Brian J. Robb investigates a little-remembered part of 1970s Ape-mania in Britain, the Planet of the Apes Live Arena Show.

Where were you during the long, hot summer of ‘76? Anyone who lived through that 1970s drought-ridden season in the UK no doubt recalls the joys and irritants of the period. We know where one group of future stars were - holed up at Elstree Studios, filming a little-heralded movie known as Star Wars.

Elsewhere in the entertainment sphere, another performing troupe entirely were sweating through that summer clad in monkey masks as the ‘stars’ of a little-remembered ‘stage spectacular’, the grandlytitled Planet of the Apes Live Arena Show!

In the 1970s, Planet of the Apes was BIG. Until Star Wars was released in 1977 (early 1978 in the UK), the Apes movies dominated big screen sci-fi. Starting with the original Charlton Heston-starring Planet of the Apes in 1968, the franchise spawned four sequels. A new film was released every year between 1970 and 1973: Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape From the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and the rather lacklustre finale, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. That wasn’t all, though - 1974 saw the arrival of the single season television spin off, also called Planet of the Apes. Everything was coming up monkeys in the 1970s.

Although the first film seemed sequel-proof -Heston’s astronaut Taylor had discovered that the strange world ruled by talking apes was in fact (spoiler!) Earth all along! The near $6 million budget resulted in a $22 million take at the box office in the US alone, accompanied by rave reviews and even Oscar nominations (for Jerry Goldsmith’s innovative score and for costume design) and an unexpected dramatic Oscar win for the astonishing make-up by John Chambers. The need for a sequel was obvious.

Each of the following four films took the franchise in a different direction. Beneath repeated many of the beats of the first, with a different crew of astronauts following Taylor’s lead, briefly featured a Heston cameo, and ended with the destruction of the Earth. The following year Escape (the best of the sequels) took the apes back in time to the then-contemporary 1970s, so setting up the eventual domination of the apes seen in the original. Conquest picked up those threads, moving things forward and depicting the revolt of the slave-like apes. Finally, Battle - on a dramatically reduced budget - saw the apes secure their dominance. The TV show offered cheaper weekly adventures of yet another pair of astronauts, but at least it featured film series mainstay Roddy McDowall.