The Naked Ape (1973)

User Rating:

4.8/10   

Director:

Donald Driver

Writer:

Desmond Morris (book)

Release Date:

1 August 1973 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Tagline:

The naked ape is only human.

Plot Keywords:

College Student | Anthropology | Animated Sequence | Female Nudity | Male Nudity

Cast

Johnny Crawford	...	Lee
Victoria Principal	...	Cathy
Dennis Olivieri	...	Arnie
Diana Darrin
Norman Grabowski
John Hillerman
Helen Horowitz
Robert Ito
Marvin Miller
Brett Parker

Runtime:

85 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:PG

Filming Locations:

University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

Company:

Playboy Enterprises

Movie Connections:

References King Kong (1933)

Underrated retro-gem of the Sexual Revolution

It's beyond me why this movie isn't better regarded, let alone hasn't been released to any home format (legally that is). Produced by Hugh Hefner's Playboy Productions--which, must as you might object to its trademark "bunny" objectifying of women--it takes the theses of Desmond Morris' pop-anthropology book and translates them into a series of pro-sex, but more importantly pro-tenderness and pro-humanism sketches.

Some are cleverly animated (in various styles), others acted out in terms that range from the satiric to the tragic. The non-cartoon segments are primarily acted out by an appealingly goofy, vulnerable if muscled-up (from his juvenile TV stardom days on "The Rifleman) Johnny Crawford, and pert young Victoria Principle. (Stills from her nude scenes here were much later exploited as bogus evidence of a past "softcore" career after she'd achieved fame in the TV series "Dallas.")

"The Naked Ape" is imagined in creative and narrative ways that would never happen again (at least with a generous budget) after the mid-70s. It's conventionally sexy/humorous on the surface. But the overriding message is that the sexes should respect one another, and that mankind's tilt toward warring, macho self-destruction is anything but "natural." It's a beautiful message, one that the film arrives at with an entirely appropriate weight of melancholy and anti-Establishment critique.

A lot of counterculture-relic features from this era have dated badly, but I think this movie--poorly appreciated in the first place--is still forward-thinking, and would earn a larger cult following (the existing one flows from "cut" early-80s TV broadcasts and bootleg videos) if it were released as a legitimate DVD. C'mon, Hugh...this was your baby once, why not let it take some long-delayed toddling steps toward the public?