"I Love You Doctor Zaius"

I was 1o-years old in 1971 and the most important thing in the world was "Planet of the Apes."

I was crazy about it. I was annoyingly crazy about it. I bugged my parents about it, my siblings, my friends and my teachers. I collected the trading cards, read paperback adaptations of the movies and clipped newspaper articles that had anything to do with the film series. I remember a weird newsprint photo of a Playboy bunny playing soccer against somebody in ape makeup as part of a celebrity charity game. I was obsessed!

As someone who has spent a lifetime going from obsession to obsession, I'm fascinated by the role that "Apes" played in my formative psyche. It was my root-obsession. The one that started the pattern of discovery, all-encompassing interest, endless search for any scrape of information, push beyond resources purchasing, satiation, disenchantment, followed by detachment. This was repeated with comic books, science fiction, Philip K. Dick novels, Doctor Who, anime and others.

"Apes" wasn't the first genre interest I had, but it was the one that pushed me over the line. I'd been a fan of "Dark Shadows," "Star Trek," "The Six-Million Dollar Man" and "Land of the Giants," but none of them hooked me beyond momentary interest. What was it about "Apes" that appealed to me?

At this stage in my life, I can't quite crack what was going on in my 10-year-old mind. The funny thing was that I didn't even see the original "Planet of the Apes" until CBS broadcast it in 1973. The last in the series that I saw was the second in the series, "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," which CBS aired about six months later.

These were pre-home video days, so, in order to preserve the films, I purchased a cassette player and recorded the audio of the two films, which I played over and over, alone in my room. To this day, I can repeat the dialog, word for word, as I watch the films, like a litany at Mass.

Before I saw those two films, the primary visual trigger for me were the trading cards, which I bought in 1968 at a drug store in Oaklandon, Indiana. I probably had about 12 cards, which I kept in a shoebox with some basketball cards and odd cards from other TV series. At some point, I pulled them out and they became the touchtone for my obsession.

In 1971, I begged my mom to take me to "Escape from the Planet of the Apes," the third in the series and the first I saw in a theater. My sister was dragged along too. I loved the movie, of course. But I remember the story being surprisingly dark and violent. My mom liked the movie, but she didn't like that she felt more sympathetic for the apes than the humans--damn, violent humans.

I saw the last two movies in the series "Conquest" and "Battle" in the theater. By the time "Battle" had rolled around, the rest of my family had given up on my obsession and I had to ride my bike to the theater to see it. I saw it twice, once on the first day and the second time a week later when it closed. By that time, the rest of America was bored with talking apes.

There was a TV show and a limited-animation cartoon series, but even I was bored by this time. I'm not sure exactly when my obsession died, but I was on to other things—Mad Magazine, comic books, Edgar Rice Burroughs novels.

In my 20s, I was pretty embarrassed by my earlier "Apes" obsession. Occasionally, I'd watch one of the films, usually the first one and "Beneath." For some reason, I like these ones the best. I saw the Tim Burton remake--God, what an awful film. About the time of the remake, I read a fascinating article about how the original "Apes" movies were popular with S&M fetishists, because the apes were all dressed in leather and were binding and torturing the human beings. It's hard to deny that that imagery is present in the films. Was it intentional? Was it that subtext that subconsciously fascinated my 10-year-old brain?

Uh, no. As an adult, the the idea of being bound by a butch simian does not appeal to me.

Not too long ago, when I was watching the original "Planet of the Apes," I had a weird epiphany about it involving Charlton Heston, who plays the lead. These days, people remember him for his pro-gun politicking. That theme was strangely present throughout the film. Early on, after the astronauts land, they check their supplies. Heston checks his pack to make sure he has his gun and ammunition. Before the humans are captured by the apes, the prehistoric native humans steal the astronauts belongings--and firearms, I suppose--making them powerless. Once the apes arrive, on horseback with guns, the astronauts and all the humans are captured. Eventually, Heston escapes with the aid of some friendly chimps. What's the first thing he asks for? A gun. Later, when Heston captures the evil Dr. Zaius, the orangutan admonishes the chimps for giving Heston, an animal, a firearm. But, of course, it's the gun that allows Heston to make the terms for his final escape from the apes. Then, in the classic ending, Heston finds evidence that he's on Earth and that humanity has destroyed itself, presumably with nuclear weapons, i.e., the ultimate super gun. Is the movie calling for gun control? Is it saying that unwise use of weapons will lead to man's destruction? Who knows?

Don't forget, at the end of "Beneath," Heston detonates the final doomsday device, destroying the Ape Earth as the Human Earth had once been destroyed. Interesting stuff.

My kids like watching the movies, my daughters in particular. Their first exposure to "Planet of the Apes" was the musical parody of the film on "The Simpsons," in which Troy McClure--in the role he was born to play--utters the phrase "I love you Dr. Zaius." When my daughters finally saw the film, one of them turned to me after it was over and said "He didn't love Dr. Zaius at all, did he?"

In about a week, to celebrate my 49th birthday, I'm going to fulfill the dream of my 10-year-old mind. In 1973, after all of the five "Apes" movies had been released, 20th Century Fox tried to milk the franchise one last time by putting an "Apes" marathon in theaters--all five films, back-to-back under the "Go Ape" banner. I begged my parents to drop me off at the one theater in Indianapolis showing the films, but it was not to be.

When the five films came out in a DVD box set, I bought them, but only watched the first couple of films individually. Now I have that Blu Ray box set and I'm going to watch them all, back-to-back. I'm looking forward to this exercise, but also dreading it. Will it be too much? Will I be disappointed? Will I be bored? We'll see...

I Am Curious Pink

Finally got around to watching the last film in the "Pinky Violence Collection" DVD Set that I

got last year for Christmas. Here's the list of films in the set:

"Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless To Confess"

"Girl Boss Guerilla"

"Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom"

"Criminal Woman: Killing Melody"

As you can see, they were all inspired by the works of Jane Austin. No, that's a lie. They're Japanese sexplotation flicks from the 1970s and they're certainly an acquired taste.

Why, Mike, why do you waste your time with trash cinema? Cause it's fun and sometimes you'll see something surprising. Case in point, the last pic I watched was "Terrifying Girls' High School: Lynch Law Classroom." How often do you get to see a film start with the torture and suicide of a Japanese schoolgirl by the school's all-girl discipline squad? It was graphic and surreal and I wouldn't want to go out on a limb and say that it was entertaining. It certainly grabs your attention and makes you wonder, where can they go now?

Turns out this school is a social experiment where bad girls are sent to get retrained to be model wives and mothers. This is accomplished by giving the worst of the lot the power to discipline rule breakers. It's a set-up that is easily corrupted.

Enter three outlaws--a thief, a whore and girl yakuza--who run afoul of the discipline squad and quickly turn the table on authority, with satisfying violent results. The end reminded me a lot of "Rock and Roll High School," in a good way.

As a sexploitation genre, Pinky Violence offers a weird mix of crime and teenage rebellion. The twist, of course, is that all the protagonists are women. Directed by men and aimed at an adolescent masculine audience, the scales, at least initially, tip toward titillation in the first part of each of these films, with nudity and racy situations coming fast and furious. But in their odd way the films grow into moral plays as the women use whatever means necessary--sex, fear, larceny and violence--to empower themselves. They fight authority no matter who yields it, man, woman, yakuza boss, husband or principal. I wouldn't say that these are feminist films, maybe proto-feminist films--they can't quite shake off their exploitation exterior after all.

The best of the four films is "Delinquent Girl Boss: Worthless To Confess," which is about a young woman who forms a gang while in prison. When she gets out and her father gets in trouble with the local gang boss, she calls together her prison cronies and forms her own female mob. The way that the mob stuff is presented reflects a lot of the mainstream yakuza flicks that were popular in the late 60s and early 70s, so it has a more genuine feel to it than the other films in he set. The other flicks blend in more humor than "Girl Boss" and come off like farces at times. "Girl Boss" resembles "Lady Snowblood," though that film was set in samurai times. It's only natural since mainstream Japanese cinema was trying to link the trappings of the samurai genre to that of the Japanese mob (yakuza) films.

I got drawn to these films because of my fascination with Quentin Tarantino's work, "Kill Bill 1&2" in particular. Pinky Violence is at the roots of Tarantino's films, the theme of the bad guys--or girls--who overcome evil to achieve vengeance or their own brand of justice. Cool stuff.