“UNCHANGING
EVOLUTIONâ€
By
Raymond Benson
The
early 1970s was a time of experimentation and risk-taking in Hollywood. Studios
were more willing to allow filmmakers to take a project and run with it, just
to see if something thrown at the wall would stick. After all, this was the
period of “New Hollywood,†maverick young directors just out of film school,
and pushing the envelope when it came to what was permissible on screen since
the Production Code was gone and the relatively new movie ratings were in
place.
Playboy
Enterprises got into the movie making business in the early 70s (see Cinema
Retro Vol. 2, issue #5 from 2006 for the magazine’s exclusive interview with
Hugh M. Hefner about Playboy’s film productions). After the critical success of
Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971), Playboy produced The Naked Ape (1973),
loosely adapted from Desmond Morris’ 1967 best-selling non-fiction book.
Morris’
book was an entertaining anthropological study of man’s evolution from primates
and how social norms and mating rituals, especially between males and females
for procreation, have more or less never changed since prehistoric times.
Morris had relatively nothing to do with the film adaptation, for the
filmmakers decided to make a “hip†comedy out of the concepts in the book,
illustrating how “unchanging evolution†still dictated man’s behavior.
The
idea probably looked good on paper. Perhaps the box office success of Woody Allen’s
loose, comedic adaptation of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972),
which was also parodied a best-selling non-fiction book, was an inspiration. However,
The Naked Ape, directed by avant-garde filmmaker Donald Driver, does not
possess the wit and brilliance of a Woody Allen or a Mel Brooks, who also might
have done wonderful things with the material. Instead, The Naked Ape is
a head-scratching curiosity that might have played somewhat well as a “midnight
movie†for college-age audiences in altered states of consciousness.
Johnny
Crawford (who had played Mark McCain in the TV series The Rifleman, now
grown up and looking hunky and handsome) is Lee, a college student infatuated
with Cathy (Victoria Principal, in an early film appearance), a tour guide in a
natural history museum. Through a series of fantasy vignettes, both live action
and animated, the film takes us through the couple’s courtship, marriage, and
subsequent relationship, as well as Lee’s stint in the army and the pair’s
experience in school (they are in an “erotic literature†class together). The
animations, usually narrated by Cathy, interrupt the flow of the loose storyline
to comment, in a humorous fashion, on the proceedings from an anthropological
viewpoint.
Both
Crawford and Principal are attractive on screen (yes, there is nudity; after
all, this is a Playboy Production), but the script is, frankly, subpar. While the
actors do their best, the movie is just not as clever as it thinks it is. The
animations, made by Murakami-Wolf Studios, are somewhat interesting (Frank
Zappa’s album cover artist, Calvin Schenkel, is one of the animators). Vocal
rock songs by Jimmy Webb help liven up the action.
This
reviewer became friends with Johnny Crawford (who passed away in 2021) over the
years. Crawford was always a kind, soft-spoken gentleman who had numerous
stories about his Hollywood years, such as having a studio mailbox right next
to Joan Crawford’s and the two of them often accidentally receiving each
other’s mail. Whenever The Naked Ape was brought up in conversation,
Crawford would simply shake his head, roll his eyes, and smile.
Kino
Lorber has distributed Code Red’s presentation of The Naked Ape in 1080p
high definition, and that distinctive 1970s film stock looks good enough. There
are English subtitles for the hearing impaired and a theatrical trailer, but
otherwise no other supplements.
The
Naked Ape is
for fans of Johnny Crawford and/or Victoria Principal, early 70s experimental
films aimed at the college crowd, and, ahem, amateur anthropologists.
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