly entertaining to watch the apes arrive in 1970s Los Angeles, mainly due to the acting of Hunter and McDowell with remarkably expressive eyes, clearly superior to their CGI descendants.  The plot goes over the top with attacking “the system” but hey, this was the seventies where Hollywood was catching up to the social unrest of the 60’s.  Zira gets “stigmatized” for dissecting live humans – how unfair.  I need to ask – how the hell did Hauptman Hans Dietrich from the Rat Patrol get to be a presidential advisor! (you’ll really date yourself if you understand that) and Khan running a circus!
MVP:  Hunter as the inappropriate but lovable Zira