Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes

Treachery and Greed on the Planet of the Apes is the third TV movie made from combining episodes of the 'Planet of the Apes' TV series together. In this case it is the instalments 'The Horse Race' and 'The Tyrant'. A human finds himself up for execution for riding a horse, which is contrary to ape law; this results in a rigged horse race where the stakes are the man's life. Next, an aggressive tyrannical gorilla becomes the prefect of a village, our heroes work up a scheme to have him removed from his position of power.

I should start by saying that I am not in the least bit a fan of these TV Planet of the Apes films. The problem is that they never escape from their origins and always seem like what they are, i.e. two episodes joined together awkwardly. For what it's worth, I actually think that this is the best of a bad bunch. The first half involving the race was fairly exciting in places, while the second had at least some potential, even if it didn't ultimately amount to much. A good example of the latter was when the evil gorilla suspects Galen of impersonating the dignitary (which he is); the tension is racked up as our hero returns later unawares into a dangerous situation. The suspense is racked up further when the bad guys act in ways that suggest they now know Galen is not who he pretends, only for them to then say something to the effect of 'actually we checked you out and you seem to be who you claim you are'! Talk about a missed opportunity to bring in a little welcome tension. It indicates that the original TV series wasn't exactly written very well and this sort of compromises all of these TV movies. Nevertheless, this instalment was better paced and more fun that the other four TV movies, so if you really want to sample just one of them I guess this would be the one I would recommend.