It’s a madhouse! A MADHOUSE!
Mike and Casey invade the Forbidden Zone with our theme song’s composer Todd Maxfield-Matsumoto and Comics Should Be Good!‘s Greg Hatcher. This month we’re talking about the classic film franchise: the Planet of the Apes!
We talk about the film’s long-lived popularity, its relevance as socially-aware science fiction, its totally insane comic book adaptations in the 1970s, and its subsequent reboots.
We also try to wrap our minds around how an ostensibly family-friendly adventure series includes bloody religious imagery, nudity, babies shot with handguns, and total nuclear devastation.
Music:
“The Hunt from the Planet of the Apes” by Jerry Goldsmith
Previously titled: “Two-Fisted Misanthrope”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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Great episode, everyone! I only discovered your site and your podcasts about 2 weeks ago when alerted by Greg in one of his columns at Comics Should be Good! And since then, I’ve been playing catch-up listening to most of the ones I missed (my favorites, besides this one, are the Star Trek, Superman and So-Bad-They’re-Good-Movies episodes) .
Also, I have to say: put me in a museum, because I actually kind of like Tim Burton’s PotA. I don’t by any means think it’s better than the originals, or even comes close to being as good, but on it’s own it’s a solidly entertaining movie.
Otherwise, the mission of your episode succeeded, in that I’m now committed to somehow re-watching all of the first 5 movies – because it’s been awhile since I’ve seen any of them, esp. Escape and Battle, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen Beneath…
Found this podcast via Greg Hatcher, whom I Follow at CSBG. He and I discovered PotA the same way/time.
Very possible someone, or everyone, in the panel knew about this already, but as it was not mentioned in the ‘cast, thought I’d share: There is a genius “Twilight Zone edit” of PotA that resizes the footage at TV specs, renders it in B&W, and presents the story in 3x 8min chapters. Best of all, the beginning and ending are bookended by actual Serling intro/outros from separate, shockingly apropos episodes of The Twilight Zone. Well worth 30min of your time:
http://www.lightningbugpress.com/films/twilightzone.shtml
Cheers,
G
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