Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (1971)

What seems like a gift from the future can quickly look like a threat to those who fear what's coming. Don Taylor's "Escape From the Planet of the Apes," written by Paul Dehn, picks up after "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," as the chimpanzee scientists Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter), along with their colleague Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo), flee their doomed world in a salvaged American spaceship and splash down off the coast of 1970s California. Taken to the Los Angeles Zoo, they keep their ability to speak a secret, until Zira can't resist correcting the scientists studying them. After a presidential commission hears their story, Cornelius and Zira become overnight celebrities, charming the press, shopping in fancy stores and speaking at luncheons, with help from a pair of sympathetic animal scientists (Bradford Dillman and Natalie Trundy). But when the president's science adviser, Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden), learns that apes will one day rule the Earth, and that Zira is pregnant, he becomes determined to change history by ensuring the baby is never born. Much as the astronaut Taylor was persecuted in their world, the couple are soon hunted down, finding refuge with a kindly circus owner (Ricardo Montalbán) who helps hide them, leading to a tense and heartbreaking finale. Surprisingly witty and touching in its early scenes before turning darker, it ends with a twist that reveals how the Planet of the Apes began and sets the stage for the next chapter in the series.