Customer Reviews

Planet of the Apes: An Unauthorized History

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This book is absolute garbage. It is poorly written, filled with factual errors and contains not a single photo from any of the films. As a matter of fact, it barely has any illustrations at all. For those looking for a great book about the Apes series, I recommend "Planet Of The Apes Revisited".

Here is an extremely pedestrian effort to jump on the inevitable Planet of the Apes bandwagon. This book features few photos and lists capsule plot summaries and trivia for each movie and TV series, including the animated TV show. Check out the quotes for "Escape from the Planet of the Apes"--the author can't even produce the correct line of dialogue. Zira "loathes" bananas, she doesn't "hate" them. This is just a rehash of information that has been available for years in other much more enjoyable formats.

It was, like already stated here, misinformative as hell. Just a cheap, perfunctory attempt to cash in on the POTA franchise.

I know this book is rather msinformative. To give just one example of my own :when the author describes Charlton Heston's 1980's tv series "The Colbys" he says it ran from 1985 to 1986. Wrong! The Colbys ran until 1987!And I thought there was a problem with the date Brent lands back on earth. Doesn't he land on our future world (around) 30 years earlier than Taylor does! And Taylor has already metZira and Cornelius in the story about Brent. Did Taylor go back into orbit and crash land on earth again (31 years earlier) and meet Zira, Cornelius, and Nova's parents. I know huh? Well the book seemingly doesn't mention this inconsistency (if I am remembering the film dates right, haven't seen either film in four years). But it is certainly wrong about the series "The Colbys". And I always thought Franciscus was superb as Brent myself. And I stil do!

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I could not put it down although I have a few problems with it. The information was interesting for Apes fans but the author put too many of his opinions on what he felt was good or not good about the movie series. Just report and we'll decide. I particularly disagreed with his harsh criticism of James Franciscus as Brent in "Beneath". Also, a few inaccuracies:P.114-The Cheinco wastepaper basket has Aldo on it, not just a Gorilla Soldier. P.120-The new Apes cards are by Inkworks Card Co., not Rainbow Card Co.. P.151-Lew Ayres played Mandemus on "Battle", not "Beneath". My biggest complaint was chapter nine about other movies/t.v. shows with primates in them. WHO CARES! Having said all that, I am somewhat pleased I bought the book and (with some hesitation) recommend it to Apes fans as the "Cliff Notes" to the superior "Planet of the
apes Revisited" book.

This is a pithy book. In some ways I like this better than the other, bigger book. It is less of a heavy read and seems to have more interesting facts. There ARE plenty of pictures (with captions---unlike the other Apes book!), none from the actual movie, but we've all seen it a 100 times anyway. These pictures are ones you haven't seen before. I didn't find the opinionated comments of the author distracting, I thought they were cogent.

This is a great book and I surgest that you buy it.There are some things that I dont like about it though.First of all I do recommend that you do not read this book from cover to cover because it gets really boring.I recommend you pick out the things you like first.If you do read from cover to cover its like reading jotted down notes on 178 pages.The thing that I hate about it though is chapter 9 does not say anything about Planet of the Apes.The book is after all pretty good though.It goes over the movies,the two TV shows,the books, and more.It is a good guild for good Planet of the Apes facts.I highly recommend you buy this book.Its great!!!!!!!!!!!!