Behind the Scenes - A 9th Gallery

 

Steve

Escape From The Planet of The Apes - Comic book and record (1975)

One page of art from this...

To see more go here: http://www.laboca.co.uk/blog/2009/09/escape-from-the-planet-of-the-apes-1975/

Very nice

 

Steve

Planet of the Apes Weekly #51 (1975)

UK reprint of the American Marvel comic strips from 1975.  This was an exciting morning's visit to the news agents before school, I can tell you.  Heady stuff for a seven year old.

 

 

Steve

Planet of the Apes - Unseen moments

One of my first great loves as a youngster was the Planet of the Apes movies, and the comics, and bubble-gum cards and the TV series and even the cartoon show.  Sci-fi and monkeys and across multimedia and at a time before we even called it that - What's not to like?

One of the great joys and fascinations of the Apes movies for me was the way that the five stories all circled round and joined back up with themselves.

And what I want to share in the this post is a little bit of that story arc with the inclusion of some stunning artwork that reveal a deleted scene or two.  I'll justify its inclusion in this blog simply by it being full of spacemen, a spacewomen and spaceapes but really its just about enjoying the artwork.

The Planet of the Apes (1968)

 

 

A crew of four reduced to three.

A ship crashed with barely time to mourn

Taking on water and beginning to sink

Evacuation, abandon the ship

The Icarus slides beneath the waters, lost forever or so it seems.

How could things get any worse.

 

Oh!  OK

 

Beneath The planet of the Apes (1970)

Oh no!  But as bad as this seems it can't end any worse than Taylor's day

 

No don't press that!

 

And here endeth the franchise, not with a whimper but with a great big bloody bang.  Everybody dies and the world blows up.  Not much chance of another sequel here, and yet....

 

At some point between the end of The Planet of the Apes and the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes this must happen...

The illustration is by Erik Marcus Gist and is simply called: Ape Diver.  It's a truly provocative and stunning piece of work and you should go and check out it's creator online in order to appreciate and support his great talent.

 

There's a whole other film's worth of story in regard to the hows whys and wherefores of three chimps, finding, raising and fixing that ship.  Maybe they found and used parts from Brent's ship as well.  We'll most probably never know in any official cinematic and canonical way but  in the version I imagination this would be the closing shot..

 

 

This is the clean artwork used on the cover of Planet of the Apes #12 in the US and #50 of the UK weekly reprint back in October 1975.

 

The artist was Ken Barr and its the view from the commandeered, bailed-out and repaired ship as the future Earth is destroyed by the last spaceman standing.  Such a clever composition this and for me it must rank as one of my all time favourite comic covers.

 

All of which gets you to this iconic moment...

 

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

The end of the journey for our lost astronauts, finally returned home?

 Or simply the beginning of the end ?

 

 

I'm off to watch a DVD but can you guess which one.

 

Steve

Behind the Scenes - A 2nd Gallery

 

 

 

Steve

Planet of the Apes A Gallery of Spacesuits

Planet of the Apes (1968)

 

Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)

 

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

 

Planet of the Apes TV series (1974)

 

Planet of the Apes Cartoon (1975)

 

Planet of the Apes (2001)

 

...and again

 

Still waiting for that apology, Mr Burton.  That was my childhood you pissed all over.

 

Steve

Something for the weekend 11

Lieutenant Maryann Stewart played by Dianne Stanley in the first of the Planet of the Apes films.

Unfortunately it didn't pan out too well for Lieutenant Stewart and she didn't even make it out of bed let alone off the ship.

 

Steve

Planet of the Apes (2001)

Lets cover a couple of films I'm not too keen on just so that we can get them out the way with.  And when I say not too keen on what I actually mean, at least with the first of these two blogs, is a film I really hate.
Tim Burton's 2001 remake of  Planet of the Apes offends me on just about every level.  Its a terrible, stupid film that has only three redeeming facets; which are the talents of Tim Roth and Helena Bonham Carter and a chimpanzee in a space suit called Pericles.

Here are a couple of pictures of our simian astronaut for your visual pleasure

...and for the joys of our two talented English thesps may I suggest renting just about anything they have ever done with the obvious exception of the the above mentioned film.

Even thinking about this film makes me cross!

Steve