by Jason Sacks
Planet of the Apes is already one of the most talked-about films of 1968. My friends have been buzzing about this movie since it was first announced, and now that it’s appeared Apes is certain to dominate all the chatter until Mr. Kubrick delivers his long-promised science fiction film.
A lot of the conversation has been about the ending of this film. I can’t talk about Planet of the Apes without revealing the incredible climax ending in this review, so if you want the twist to be fresh to you, you will want to turn the page around paragraph twelve of this review. You have been warned!
As you probably know, the movie stars Charlton Heston as George Taylor, an astronaut who journeys with his four compatriots to an alien planet via a deep sleep device. One companion dies along the way, so Taylor and his remaining pals journey across a desert. For three days (and thirty minutes of screen time), Taylor and his friends wander like Moses and the Jews across a desolate desert. Unlike wandering tribes of Israel, the astronauts eventually discover an oasis. This verdant area is beautiful and welcoming and perfect for a skinny dip. It’s also the absolute worst place they can end up.
See, the astronauts' clothes get stolen and then the visitors become witness to an incredible tableau. It seems there are many living humanoids on this planet. They look like humans, in fact. They are dressed in rags, running around like savages, terrified of something even stranger.
What sparks their fear is something even more uncanny. What sparks their fear as gorillas. Riding horses. Attacking the humans, and slaughtering them like a big game hunter might hunt gorillas in Africa in our world. The apes are clearly the dominant species on this world. We witness the slaughter of hundreds of humans under the apes’ vicious attack. One of Taylor’s companions is killed in the massacre, while Taylor’s vocal chords are damaged by an ape rifle. Taylor is tied hands and feet, and brought to a very odd sort of jail.
Amazingly, it’s a bespoke sort of jail, in which various ape species come to perform experiments on the humans. Scientist apes Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) and Zira (Kim Hunter) are amazing in their portrayals of these oddly humanlike creatures, full of empathy and confusion about Taylor and yet also a deep commitment to their own ape world. The script nicely walks a fine line with these characters.
The story squarely embeds Cornelius and Zira in the middle of this fictional world, explicitly having them react as members of their society first and foremost. Our hirusite leads react as apes with moral codes and professional ethics and wow is this a wonderful breath of fresh air compared with the way most science fiction movies portray societies.
I’ll move away from this plot summary, at least for the moment (gotta talk about the astonishing ending!) because I must make sure I discuss the many other ways this movie stands out.
First and foremost, Planet of the Apes is a fun movie. It’s full of action and twists and surprises. The crowd at the Northgate Theatre seemed on the edge of their seats the entire time as we watched this film, and the buzz at exit was full of joy.
Which implies the film had a great script. Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone wrote the initial outline, but Michael Wilson completed it. Wilson has previously worked on the David Lean films Bridge Over the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, and he brings this film a similar combination of epic feel and personal intimacy we get in those films. Specifically, he creates a complex and fascinating society for the apes. This society has a history, and a religion, and social castes, and even mythologies they’ve created. All of it feels smartly earned, based on how I would imagine an ape society would be constructed, and I keep finding myself pondering this world.
One of the most important things about Apes has been receiving a lot of buzz in Famous Monsters and other recent zines: The makeup in this movie is amazing. I know there’s no Academy Award for best makeup, but the category should be reinstated just for this film. I was initially skeptical about the design of these characters going into the movie, but Dan Striepeke and his crew at Fox deliver an amazing design.
Franklin J. Schaffner directs the film. I’m not familiar with any of his recent work, but I know he directed Heston in The War Lord, and it’s obvious their previous project built some tremendous trust between the men. The direction is solid, professional and not showy. I’ve been pondering what Kubrick might be showing us in his sci-fi film, and I’m sure it will be much slicker and showier than Schaffner’s work here.
Leon Shamroy’s cinematography delivers in every scene, whether the gorgeous vistas of the American desert, the weird interiors of the Apes’ abodes, or the claustrophobic cages. Jerry Goldsmith’s atonal music adds so much to the story being told, and the set design work by Walter M. Scott and Norman Rockett really brings this world to life.
Okay, okay, yeah this movie is fantastic. It’s full of some thrilling and hilarious moments. Heston screaming “get away from me you damn dirty apes” is already starting to enter our lexicon. Sock it to me!
But the biggest reason everybody seems to leave this film giggling, the “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn!” or “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!” moment which will go down in history, is that awesome tableau at the very end. Schaffner films the sequence perfectly. Taylor and his female companion Nova are riding a horse on a beach. We think they’re still on an alien world as the camera zooms up. We see a triangle on the edge of the screen, we witeness a pull back, and at last we get a stunning image and a powerful primal scream of anger from Heston…
Ohh yeah! If you’re not smiling thinking about this ending, you saw a different movie than I did.
This is clearly the best science fiction movie of the year so far. I don’t know much about what Stanley Kubrick has planned, but this odyssey to the Planet of the Apes is stunning.
5 stars.
It is definitely a great film. A couple of other things than were in your review struck me.
First off was the restraint of it. Unlike many other SF films, it does not feel the need for an action set piece every 15 minutes to make sure people don't leave the theatre. The lead character even spends the first half of the movie not speaking.
Secondly, whilst you mentioned colonialism, I feel we are suppsoed to read this, at least partially, as being the South in the early 20th century. The riding through the fields on horses beating people with sticks, the fear which humans seem to invoke in the apes, the controversy over the teaching of evolution etc. So much iconography in it to me seems too intentional to be accidental to my eyes.
One criticism I have to add is that a "human doll that talks" is surely not the conclusive proof of a human society. If so Mattel is clearly telling us something sinister with its Chester Chimp dolls!
I agree completely on the restraint. The movie does a great job of taking its time to introduce the world, so that when the attack hits the humans, it's all the more shocking. In a way I wish the film didn't have its title at the beginning, or any of its publicity, so I could have had that experience completely fresh.
I hadn't considered the South for some reason, but that's a great point!
This is a rare combination – a movie filled with ideas which is also thoroughly entertaining!
I'm not able to guess the reason for the large and continuing publicity and acclaim for this movie, unless it had monkey shines and dancing apes in it which brought amusement to the audience.
Many thanks for this post! Planet of the Apes has always been one of my two favourite SF films, the other being 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Although this first film was clearly the best of the original series, I also like the other four films, whatever their flaws. In some ways the entire series is like a single five-part film.
All five of them have positive aspects to them. Conquest is probably my favorite sequel. It's weird and upsetting and actually pretty spooky.
It should be noted here that Pierre Boulle's novel is very different, and has a twist ending that does not resemble the film at all.
That is true but I do feel that ending would be quite hard to do on screen. I think the move to a more visual choice than narrative twist was probably the right choice.
You're right, Victoria, although I like Boulle's twist ending–and the novel as a whole–just as much as the film. Nevertheless, some aspects of the novel also found their way into the film, such as the discovery of the origins of ape civilization (the archaeological digs, the doll, etc.)
It's almost stunt casting to have once-renown stage actor, Maurice Evans, playing "Doctor Zaius."
Keeping pretty close to motion pictures, aren't you, knowing details of the actors and directors?
I try.
I see a lot of people going all the way into the movies they watch. These must be confirmed motion picture fans.