Planet of the Apes (1968)

Alternate US title:
“Monkey Planet”

Directed by: Franklin J. Schaffner

Written by: Michael Wilson, Rod Serling, Pierre Boule

Starring: Charlton Heston, Roddy MacDowell, Kim Hunter

Running Time: 1 hour, 52 minutes

Rating: G

Pre-Conceived Notions: It’s about a guy who finds himself in a world that is dominated by gorillas or some other large nonhuman ape creatures, and come to find out it’s our own planet! In the (not so) distant future! *Spoiler Alert!* Damn. I think I messed that up again. I’ll get better at it as we go along.

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: I haven’t seen a lot of ’60s films.

1 hour, 52 minutes later…: I didn’t expect this movie to be so short and to the point. My first impression was to be, uh, impressed with the premise of the whole movie revolving around Einstein’s theory of relativity. That was a nice touch. But at the beginning, didn’t Taylor say, “we’re making our way back to Earth.” Didn’t he know that’s where they were landing? And why did it take them over a year to land? 

The themes this movie dealt with were top-notch. It showed how sticking to traditions and old ways of thinking can really put a stop to advancement of society. That point kept getting hammered home with Dr. Zaius talking about the scrolls, and the the forbidden area being forbidden because the scrolls say they are forbidden. I liken it to the controversy surrounding stem cell research with Bush putting a kibosh on it because it went against his faith, meanwhile Israel—who is lightyears better at separating Church and State than we are—went ahead with their research and gained a lot of ground with it. Look up “Christopher Reeve in Israel” and there’ll be a couple of videos that pop up on that topic.

The make-up was awesome, but it made it so that Cornelius and Zira didn’t kiss each other so much as they bumped latex lips together. It was like watching a really bizarre incarnation of bumper cars. But I guess if they did try to actually kiss, they would have suffocated themselves after 10 seconds. 

Final Thoughts: 5 out of 6 slices of pizza. I loved the Serling ending to this movie that this was Earth all along, even though we knew that from almost the first frame of the film. Charlton Heston wielded his weapon like any future NRA president worth his salt. And he had the flu through much of the filming. So, hats off to him!