The Kennebeck Journal (October 8, 1976).
One of my all-time favorite examples of pure cinema chutzpah goes to whoever had the cajones / bright idea of trying to pass off Amando de Ossorio's completely brilliant Tombs of the Blind Dead (alias La noche del terror ciego, 1972) as an ersatz sequel to The Planet of the Apes (1968), hoping to cash-in while the country was monkey-addled and encouraged to Go Ape!
Alas, as to whose idea that was exactly hasn't quite surfaced yet. But what we do know is that the goal was to present the living dead Templars of Ossorio's film as a "group of long-dead Apes risen from the grave to take their revenge on the human race that killed them and destroyed their society," says the Planet of the Apes Wiki.
"One can only assume that this outrageous idea was inspired by the fact that the sunken, nose-less but bearded faces of the Blind Dead look very slightly simian in nature. The film was clearly unsanctioned at the time and the handiwork of a dodgy distributor."
Unfathomably, the only real changes made to the film was a kit-bashed opening prologue, where a narrator sets up this pending postmortem ape apocalypse from beyond the grave. That, and trimming out the flashback sequence that gives the true origins of the Blind Dead. That's it.
This opening narration piece is available as an extra feature on several DVD and Bluray releases of Tombs of the Blind Dead for those curious. Last check it was also available to stream on YouTube.
Now, from what I could gather after several online searches, Revenge from Planet Ape first surfaced in Maine in October of 1976, where it made its most theatrical appearances:
The Kennebeck Journal (October 7, 1976):
The Evening Express (October 8, 1976):
The Morning Sentinel (October 8, 1976):
The Times Record (October 12, 1876):
Then, after a brief stop at the Paramount Theatre to celebrate New Year's Eve '76 with Lola Falana's Black Tigress (alias Lola Colt, 1967), in February of 1977, it popped up proper in Texas, including a legendary run, print ad wise, in San Antonio at several ozoners:
The Marshall News Messenger (December 31, 1976):
The Express News (February 17 thru February 20, 1977):
The Monitor (March 25, 1977):
It then had a brief run in Colorado in May, 1977, playing a week at the Chief:
The Daily Sentinel (May 11, 1977):
Then it resurfaced in a South Carolina multiplex around June, 1977, before disappearing again.
The Anderson Independent (June 4, 1977):
And finally, it resurfaced again, again, briefly in early 1978 in the hinterlands of Detroit, Michigan.
The Detroit Free Press (January 9, 1978):
It might've played in other places, there's rumors that it was still in circulation until 1984! But I can find no trace of it between 1978 and 1990 on newspapers.com. Doesn't mean it didn't. It just means I couldn't find it.
