Product Details

• Actors: Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Bradford Dillman, Natalie Trundy, Eric Braeden
• Directors: Don Taylor
• Writers: Paul Dehn, Pierre Boulle
• Producers: Arthur P. Jacobs, Frank Capra Jr.
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, THX, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: G (General Audience)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: March 28, 2006
• Run Time: 98 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000E6ESE4
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #46,521 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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  Movies & TV > Action & Adventure > Series & Sequels > Planet of the Apes

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter reprise their roles from the original Planet of the Apes in this third chapter of the Apes saga. Two intelligent simians from the future, Cornelius (McDowall) and Zire (Hunter) travel to present-day Earth. They become instant sensations, wined and dined and treated like celebrities - until a high-level plot forces them to run for their lives!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Paradox of the Apes, May 16, 2006

By	Dave Cordes (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

Following the cataclysmic finale of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, there was only one logical direction for the series to go---> back to the future. The result is an illogically conceived and satirical prequel that will amuse and delight and ultimately devastate with its bleak Shakesperean tragedy.

When Taylor's spacecraft unexpectedly splashes down in 1973 and is retrieved by a military envoy, the three astronauts that emerge from the capsule are not revealed to be Taylor, Landon and Dodge, but rather the astonishing simian ape-o-nauts Cornelius, Zira and Milo... the third of which is a completely disposeable character who is appropriately killed off very early by a caged zoo gorilla who was probably jealous that the talking simian chimpanzees were getting all of the attention. With Milo out of the picture, the story focuses on the relationship between Cornelius and Zira in ways that were not afforded the opportunity in the two previous films and is filled with tongue-in-cheek episodes inspired by Pierre Boulle's original novel as Cornelius and Zira go around "aping" 20th century human culture (a subtle and clever mockery of our own) in an attempt to make themselves fit in to our society.

While Cornelius and Zira make themselves at home as cultural "celebrities" they are being carefully monitored under the watchful auspices of the nefarious Dr. Otto Hasslein played by recognizable character actor Eric Braeden (of Young and the Restless fame) who listens with great interest to what the talking chimps have to say about where they came from during a Presidential Inquiry and how they managed to arrive in Taylor's spacecraft as Cornelius explains that it landed on their seaboard and was repaired by Milo -- an implausibility which is the film's glaring continuity error since Taylor's spacecraft immediately sunk into the depths of the Forbidden Zone it is a far fetched conclusion that they somehow managed to not only find, retrieve and repair it (even if they had repaired Astronaut Brent's crashed spacecraft from Beneath) with engineering far in advance of their own intellectual ape intelligence (which Milo only "half-understood" as Cornelius describes it) but managed to do so and escape within a very small window of time before the planet was obliterated by the shockwave of destruction catapulting them backwards in time and arriving at roughly the same destination and era as Taylor's original point of departure (it could be argued that these narrative discrepancies support the theory of "Hasslein's Observed Time Curve" which suggests that a predestination paradox created alternate intersecting timelines as illustrated by the incongruent timeline of events that occur between Conquest and Battle). Nevertheless, once you get past the narrative gaps and just go with it, Escape is a fun and dramatically intense film but is my least favorite second only to the weakest link in the evolutionary Apes chain; Battle For The Planet of the Apes.

When Zira announces that she is pregnant, the film takes a dark and conspiratorial turn when the government realizes the consequence a race of intelligent talking apes will have on the future of our human civilization. In an effort to protect their newborn (the ape who would become Caesar), Cornelius and Zira find refuge with Armando, a sideshow circus entertainer played by the extravagant Ricardo Montalban who gladly welcomes the simian family with open arms, but it isn't long before Dr. Hasslein picks up the fugitives' trail and hunts them down in a tragic and inevitable climax that sets up the paradox of the entire Planet of the Apes chronology.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Last Great "Planet of the Apes" Movie, July 25, 2003

By	Oscar Saborío "Film fan" (San José, Costa Rica) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Escape From the Planet of the Apes (DVD)

This is the last "Planet of the Apes" film to feature characters from the original 1968 classic: Cornelius and Zira. The importance of this movie is clear at the end, as we realize how the Planet of the Apes began. It is good to have Roddy McDowall back, as he was absent from "Beneath the Planet of the Apes".
I always considered that the storyline of the first film ends here, and that the next film is like a slightly different story, in which a new character takes center stage: Cornelius's and Zira's son (named Milo in this film, but inexplicably Caesar in the next one).
Anyway, a must see in the "Planet of the Apes" canon.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A viewer, December 29, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Escape From the Planet of the Apes [VHS] (VHS Tape)

A pretty good PLANET OF THE APES sequel. The third best in the series. It has no suspense like the first two APES movies do. Not much action but the drama was good.