Theme: Apes

In being the nearest animal to humanity, evolutionarily speaking, the ape has had some considerable fascination in fantastic cinema.

Popular for many years was the depiction of the ape as monster. The classic version of this was King Kong (1933) and there have been various rampaging giant and regular-sized apes since then. Modern portrayals depict the ape in a more sympathetic light and show it as an endangered species.

Apes are also popular in mad science cinema where scientists regularly conduct experiments to transform people into apes or transplants human brains into ape bodies or vice versa. Mad scientists frequently have an ape in a cage in their laboratory, which can usually be counted on to escape.

Apes often serve as cute and cuddly companions or comic sidekicks as in the Tarzan, Mowgli and Doctor Dolittle films. There have been a variety of talking apes in animated films.

There have been a number of films about intelligent apes as in the Planet of the Apes saga ranging all the way to comic-book super-villains like Gorilla Grodd, while other works have dealt with real world attempts to teach apes sign language.