In celebration that the new Planet of the Apes movie is coming out very soon, I thought that maybe I will review all of the movies before I review the new one. So sit back and enjoy because this week is “Planet of the Apes week.” Let’s not waste any time, let’s jump right into the very first movie, released in 1968.
This movie started it all and the only memorable flick to come out of the laughable and sometimes unbearable saga of talking ape movies, “Planet of the Apes” still holds up exceptionally well 36 years after it was released.
Now this film is a novel adaptation of “Monkey Planet,” written by Pierre Bouille, which came to screen by producer Arthur Jacobs, who eventually oversaw the production duties for this entire franchise. None of the studios would even pick up this project except for Fox, despite the fact that Rod Serling was involved, who co-authored the screenplay adaptation of the novel (and which led to 30 drafts), Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, and Kim Hunter, and the first-time makeup artist John Chambers.
Heston plays George Taylor, who along with three fellow astronauts (Robert Gunner, Jeff Burton, and Dianne Stanley), is exploring the universe like all astronauts have done since the beginning of time with a time-traveling space shuttle. Taylor and his co-astronauts crash-land on an isolated planet and they set out across the desert to find any sort of life on this new planet they are on. That is until the astronauts find a watering hole, jump in to bathe themselves, and run into a race of mute humans looking for food in a local cornfield. Suddenly, apes come in on horseback with rifles on their shoulders, and Taylor’s crew is captured during an ugly roundup of mute humans.
During Heston’s captivity, a sympathetic ape named Kira, played by Kim Hunter, takes an interest in Taylor and helps him back to health since Taylor was shot in the throat and cannot speak. When Taylor escapes from this prison, he is chased by through the ape civilization and says the movies famous line that puts the entire ape community in awe. Those words are, “Get your stinking paws off me, you darned dirty ape.” Kira and her husband Cornelius, played by Roddy McDowell, an anthropologist with his own speculations about ape evolution, takes her side in depending Taylor against the head of the apes named Dr. Zaius, played by Maurice Evans, who is wanting to make Taylor into all of the other humans they have imprisoned. After judgment is passed, Kira and Cornelius help out Taylor and his new girlfriend Nova, played by Linda Harrison (girlfriend of the studio’s head who doesn’t have a word of dialogue throughout the entire film) escape from the cruelty of these apes. Together, they get apes and humans together to go out to the Forbidden Zone to find out Taylor’s true destiny on this ape planet.
“Planet of the Apes” has surprisingly held up very well due to one main reason: its script. Rod Serling and Michael Wilson, working on the script separately, managed to put together one of most diverse and entertaining movies to ever come out of the 1960s. Max Messier stated in his review of the film: “The combination of Serling's deft storytelling abilities shown so strongly in his work on The Twilight Zone with the real-life political experiences of Michael Wilson -- who was blacklisted by the Un-American Activities Committee in the 50s -- gave this first Apes movie everything a successful film needs: intelligent and meaningful dialogue, rousing action sequences, evolving character development, and a whopper of an ending.”
To summarize, the script would not have been able to be good if it wasn’t for the magnificent acting done by Heston, McDowall, Evans, and Hunter to make this film have some of the most memorable characters that have left an inevitable impact on the audience. Might be another one of my favorites.
Go see this film if you haven’t, it’s one of the best out there. Stay tuned tomorrow to when I continue “Planet of the Apes week.”
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