"Row upon row of naked gorillas, hanging from inverted crosses staked
to the ground, glowed wickedly in the sunlight. A mass crucifixion,
awesome in all its implications, to match the Roman massacre of
Christians along the Appian Way* in another equally terrible time.
Zaius' scholarly blood ran cold. Ursus' face darkened. Fire and smoke,
both sourceless and spread out like a blaze encompassing the world,
had also appeared, seemingly from nowhere. And still the mutilated
gorillas hung crucified from their upside-down crosses."
We all know the first Planet of the Apes movie evolved from the book. But each subsequent sequel had a book that evolved from it.
Wait...a planet where books evolved from films?! It's a madhouse!!!!
Planet is a longtime favorite that, if I stopped to think of it, would
easily rank among my favorite science fiction films of all time. But
weirdly enough, I've never seen any of the original four sequels that
were churned out between 1970 and 1973. Until recently, I couldn't
even put their titles in the correct order. I'm not sure why I never
bothered to sit down and watch them, especially considering the
interesting directors involved: The Baby's Ted Post and indefatigable
British journeyman J. Lee Thompson, who helmed the last two. Based on
how quickly they were generated, I think I just assumed they were
terrible - as Dr. Zaius warned Taylor, I was worried I may not like
what I found.
But after receiving the entire blu-ray set of Apes movies on my
birthday from my very thoughtful brother, I thought up a little
experiment: I would read the novelization of each Ape sequel before
viewing its cinematic equivalent. Therefore, my first impressions of
the movies would be through the novelizations. I'm not sure if this
experiment is merely nostalgic (as a kid I was always reading
film-to-books based on movies I wasn't allowed to see or that were
simply inaccessible at the local video haunt) or if I might actually
learn something about the role of the novelization by reversing the
accepted process of reading it after seeing the movie. Perhaps it's
just a gimmick that I hope will bring more visibility to my flimsy
series that many people would argue is a colossal waste of time to
write and to read. Well to those I say, I'm a seeker too. But my
dreams aren't like yours. I can't help thinking that somewhere in the
universe there has to be something better than the novelization of
Catwoman. Has to be.
I love innovation in my novelizations. And I don't mean the inclusion
of sequences that were obviously cut out of the script or edited out
of the movie - that stuff's interesting, but I truly love when the
novelizer really goes off-book (or in this case, off-movie). The murky
details of novelization contracts makes it difficult to discern just
how far out an author is allowed to go, but I imagine it's limiting:
patron saint of novelizations Alan Dean Foster likes to relate the
story of how he fixed many of the script's plot problems in his
version of Alien 3 (and saved Newt's life), only to have his revisions
rejected by Walter Hill. Radical changes/additions to the screenplays
on which they're based, as opposed to creative interpretations of the
existing material, seem rare. So the more audacious the better.
Let's say, for example, the man who was hired to pen the novelization
of Beneath the Planet of the Apes decided to ignore the undoubtedly
conventional ending of the film and instead have Colonel George
Taylor, accidental time traveler and reluctant paladin of the
devastated human race, nuke the planet of the apes. "How is that even
possible?" you ask. "Does he build a nuclear bomb out of some bamboo
sticks and coconut shells?" Nope - the novelization would have you
believe there's been a secret society of telepathic mutant zealots
who've just been hanging out in the Forbidden Zone for generations,
bidding their time for no reason whatsoever, sitting on the last
cobalt-cased atomic weapon that must be at least 2,000 years old, just
waiting for an excuse to set it off.
And at the end of the big climatic battle, Taylor - the hero - sets it
off! What a wacky way to end a novelization to the first of four
movies with "planet of the apes" in the title. You obviously can't
nuke the planet of the apes before it's used as the setting of the
next three movies, ya big goof!
It's kind of impressive that four books put out in four years based on
films made by the same studio (two of the movies even directed by the
same person) were written by four different authors. These authors,
who we'll get into with each individual write-up, are as diverse and
interesting a group as the filmmakers they got to direct the sequels.
First up is prolific pulp writer and self-proclaimed "King of the
Paperbacks" Michael Avallone. Avallone got his start with a series of
original novels starring P.I. Ed Noon, whose adventures he'd
frequently return to in titles like Assassins Don't Die in Bed and The Flower-Covered Corpse for 35 years. He was reputed to wind people up
by claiming that Stephen King plagarized his work.
I'm not sure if it
was his Partridge Family series or his Mannix spin-offs that he felt
King ripped off, since Avallone toiled largely in the field of the
tie-in. Half of his 200+ publications were based on movies and TV
shows, two of his most notable being the novelizations of Cannonball Run and Friday the 13th Part 3D, an assignment most likely undertaken
as a challenge to see if he could narrate that naked tale without the
benefit of the movie's riveting 3-D effects.** "He could sure tell a
story," mystery writer Bill Crider once said of Avallone. "He couldn't
write, but he could sure tell a story."
The story he tells - or, at least, retells - in Beneath the Planet of the Apes is that of astronaut Brent, intrepid voyager into the great
cosmic unknown, the last survivor of a ship that crashes on a
backwards planet where ape is superior to man. Along with supermodel
cavewoman Nova, he's captured by hostile gorillas along with a group
of primitive indigenous humans and treated like a lowly animal by his
simian captors until he escapes and discovers he's been on Earth all
alon - woah. Wait a minute. This is literally the first movie. With
Taylor missing somewhere in the Forbidden Zone, the plot starts from
scratch with Brent, a Taylor surrogate, going through the same motions
all over again. The difference is that he's looking for Taylor, having
been sent to find out what happened to the original crew (well Taylor
at least, he never mentions poor Landon and Dodge.)
This begs the question: does future Earth have the worst space
engineers in the universe? They design controls that lead not one, but
TWO spaceships once around the cosmic block and then straight back to
the planet, with both crews being convinced that they're traveled
millions of miles into deep space. And don't any of these ships know
how to land properly? At any rate, Brent postulates that he and his
crew (and Taylor's) may have come through something called a Hasslein
Curve, "a bend in time" that propelled them hundreds of years into the
future (I thought it was a hyperspace wormhole?) Not sure why Avallone
felt the need to whip up some silly science fiction to cover what was
quickly explained away through time dilation during interstellar
travel in Boulle's novel when a better question to answer would be why
they'd bother financing a second space expedition to go find a crew
that nobody expects back for at least 700 years? Guess they just got a
little impatient back on Earth.
Humbly placing myself in the role of an astrophysicist in the time
that Taylor's shuttle departed the planet, I submit my own Cupcake
Theory. If you put a batch of delicious cupcakes in the oven, and
explain that it will be 700 years before they're ready for your
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren's
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren
to enjoy, don't come back in a week and ask if the cupcakes are ready
yet!
Meanwhile in Ape City, an imposing gorilla named General Ursus is
stirring the military into a fervor over "strange manifestions" in the
Forbidden Zone. Ursus has somehow used a phantom menace in that region
to fuel anti-human sentiment among the monkey populace, even though
there's seemingly no connection to the docile humans of their planet.
If only there was some kind of human threat - like, the talking human
who caused a big ruckus in town? Why is Taylor not the reason for the
sudden interest in the Forbidden Zone? Instead scouts have been
disappearing into thin air, something that apparently never happened
before now...kind of weird for this to occur, right after the incident
with a talking human from outer space. All it would take is a single
throwaway line of expositive dialogue about how they tracked Taylor to
a part of the Forbidden Zone where suddenly freaky shit began to
happen (Taylor having disappeared in the Forbidden Zone himself).
Simple cause and effect, right? The contention between Ursus and Zaius
could have been about whether they should be chasing after Taylor,
just in case he did get it in his head to start a human revolution.
Rather than starting all over again, the sequel could easily have
leaned on the repercussions of Taylor's presence in the ape community
and how its population chooses to proceed. Instead, when Brent shows
up at Zira's looking for help, it's like "Oh yeah, talking humans from
another world - how did we forget about that?"
Avallone apparently bragged that he wrote the novelization over a
weekend, and it shows. Even though the chapters are specifically
sectioned off by character name, suggesting perspective, sluggish
writing becomes apparent in the first scene in Ape City during Ursus'
speech. Avallone switches the perspective carelessly from Brent to
Nova to Ursus to Zaius to Zira to Cornelius, confounding the mess by
abruptly transitioning from one character's thoughts to another, said
thoughts running from "I hope my ape wife doesn't get arrested for
being obstinate" to "Holy shit, a city of intelligent apes!" One
second you're wondering why Cornelius, a talking ape, would suddenly
be shocked by the concept of talking apes...by the time the reader
readjusts and realizes we've moved on to Brent's mindset, the human
becomes oddly concerned about the political role of Dr. Zaius and his
science team because now Avallone has abruptly switched back to Ursus'
train of thought. This becomes a consistent problem in any scene with
multiple characters.
You churn out a book in two days without editing it, there's bound to
be a little repetition:
Page 54:
So Brent waited until the proper moment should come.
It did.
Page 62:
"That hum. You hear it too!" He exulted, not knowing why. "We're going
to follow it..."
They did.
Page 122:
He knew that Taylor would follow him. Taylor the man had to.
Taylor did.
You don't become a fan of movie novelizations without a high tolerance
for lazy descriptions, over-enthusiastic action and borderline poor
writing. Likewise, you don't publish over 200 books without
occasionally falling back on some of these dubious techniques. In
Avallone's obituary, the New York Times related the writer's playful
rivalry with critic Newgate Callendar, who loved to cite such
enjoyably awful Avallonian prose as: "The footsteps didn't walk right
in. They stopped outside the door and knocked." Something like that is
practically Richard Brautigan, and with beneath Avallone kind of won
me over with this sentence, which takes place in the middle of an
attack by the apes where Brent and Nova are overwhelmed, dozens of
damned dirty paws all over them:
"Nova was being similarly manhandled. Gorilla-handled?"
I love it! It's almost as if Avallone, sitting there at his
typewriter, actually thought about using that term only to decide
Brent must have a similar bit of absurd revery as he's being roughly,
uh, "gorilla-handled." And damn if ol' Bill Crider wasn't on to
something: Avallone tells the friggin' story, in a way that could
politely be turned unconventional. Following Brent into Ape City, he
has his hero "seeing what Taylor had seen way back at the beginning."
So much of the book reads like that: like a campfire story, or a
prospectus for a sequel, narrated widely and pompously without any
concern for narrative integrity. Like someone who just came back from
seeing the movie trying to explain it to you - the disdainful infamy
of the novelization! Brent can't know what Taylor saw "way back at the
beginning," but the original planet of the apes was already so iconic
in the minds of readers in filmgoers two years after its release,
Avallone can comfortably refer to it the way the writer a fantasy
novel can off-handedly cite Dorothy setting out on the yellow brick
road in her ruby slippers. The relaxed approach so many writers apply
to novelizations may be a chief factor in their cultural demotion, but
passages like one from a fight scene late in the book - "He lashed out
with a terrible left to the jutting promontory of Taylor's chin" -
strike an amiable middleground between pulpy and pretentious, glorious
hack writing from a bygone era.
Not that all Avallone's bad writing deserves praise, particularly the
stuff that's inconsistent and uninformed. When Ursus confronts the
mutant elite, a bunch of stuffy telepathic mutated humans who've been
causing all the trouble in the Forbidden Zone, for the first time,
Avallone reveals "a huge fat man encased in scarlet robes, an
elder-statesman type in brilliant green, and a tall, lean, hooded man.
These had been, of course, the fat man, Caspay and the verger." Well
Ursus wouldn't know who they were, "of course!" He just saw them for
the first time! And we understand who they are, the second sentence is
unnecessary - oh, the fat man was the fat man? Thanks for clarifying
that. During this same ape raid on the mutant's headquarters, Avallone
keeps mentioning the "beauty" of mutant Albina; even an ape sergeant
is fascinated - "sexually stimulated" - by her, even though it's been
established that apes think humans are ugly. When Taylor finally
appears during the last chaotic chapters, there's a moment where he
thinks back to the beginning of the original movie: the disastrous
flight, the death of the "woman astronaut" and "lobotomizing of one of
the others." Come on, wouldn't Taylor remember the names of his crew,
especially since it's implied in the first movie that he'd developed
romantic feelings for the "woman astronaut"? Couldn't Avallone be
bothered to look those names up? All this comes from the same voice
Avallone adopts throughout, like someone doing a bad job summarizing a
movie plot: "And then the woman astronaut dies...and this other dude
gets lobotomized..."
And then, the world blows up! Like Colonel Nicholson collapsing on the
plunger in the Bridge on the River Kwai movie, a mortally-wounded
Taylor (Brent and Nova are already dead) sprawls across the control
panel of the armed "doomsday bomb" and wipes out all life on the
planet. Again, this is the kind of thing that can only work in a
novelization (perhaps with a chuckle at the thought of the next
novelizer having to ret-con or at least address this blatant
alteration), so it was something of a surprise to watch the movie
after finishing the book and discover that everything, including the
ending, was exactly the same. The bizarre absence of Taylor, the
recycling of the first movie's plot with a Taylor stand-in, the goofy
psychic war waged against militant apes by mutant weirdos in the
Forbidden Zone, the complete destruction of all life on ape-run Earth
- none emanated from the bargain bin brain of Michael Avallone. Only
embellished by the unrefined prose that rolled off his platen.
Avallone worked with what he was given, much like director Ted Post
and screenwriter Paul Dehn. Turns out, Richard Zanuck was so desperate
to get Heston onboard that he let the star dictate his own terms, two
of which were that Heston would only have to work on the film for a
week, and that at the end Taylor would blow up the Earth so the actor
couldn't be bothered with offers to appear in another sequel. This
explains why Taylor was written out of a majority of the movie,
turning up only to kill everybody in an ending that Post vehemently
protested yet dutifully filmed (at the time he was merely the director
of Hang 'Em High, not the hot shot helmer of the Stagecoach TV
remake). Taylor's leisurely hiatus from Beneath the Planet of the Apes
essentially marginalizes him to a non-character, making the nihilistic
ending all the more meaningless. Did they think detonating the bomb
would send Taylor off on a noble act of redemption, like in Kwai?
What's the redemption? Planet ended with Taylor damning all humanity
for their destructive hubris, seeing in his own aggressive retaliation
that he, the last repesentation of homo sapien, was no better than a
wreckless animal.
The novelization seems conflicted about how to depict the advent of
Taylor's holocaust. On page 108, Brent is telling Taylor about the
bomb and that the mutants "intend to use it," the implication being
the classic hero scenario - "We've gotta stop them." Taylor, when he
hears it's the dreaded "doomsday bomb" so powerful it could destroy
"not just a city...not just a nation" but "every living cell on
Earth," intones: "May God help us." The clock is ticking, and these
rational humans have got to get in the middle of this ape vs. mutant
battle to prevent armageddon. While it's at least suggested by
Avallone's narration that Taylor doesn't set off the bomb on purpose -
it's the bulk of his body that falls on the button rather than his
hand and there's no specific inner-monologue about triggering the
device on purpose - the death of Nova is clumsily used as the catalyst
for Taylor losing his mind: "I should let them all die! Not just the
gorillas! Everyone! This world, whatever it was, WOULD HAVE TO PAY FOR
NOVA!" This is usually the kind of angry tirade a hero comes out of
after a minute of reflection. Instead Taylor proves what Zaius said in
the first movie about mankind as "a warlike creature who gives battle
to everything around him, even himself" to be true, seemingly ignoring
the allegory that was the original movie. Just kill 'em all and let
monkey-god sort 'em out.***
Which isn't to say the film is a complete washout. James Gregory makes
a formidable heavy as gimlet-eyed gorilla Ursus; it's just too bad he
doesn't have anything to do but sneer, wear epaulettes and lead his
army into the Forbidden Zone even though he doesn't know who they're
attacking. Avallone accentuates a conflict that's only lightly hinted
at in the film by making Ursus resentful of Zaius' popularity and
derisive towards his rational thought: "The conflict between the two
of them hung like unexploded dynamite in the charged atmosphere." The
resentment reaches its boiling point when Zaius fearlessly rides into
a vision of fire and crucified apes manifested by their mutant enemy,
a "marvelous opportunity" for Ursus to show courage in front of the
cowering army which he fails to seize. The kooky telepathic
manipulations also make a lot more sense in the book, Avallone having
Brent see two versions of his face reflected in the water when he's
mentally "pushed" to drown Nova. His descriptions of the mutants is
memorable, "a mockery of nature...Repulsively red and blue and pink,
exposing all the ganglia and facial veins, arteries, tendons and
muscles. As stripped and visible as any anatomical specimens in a
medical class...totally horrible, totally and unbelievably hideous."
This depiction is backed by John Landis, who worked in the mail room
on the Fox lot at the time and snuck onto the set of Beneath.
Presenting the preview for Trailers from Hell, he recalled that "some
of the most horrific test make-ups I had ever seen...literally
replusive...were all rejected for the kind of shitty make-up they
ended up using in the piece. They pull back their faces and they just
look...veiny."
Despite a valiant effort, even Avallone can't do anything with Brent
other than focus on his confounded reaction to this crazy scenario for
the first half of the book - other than coming up with
"gorilla-handled," Brent dubs the world "Nightmare Planet" and goes a
little nuts when he garrotes a gorilla: "Even killing felt fine and
good in this godawful place!" This disorientation is reflected in the
movie by how lost the poor actor seems, thrust into this mess like an
understudy late for a performance for which he's never read the
script. Cheekily referring to him as "Brent - almost the reflection of
[Taylor],"**** Avallone pulls this replacement hero through the motions up
to the point where Taylor reappears and the mutants make them fight to
the death, as if they're vying for who gets to star in the rest of the
movie; Nova gives the ruling, shouting her first word, "Tay-lor!!!"
Brent is hastily relegated to the sideline so the starting QB can take
the field, which is unfair to the character and to the audience. We're
with him the entire film, and he doesn't even get to perform the final
"heroic" action (at least the movie lets him kill Ursus; Avallone has
him gunned down unceremoniously in the middle of the fray without
contributing anything slightly valorous).
Which brings up a point: Avallone didn't need Heston to appear in the
novelization, any more than he would need to go out of his way to
clarify to the reader, "Roddy McDowall doesn't play Cornelius in this
one." Why not simply dump the Brent character and put Taylor back
where he belonged, at the center of the story? It would eliminate the
question of why Earth's brightest 20th century scientists failed the
Cupcake Test and launched a second shuttle. No need to waste time
re-establishing the workings of Ape City or introducing old characters
to this new bright-eyed, blonde, speaking spaceman who popped up out
of nowhere. It would take very little revising to give all Brent's
actions to Taylor, and not repeat his experiences: we'd be reading of
Taylor's adventure in the former subways of New York for the first
time, witness him argue defiantly with the mutants on the validity of
human pacifism. Maybe expanding Taylor's role would justify his
ultimate decision to set off the nuke, maybe it wouldn't - but there
would at least be a chance. The novelization would have made an
interesting experiment in what could have been, if a studio head
hadn't kowtowed to the wims of a pampered Hollywood star.
So the author of The Satan Sleuth #2: The Werewolf Walks Tonight was
either restricted from taking such liberties or simply wasn't willing
to put forth the effort for a weekend writing gig. While this makes me
slightly less curious about checking out Avallone's novelization of
Shockl Corridor, after sitting through the movie I can at least
appreciate that most of the novelization's problems are really the
movie's problems. British screenwriter Paul Dehn,***** who like Pierre
Boulle and Xan Fielding had worked in counter espionage with the SOE
during the war, can't resolve the issues created by Zanuck's
insistence that Heston be involved with Beneath any more than Avallone
can. For example, he sends Brent and Nova to Ape City to find
Cornelius and Zira, for no reason except to recap exposition from the
first movie and so Brent can learn Nova's name (the mute Nova is the
only one who saw Taylor disappear, so the apes can't offer any
information as to where he might be). Going into the city to find
Cornelius and Zira gets them captured, and Cornelius and Zira help the
escape twice - then again, the whole point of risking going into the
city instead of straight to the Forbidden Zone to seek Taylor was to
find Cornelius and Zira, so...ugh. From interviews with Dehn, I can
officially absolve Avallone for naming a black member of the mutant
cabal "The Negro"; turns out Dehn was an old-fashioned Englishman who
still insisted in using that term in the early 70's.****** Still, not
sure if it excuses this line from Avallone's book: "He saw a
magnificent Negro, robed all in white, his onyx face startling in
contrast with his garments."
Avallone dedicates his effort to "Pierre Boulle, for his two very
important contributions to the arts of Literature and Film - The Bridge of the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes," which could be read
as genuine affection or optimistic hint at belletristic equality.
Boulle actually handed in a scenario for a sequel titled "Planet of
the Men" that basically takes the story in the most obvious direction:
Taylor gathers an army of primitive humans, teaches them how to speak
and handle weapons, and leads a revolt against the reigning apes.
After having his leadership undermined by Sirius, his teenage son with
Nova (Boulle was determined to get that kid into the film series!),
Taylor finds his guerilla (heh) resistance band turned into a death
squad.
Although Beneath borrowed a few elements from Boulle's treatment
(young chimps demonstrating, the head of the ape army named "Field
Marshall Urus," the line "The only good ape is a dead ape!" changed to
"The only good human is a dead human!"), Arthur Jacobs turned it down,
claiming it wasn't "cinematic" enough.******* Which is odd, since all
the demands of the production seem amendable to Boulle's story: Heston
would be committed to less screentime than the first movie, Taylor
dies so Heston could be assured he was done with the series and things
would end on a bum note about man's destructive nature (although not a
completely ridiculous one). Characters from the first film would have
all had something to do (even Lucius, who they completely forget about
in Beneath), standing sets like the Statue of Liberty and Ape City
would have been utilized further than "characters walking around
there" and an interesting moral question would be raised over which
species could claim dominance over the planet. There would even have
been a daring heist on a weapons depot pulled off by Taylor and his
team disguising themselves as apes! (With the skin of murdered apes?
I'm guessing Taylor probably wasn't wasting time building Halloween
stores, although the mutants of Beneath have plastic masks so who
knows.)
At the end of the day, Avallone comes out on top. Despite not doing
anything particularly innovative and sticking close to the script, you
never get the sense that he feels beneath The Planet of the Apes. He
lends the material his cheap, flashy style and gives it some sense of
the literary (he even bookends the voiceover narration so it doesn't
seem so random at the end like it does in the film). Of all those
tangentially involved with this slapdash sequel, he certainly deserves
a seat on the shuttle that miraculously survived the ludicrous
destruction of the planet. It's too early in this experiment to
determine if reading the book first swayed my opinion in its favor,
but I kind of enjoyed it.
The novelization was translated into German and Japanese editions,
which seems weirdly insensitive when you consider how it ends.
