Having narrowly escaped the destruction of Earth in the year 395something A.D., intelligent chimpanzees Zira (Kim Hunter), Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Milo (Sal Mineo) are thrown back in time, crash landing off the coast of Southern California in the year 1973. Picked up by the U.S. army, they are taken to a zoo for observation, where Dr. Lewis Dixon (Bradford Dillman) and Dr. Stephanie Branton (Natalie Trundy) discover that the apes can talk. Milo is tragically killed by a captive gorilla, leaving Zira and Cornelius to be questioned about the events leading to their arrival on Earth inside a spacecraft originally manned by American astronauts.
Successfully satisfying the enquiry with their answers, the chimps are moved to a fancy hotel and given a tour of the city (during which Zira announces she is pregnant!). However, when suspicious Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden) gets Zira gets drunk on Grape Juice + (Champagne), he learns details about her work as a scientist and information about Earth's future that give him cause for concern. Convincing the authorities that the chimps should be questioned further, Hasslein has them taken to an army base where Zira is administered a truth serum. She admits that apes will one day become a threat to the human race, and so a commission decides that Zira's baby should be aborted and that both chimps should be sterilised, leaving the hairy couple no choice but to escape.
This second sequel to the 1968 sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes could easily have been a repetitive cash-grab (like Beneath the Planet of the Apes before it), but in setting the action in the present day, the intelligent script raises a couple of thought-provoking moral dilemmas that make it a very interesting watch. Should we judge another species for its inhumanity when humans treat other animals with the same lack of respect? And does the human race have the right to ensure that it remains the dominant species or should we allow natural selection to decide what happens next? These clever conundrums, coupled with fine performances from McDowell, Hunter, Dillman, and Ricardo Montalban as kindly circus owner Armando, plus a wonderfully silly twist ending, go to make this a very entertaining entry in this much-loved franchise.
