**This past month the Movie Stakeout precinct investigated monkey movies, baboon blockbusters, and orangutan originals. Let's keep them bananas peeled.**
*Dick Japowski's Ape-ril Ape-travaganza*
**Bye Bye Monkey a.k.a. Ciao Maschio (1978)**
Surreal dark comedy set in a mostly abandoned New York. It's rats, eccentrics and *Gérard Depardeau* and all of them are creepy, terrible or both! One day Depardeau finds a baby chimpanzee trapped under *King Kong*'s body on the beach and raises him as his own. This is the kind of film that if you watch before bed you'll end up watching twice, just to make sure what you just witnessed was real or if you dreamt up. It turns out it was all real!
This won the *Cannes Film Festival* in this year, and although I didn't love everything about it, it's also not going to leave me anytime soon.
First watch: 3 Bananas 🍌
*The Ape-rizona Case Files*
**MVP: Most Valuable Primate (2000)**
A research chimp tries to make his way back to his nature reserve home following the sudden death of his handler, but he misses his stop, and winds up in the wrong town. He then gets befriended by a deaf girl struggling to fit in in her new school and her brother, who wants to be a big league Ice Hockey, if only his team could make an effort to win a game. Luckily Jack the chimp knows sign language...and his a master on the ice.
Not going to lie I anticipated this being terrible, but it was pleasantly surprising, it still wasn't great, but I would sit through it again. It's basically somewhere between *The Mighty Ducks*, a *Hallmark* Christmas movie, and The old *PG Tips* ads minus the cockney voiceovers.
First watch: 2.5 Bananas
*Dick Japowski's Ape-ril Ape-stravaganza!*
**King Kung Fu (1976)**
When a karate loving gorilla beats up his master, he is shipped to America where he just wants to see the sights but people try to stop him so they also get beaten up!
Super low budget, man in a suit spoof of King Kong and martial art movies with the most annoying out of place soundtrack I've ever heard! Not great, but redeemed slightly with some fun sight gags.
First watch: 1.5 Bananas
*Dick Japowski's Ape-ril Ape-stravaganza*
**Head (1968)**
Keen to shake the image of being a squeaky clean boy band, *The Monkees* starred in this wacky and bizarre musical voyage into their psychedelic minds. Written by *Jack Nicholson*, this is endlessly inventive and funny and perfectly captures their moment in history.
Rewatch: 5 Bananas
*Dick Japowski's Ape-ril ape-stravaganza*
**Queen Kong (1976)**
A strong female director and her crew of bra wearing ladies drag unwitting ninny, Robin Askwith to an island where Kong is queen. She also falls for whatever Askwith's putting out there and is soon terrorising London. I've never seen any of the confessions of a... Movie series but this felt like one as I was watching and a quick *Google* confirmed *Robin Askwith* was the star of those! I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a few chuckles from this and your dad and his dad would love this. Just be warned there really are a lot of bras on display!
First watch: 2 Bananas
*The Ape-rizona Case Files*
**MVP2: Most Vertical Primate (2001)**
Jack gets drafted to the Seattle Simians, and after a few teething problems the team make it to the finals. But when some underhanded tactics from another team leave Jack's position in question he runs away. Jack is then befriended by a skateboarding orphan with dreams of the big time. The future *Tony Hawk* teaches jack to skate while also avoiding Child Services and the police.
Before I watched the first movie I was very apprehensive about this franchise, but they've actually been a pleasant surprise, they're by no means good, but they are fun.
The highlight though has to be Al from *Home Improvement* as a friendly skate shop owner named Ollie Plant, a great joke probably missed by the target audience.
First watch: 2.5 Bananas
*Dick Japowski's Ape-ril Ape-stravaganza*
**Mighty Peking Man a.k.a. Goliothon (1977)**
An expedition to bring back a mega monkey man, leads our intrepid adventurers into elephants, tigers, jaguars, cliff climbing and most hilariously quicksand! This is just a *Hong Kong King Kong*, but there are some fun effects and fun to be had.
First watch: 3 Bananas
*The Ape-rizona Case Files*
**War for The Planet of the Apes (2017)**
Following Koba's betrayal in the previous installment Caesar and apes are at war, but while the tree-swinging savages look for peaceful solutions mankind, as ever, insist they're the planet's rightful heirs.
Disclaimer: I love the *Planet of the Apes* franchise, as a little detective the TV series was a staple of our Sunday afternoons, I love the old movies, and I love ths new ones, I even appreciate the *Tim Burton* remake...so quite why it took me this long to watch the latest installment I don't know, I've had it on Blu-ray for over a year.
It's a very different beast to the last two efforts, a Conan-esque cross country quest for revenge, followed by a hybrid of *The Great Escape* and *Apocalypse Now*, but with added poop-flinging.
First watch: 4 Bananas
*Dick Japowski's Ape-ril Ape-stravaganza*
**The Monkey's Paw (1948)**
An antique curio of a monkeys paw that will grant your wish but kick you in the olden days balls messes with a series of townsfolk.
Adaptation of the 1902 short story but probably most fondly remembered as a *Simpsons Tree House of Horror* story! This was a lot of fun and at just over an hour this was the perfect length. There was a streak of macabre humor running through this and gained bonus points from me being a local tale, at one point they talk about going to *Truro* and even mention *Penair girls* which made me chuckle and think of good friends!
First watch: 4 Bananas
(Truro and Penair are local to The Movie Stakeout precinct)
*Dick Japowski's Ape-ril Ape-stravaganza*
**A.P.E a.k.a. King Kong's Counter Attack a.k.a. Hideous Mutant (1976)**
Cashing in on the big budget Kong remake of the same year, this South Korean/American co-production is a large snooze fest even with the a.p.e being on screen right from the get go. The same footage of people running from him is Used constantly and the dubbing of poor dialogue may be something that straightens your banana but I'm not promising anything!
First watch: 1.5 Bananas
*The Ape-rizona Case Files*
**Bride of the Gorilla (1951)**
*Lon Chaney Jr* and *Raymond 'Ironside' Burr* star in this tale of a cursed plantation owner who turns into a gorilla.
In the movie *Ed Wood* there's a scene where Wood is watching a reel of stock footage and declares he could make a whole movie out of it, well this must be that movie. It's 65 minutes long, and at least 15 minutes of that is stock footage of various Jungle animals...and very little gorilla.
First watch: 2 Bananas
*Dick Japowski's Ape-ril Ape-stravaganza*
**Time of the Apes (1987)**
A group of humans volunteer themselves to the future, to a time when apes are jerks and then scream their way to a conclusion.
If this looks like it was shot in the seventies it's because it was! This movie was pieced together from footage of a 1974 series called army of the apes, from *Tsuburya* who also made the *Ultraman* shows. Fun, but repetitive. This probably worked better as twenty minute episodes.
First watch: 2.5 Bananas
**Have you seen any of the movies we've investigated? What's your favourite Ape Odyssey, Monkey Movie, or Chimp-centric piece of cinema? Let us know in the comments below.**