Director/Screenplay – Mark Polonia, Story Idea/Producer – David S. Sterling, Photography – Paul Alan Steele, Visual Effects – Brett Piper & Alan Wyoming, Miniatures – Alan Wyoming. Production Company – Cinema Epoch/Polonia Bros. Entertainment.
Elizabeth V. Costanzo (Theel), Danielle Donahue (Dane), Marie DeLorenzo (Jada), Ken Van Sant (Korg), Jeff Kirkendall (Trask), Steve Diasparra (Captain Zantor), James Carolus (Baal)
Three girls, Dane, Theel and Jada, are prisoners aboard the ship of Captain Zantor where they are being taken to be sold as sex slaves to the Dalvanoids. However, they manage to break free from their cell and steal a shuttle. They make a crashlanding on a planet, only to be captured by talking apes. There the girls realise that the ape leader wants their ship to escape offworld and that they are to be held for breeding purposes. Meanwhile, Zantor comes hunting them, not wanting his bounty to escape.
Twin brothers Mark and John Polonia, who hail from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, gained recognition for their ultra-low-budget films, beginning in the 1980s when they were in their teens. John passed away from an aneurism in 2008 but Mark has continued on his own putting out a substantial body of genre works with some sixty films to his name at current count. (A full list of the Polonia films is at the bottom of the page).
Empire of the Apes was made around the same time as 20th Century Fox’s reboot of the Planet of the Apes series with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War of the Planet of the Apes (2017). Empire of the Apes was made just two years after Rise of the Planet of the Apes kicked the reboot series off and can clearly be seen as Mark Polonia’s ultra low-budget Mockbuster version. Polonia would follow with three sequels Revolt of the Empire of the Apes (2017), Invasion of the Empire of the Apes (2021) and Revenge of the Empire of the Apes (2023).
As always with Polonia films, Empire of the Apes is made with a painful cheapness when it comes to effects and production values. The spaceships are represented by some incredibly shoddily photographed miniatures (courtesy of Brett Piper, a regular Polonia effects contributor and a director in his own right). The explosion of the shuttle consists of some badly overlaid fire effects and smoke. The trial of the girls and subsequent gladiatorial contest simply takes place before a table placed in front of a barn.
The ape suits themselves often have gaps around the eyes or where you can see through the mouth to the face of the actor beneath. Most of the apes wear assorted robes and rough shawls but beneath these you can also see that some of the actors are wearing jeans and sneakers. Being made on the ultra-cheap, this is a planet of the apes where there only seem to be about a total of five apes.
The trio of actresses playing the escaped girl are Polonia regulars and none of them any great shakes in terms of acting talent. Polonia himself and other regulars like Ken Van Sant and Jeff Kirkendall can be found beneath the ape masks. Classic line of dialogue “Hey you merry mothergrabbers,” which feels exactly like it was inserted in parody/homage to the way R-rated films are redubbed for television screening.
The Polonia Brothers films are Hallucinations (1986), the Polonia Brothers, who were then only eighteen years old, went on to make a series of horror films that became legendary for their cheapness. Over the next two decades, the two put out the likes of Splatter Farm (1987), Hellspawn (1993), Saurians (1994), How to Slay a Vampire (1995), Feeders (1996), Night Crawlers (1996), Bad Magic (1998), Terror House (1998), Feeders 2: Slay Bells (1998), Blood Red Planet (2000), The House That Screamed (2000), Hellgate: The House That Screamed 2 (2001), Dweller (2002), Gorilla Warfare: Battle for the Apes (2002), Night Thirst (2002), Holla If I Kill You (2003), Among Us (2004), Dinosaur Chronicles (2004), Peter Rottentail (2004), Preyalien: Alien Predators (2004), Black Mass (2005), Razorteeth (2005), Splatter Beach (2007), Wildcat (2007), Forest Primeval (2008) and Monster Movie (2008). John died of a heart aneurism in 2008. Since then, Mark Polonia has continued on as a solo director, making the likes of HalloweeNight (2009), E.V.E. of Destruction (2011), Camp Blood First Slaughter (2014), Amityville Death House (2015), Channel 13 (2015), Death Reel (2015), Jurassic Prey (2015), Bigfoot vs Zombies (2016), Sharkenstein (2016), Amityville Exorcism (2017), It Kills (2017), Land Shark (2017), Revolt of the Empire of the Apes (2017), Alien Surveillance (2018), BattleBots (2018), Frozen Sasquatch (2018), Ghost of Camp Blood (2018), Bride of the Werewolf (2019), Deadly Playthings (2019), Amityville Island (2020), Children of Camp Blood (2020), Return to Splatter Farm (2020), Shark Encounters of the Third Kind (2020), Camp Murder (2021), Dune World (2021), Invasion of the Empire of the Apes (2021), Noah’s Shark (2021), Sister Krampus (2021), Virus Shark (2021), Amityville in Space (2022), Doll Shark (2022), Feeders 3: The Final Meal (2022), House Squatch (2022), Reel Monsters (2022), Sharkula (2022), Saurians (2022), Cocaine Shark (2023), Jurassic Shark 3: Seavenge (2023), Motorboat (2023), Revenge of the Empire of the Apes (2023), R.I.P. Van Winkle Part 2 (2023), R.I.P. Van Winkle Part 3 (2023), Saurians 2 (2023), Yule Log (2023), Camp Blood: Clown Shark (2024), Cocaine Werewolf (2024), The Girl Wore Yellow Lace (2024), Jurassic Exorcist (2024), The Last Chainsaw Massacre (2024), Mummy Shark (2024), Once Upon a Time in Amityville (2024), One Million Babes B.C. (2024), Pandasaurus (2024), The Stalking (2024), Teddiscare (2024), Battle Beyond Mars (2025), The Final Possession (2025), Harvest of Eyes (2025) and Trail Cam Sasquatch (2025).
Trailer here