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.

As fans of the series know, the Earth got blowed up good at the end of the second movie. So, you might ask, how did they make a sequel? Hmm, well they did something unique in film history--the sequel was also a prequel!! Here's how they did it: At the end of the last movie the Earth blew up, but somehow our favorite apes, Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) and Zira (Kim Hunter) both escaped the explosion in a space ship and traveled back in time to 20th century Earth!!! Now this was no small feat, as the apes in the previous movies had progressed up to perhaps the 18th century in technology and no others possessed a space ship, either! Well, this gaping plot hole is one of the reasons this movie only gets a 6. The other is that this movie, for the first half of it, has absolutely no controversy or excitement. If you like seeing the two apes being wined and dined and interviewed on TV, then this movie is for you--but zilch as far as controversy goes.

However, later, under the influence of a truth serum, Zira tells the humans that they are from Earth in the future and that humans are either treated as slaves or killed! Well, the narrow-minded humans want no part of that and decide to sterilize the apes to prevent this horrible future. The problem is that Zira is already pregnant (never mind that it seems hardly likely that Roddy McDowell could be the father) and they don't want their baby killed! I'm not sure why no one thought about letting the child be born and then sterilizing the three--this could have worked out and prevented a fourth movie.

Well, our two beloved apes don't want to be sterilized or lose their baby, so they escape. While in hiding, Zira has the baby and when the human thugs catch up to them, they are killed--but not before a DIFFERENT baby is substituted for theirs--meaning that they actually planned on making a sequel to this movie.

Decent story writing (though with HUGE plot holes),good acting and a fun script make this a worthwhile film, but certainly weaker than movies number 1, 2 and 4.

If you remember the previous film in this series Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, the world met doomsday courtesy of a doomsday device left over from the human nuclear age. I would think it would have been hard pressed to come up with a sequel after that, but there must have been a demand for one.

While the cataclysm was happening, Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall, and Sal Mineo managed to get Charlton Heston's old ship in working order and transported back in reverse order to Earth of the second half of the 20th century and when it's discovered they speak and are from our future they're met with acclaim by most. But science adviser to the President of the USA Eric Braeden, he's quite alarmed.

Braeden proposes a King Herod like solution to President William Windom who really doesn't want to go down in history that way. Doesn't deter Braeden in the slightest.

This film in the Planet Of The Apes saga makes us learn that earth history courtesy of some unplanned time travel is in a time loop. Can we escape it.

A good ensemble cast makes us want to find out in the next film.