Escape from the Planet of the Apes was 1971's sci-fi followup to Beneath the Planet of the Apes. It was the third of the four-film series. A fifth one - Get Me The Hell Off the Planet of the Apes - never materialized.
This one is more character-driven than its predecessors. There are really only a few actors in monkey make-up, including the stars Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter. The movie touches on several social issues of the day. It must have been hard to present a serious argument for or against something while made up to look like an ape.
The chimps escape the destruction of the earth in a spaceship and go through a sort of ripple in time that lands them in the 1970s, just as the earth's pop music was beginning to turn bad. They seem to ignore the tectonic shift that replaced The Beatles with ABBA, while serving as simian lab rats at the Los Angeles Zoo. Yeah, I didn't know that stuff was going on there, either. The next time I'm at the monkey house, I'm going to ask to interview the talking apes.
The Bored Wine Company has found a way to mix wine, monkeys and non-fungible tokens. How does it taste? Who knows if it even does? This website is on the ".xyz" domain, so anything is possible. Nice monkeys on the labels, anyway.
Just nine months after the release of King Kong, the movie gave birth to a sequel. Son of Kong is a 1933 film which takes a group of treasure seekers - including Kong's original abductor - back to Skull Island. There they encounter an albino monkey which they believe is Kong's son. It's a pre-code movie, by the way, so the big ape doesn't even have to wear pants.
Kong's kid turns out to be a real mensch, assisting the team by fighting off dinosaurs and saving a drowning man. Spoiler Alert: he couldn't save himself.
Son of Kong was riddled with humor, which was explained by the writer with the adage that if you can't make something better, make it funnier. Nowadays, that notion has escalated to "if you can't make something funny, make it filthy." I save my cursing for the other drivers around me.
Colorado has a winery called The Infinite Monkey Theorem, and they make a Cabernet Franc for $30 that comes with a picture of a monkey on the label, no extra charge. You can imagine him as an oversized albino, if you like.
1942's Dr. Renault's Secret is a mashup of horror, mystery and sci-fi movies. A French doctor's assistant happens to be the result of the doc's experiments which turned an ape into a man. I suppose that's one way to get cheap help - make it yourself. The good doctor - or mad scientist, if you prefer - should have checked with Dr. Frankenstein about how that trick usually plays out.
The movie comes complete with a washed-out bridge, an unexpected stay at a mysterious inn, unexplained murders and an ape in the backstory. It's a real shame about that little dog, but it's an even bigger shame about the poor monkey that was recast as a human. He didn't deserve that fate.
We could pair Dr. Renault's Secret with a New Jersey namesake wine. Renault Winery is also a resort, if the Garden State is your idea of a vacation destination. We'll ignore the website pic which shows a guy sabering a bottle of sparkling wine with what appears to be a dinner knife. Also ignoring: their reference to the bubbly as an American champagne. Champagne comes from Champagne, not New Jersey. Oops, I guess I didn't really ignore it, did I? Try the blueberry sparkler, or the Merlot.
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