SyFy recently went old style Simian Apocalypse with a marathon of the first and original Planet of the Apes cycle, and you can do it yourself any old time. It’s worth it.

You can click on the links scattered throughout and watch any one o’ these on Amazon Instant Video, or even buy the entire set here. In any event…gotta catch ’em all beginning with:

Planet of the Apes. It was such a thing, such a weird thing when it first showed up in 1968. Talking apes? Seriously? And what’s Charlton Heston doing here, with his shirt off, yet? Who knew it would become a trope all by itself, especially over the next five years. And who’d a thought Roddy McDowell would make a convincing — even charming — chimpanzee? You have to start here.

Arguably, Beneath the Planet of the Apes may actually be the best in the entire series, including #1. Yes, there’s more shirtless Charlton Heston, but that’s just the beginning. This may be the best post-nuke world in film, at least up to 1969 (when was Boy and His Dog, again?): the mutants living in the remnants of the New York subway, reading minds and making annoying squeaky noises with their brains. Hail the Holy Bomb! Don’t brain-fry me, bro! A perfect over-the-top film, and only the first of many.

 Escape from the Planet of the Apes brings us more Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter (the only lady-ape to wear mascara and really pull it off!) as they abandon the future world and arrive on present-day earth (if “present day” is 1971). It’s an orgy of 1970’s character actors. Seriously: William Windom, Bradford Dillman, Eric Braeden, M. Emmet Walsh, Albert Salmi, Sal Mineo, Ricardo Montalban – hey! Ricardo friggin’ Montalban! We give up, we have to watch this again.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes came next. Most everybody’s back as witnesses to humanity’s stupidest move ever: turning the talking, thinking genetic offspring of Cornelius and Zira into a slave class. (Hey, they’re only monkeys, right?) Didn’t we do this whole slave-rebellion thing in the past? Like in real life? Well here we go again…

The last of the line: Battle for Planet of the Apes, as Roddy McDowell, who’s now been wearing the monkey-suit with dash and dignity for five years, brings the story full circle, as rebel leader, now King Caesar (yes, kind of redundant), tries to build a world where apes and humans can live in peace. But come on, we know that’s not going to work out. We saw the movie! Another slew of great character actors, including Claude Akins, Severn Darden, France Nuyen, Lew Ayres (trust us, if you don’t know the names, you’ll know the faces), and plenty of flashbacks to bring the story full circle.

Here’s a kind of sad/heartwarming side story: One producer made this whole thing happen, right from the first movie, Planet, back in  1968 to the fifth and final sequel, Battle, in 1973 (notice that back in those days they just banged these babies out. He did almost one a year, with the longest gap between #1 and #2 of less than two years). Anyway, Jacobs produced other memorable films, including Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison (one of the biggest financial bombs in Hollywood history, but – predicably – his only Oscar nom), Play it Again, Sam with Woody Allen, Goodbye, Mr. Chips with Peter O’Toole – class work. But ‘til the end, he was known best for the Apes cycle. He was to apes as Cubby Broccolli was to James Bond. And his wife, Natalie Trundy, appeared in all this films in different roles (completists will probably remember her best as the beautiful blonde mutant in Beneath). Natalie herself has had an interesting life: a strong start as an actress when she was young, working with Vittorio de Sica and the like, then a car accident that sidelined her for years, and then her marriage to up-and-coming Jacobs.

And then, after years of makin’ the movies, Arthur Jacobs dies of a heart attack at the age of 51, just weeks after the last of the Apes movies is released, causing Natalie to retire from acting entirely, so she can take over his production company. The nicest part of all? Natalie appears in the last two films as Lisa, Caeser’s wife. Awww…

Natlalie may have left acting, but she didn’t stop living. Quite the opposite: she spent years volunteering at Mother Teresa’s hospice in Calcutta, and is still with us today, in her seventies, living in Los Angeles  with her children and her pets.

You can read more about Jacobs in John Gregory Dunne’s excellent book The Studio, available here.

…and you can buy the whole series on DVD right here.