Invasion of the Empire of the Apes begins shortly before Revolt of the Empire of the Apes concluded. Our heroes flee Earth before it blows up in their rocket ship and blasts off into a black hole. What’s weird is that the scenes from Revolt have been supplemented with redone special effects. These new effects aren’t exactly “special”, but they are certainly better than what we got last time around. Still, it’s kind of jarring to see, especially if you watched the films back-to-back like I did. The mask for the villain is pretty good too (although I suspect all they did was turn one of the ape’s masks inside out), and there’s even a little T & A this time around. That said, a slightly more polished turd is still a turd.
The last of the ape men is beamed aboard a terraforming ship fifteen years after the events of Part 2. The captain of the spacecraft asks him about his past, and he says, “I wish not to speak of it.” INSTEAD, we get a ten-minute recap of the first two movies, much of which is shown in irritating Blurry-Vision. A cult that worships apes as gods soon turn up to liberate him from the ship. There’s also a mega-conglomerate that wants to exploit him. Oh, and some aliens want to eat him.
Even with all that going on, Invasion of the Empire of the Apes still manages to be deadly dull.
Without all the footage from the other movies, this probably would’ve clocked in at forty-five minutes or so. At that length, it might’ve been somewhat bearable. Whether you’ve already seen the recycled footage or not, either way you slice it, it’s a tough sit from start to finish. The fun of the first flick was seeing Planet of the Apes being redone on a microbudget. Unfortunately, this one strays so far from the original concept that the fun has essentially evaporated from the series.
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