When the great movie ‘recasting’ craze hit the Terran Federation’s colonised worlds in 2139-2140, many new cinematic masterpieces were created. Whether Planet of the Homo-Nids classifies as one depends on what your definition of masterpiece is, and in which genre. Historians of erotic entertainment media say that it is, but they keep getting into fights with hordes of neo-existentialist French cinematic theorists over this one.

The original production, Planet of the Apes (1968) was itself an adaptation of an earlier techfic novel, Pierre Boulle’s Monkey Planet, but resembled it in approximate name only.  The movie is full of scientific implausibilities, like a handily developed multispecies pandemic that just happens to increase simian intelligence, wipes out all canines and felines, decreases human intelligence, and a nuclear war which has the ridiculous effect of causing accelerated geological change which would normally take millions of years, resulting in a cringe-making scene where an astronaut encounters the Statue of Liberty’s remains on a New York beach. And we’re also supposed to believe that the 20th C Former United States had FTL capability? Oh, please…

Anyway, given that the film was oddly homoerotic in places, it’s a wonder that no enterprising erotic entertainment producer decided to parody the movie, given exactly those propensities within the thriving pre-Theocracy War FUS male EE industry.  For whatever reason, the ‘recasting’ craze of 2139-2149 did so, with some amusing results.

President “Dixon Noxin” is first seen snorting cocaine with Otto Hasspeciest, the inventor of the FLT starships, which is poisoned. It’s all a cunning Soviet Union ploy. Alas, when buxom KGB agent Svetlana Oktobrena reports to Brezhnev, he’s so excited he tanks it, leading to a panicked reaction from his guards, who shoot her, and one just happens to crush the FTL microfilm cartridge she was carrying under her feet.

Fastwind to the fortieth century, when the FTL vessel crashlands. When it does so, the three male crewmembers find a note from Ripley, their female colleague, in her empty suspended animation tube, explaining that their vessel was intercepted by the Vrandhi’ir, a matriarchal alien species of avianoids, and given an immortality drug that only works on females. Tough. So long, boys.

Nothing else significantly deviant happens until the three male crewmembers traipse across the desert and encounter a waterfall, whereupon they all strip off, and plunge into it. There’s a badly interpolated mansex scene with awful dialogue and stilted acting, where “Rod” Taylor and Dodge, the Newafrikan astronaut, get it on. Unfortunately, fellow astronaut Dwight is infected with the Homophobic Stupidity Virus, carried by Polyester Stupidity Flea parasites, which transforms him into a brain-dead SM Nun, who then mysteriously dies for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, someone steals Taylor and Dodge’s clothes.

Dodge and Taylor give chase, but Taylor loses Dodge, who is abducted into the Newafrikan market version of the re-cast for blacksamesexers, Dodge Does the Down-Low in Harlem Renaissance City.  He eventually encounters a group of primitive looking heterosexual primitives in a cornfield.

At that point, a fleet of antigrav vehicles descends on the primitives, resulting in the capture of several. Commander Stryker objects to the smell of Taylor’s loincloth, and rips it off, which happens on cue every fifteen minutes or so during the rest of the movie. There’s more mansex. Taylor is taken back to the “Finland Station,” an experimental base, which leads to Taylor having even more mansex with Kornell and Zane, two sympathetic younger scientists.

Proctor Julius Clary is the presiding Queen’s Representative at Finland Station, and Taylor’s loincloth is ripped off for the third time in this recast, on the discovery that, yes, Taylor can speak. He didn’t before, because something (…) kept blocking his mouth before he could do so. Okay, about four somethings to date. He ponders aloud why it is that heterosexuals are so stupid on this world. Proctor Clary sighs and points out that he’s from 20C Earth, and therefore must have encountered Deep Southern US fundamentalists at some point.

Anyway, he’s a ‘mushroom,’ not a real samesexer, because he doesn’t display any of the civilised hallmarks of samesexers, and is tossed back into the heteropreserve. Fortunately, he breaks out of it, and Clary, Stryker, Kornell and Zane all give chase until he reaches a ruined city. After more expository dialogue, it becomes clear that Julius Clary is hiding a secret of his own.

Cue the inevitable scene in which Taylor then spots the Statue of Liberty, only this version has been tarted up to look like one of the dragqueens from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, leading to this memorable dialogue:

“No! No! You stupid bastards, you let it turn all girly, damn you!”

Kornell is puzzled: “But wasn’t that statue female to begin with? And gender does not neccessarily depend on physical anatomy. What about Margaret Thatcher, for example?”

Clary relents: “Quite apart from that, sweetie, we’ve found out that Stryker lied. You’re a highly talented butch bottom, and could make untold megacredits on holosuite residuals.”

Taylor shrugs, smiles and rips off his own loincloth, leading to a naked stroll down the beach, with hands around his new management group’s shoulders:

“Guys, this may be the start of an excellent professional relationship…”

Admittedly, it did quite well on the male samesexer erotic entertainment market, but then there was the obligatory outbreak of warfare with snotty French neo-existentialist cinema theorists, who objected to the liberties taken with the recast. They were also homophobic, resulting in an unpleasant fight with escargots, giant camembert and a vat of replikant champagne.  In order not to provoke riots from the aforementioned, it was summarily banned on Earth, until they died from a BSE mutant which is believed to have had something to do with the Evil Mutant Bacteriophage Competitor Obliteration Division of KiwiOmniFoods.

Today, though, controversy still rages around it, as we approach the seventieth anniversary of this vintage product of erotic entertainment.

Excerpt from: Sudoku Tsai-Dao: “Loincloth Ripping Ahead: The Recast Controversy and Man-Handling on Planet of the Homo-Nids” Ganymede Cultural Studies: A-58, 2207 CE.