— RANKING: 14 —
MONKEY BUSINESS: In Rod Serling’s seminal contribution to sci-fi cinema, the space-time continuum is dramatically explored as in many Twilight Zone episodes. From left to right, Charlton Heston, Linda Harrison, Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall, and player. Courtesy: 20th Century-Fox.
CREDITS
Twentieth Century-Fox; Franklin J. Schaffner, dir.; Pierre Boulle, novel; Michael Wilson, Rod Serling, scr.; Mort Abrahams, Arthur P. Jacobs, pro.; Jerry Goldsmith, mus.; Leon Shamroy, cin.; Hugh S. Fowler, ed.; William J. Creber, Jack Martin Smith, art dir.; Morton Haack, costumes; John Chambers, makeup; Vernon Archer, Johnny Borgese, Bill Clove, Glen Galvin, Marlin Jones, Ralph Winigar, F/X; L. B. Abbott, Art Cruickshank, Emil Kosa Jr., visual effects; 112 min.; Color; 2.35:1.
CAST
Charlton Heston (George Taylor); Roddy McDowall (Cornelius); Kim Hunter (Zira); Maurice Evans (Dr. Zaius); James Whitmore (President of the Assembly); James Daly (Honorious); Linda Harrison (Nova); Robert Gunner (Landon); Lou Wagner (Lucius); Woodrow Parfrey (Maximus).
MOST MEMORABLE LINE
Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!
GEORGE TAYLOR, WHILE BEING ARRESTED
The once impregnable Fox studio had been on the verge of bankruptcy since 1963, when the outrageously expensive Cleopatra failed to recoup its investment. The studio could not afford to purchase new material and so brought out of mothballs properties purchased earlier but never developed. Pierre Boulle’s La planète des singes, published in 1963, had been placed on a backburner. Desperate to get something on the market, executives decided to shoot the movie and hope for the best or, quite possibly, go under.
THE PLOT
A spaceship from Earth, traveling at light speed, crash-lands on an unknown planet. Astronauts emerge from deep sleep and realize that the year is 3978 ad. While foraging in the forest, they are attacked by gorillas on horseback. George Taylor, one of the few to survive, is brought as a prisoner into Ape City, where everything is the reverse of what evolved on Earth: apes are advanced, and humans are a lower-level primate. Sensitive Zira and fiancé Cornelius recognize that Taylor is intelligent, and they help him and a human woman escape from Dr. Zaius. After many misadventures, Taylor heads into the Forbidden Zone, where he will discover his destiny.
THE FILM
With a whopping $5.8 million budget, this was an ambitious project, explaining why Fox was able to sign Oscar winner Heston. Though numerous A-list directors were approached, Franklin J. Schaffner (1920–1989) was the star’s suggestion. Never before associated with sci-fi, Schaffner had made his name in golden age TV (Playhouse 90, Studio One in Hollywood) and had directed Heston three years earlier in The War Lord. The idea was to bring aboard a top talent who was not typecast as to genre in order to play down clichés and bring the piece alive as human drama—if, of course, in a futuristic setting.
Schaffner solved the problem of creating an advanced ape world, as originally planned. Rather than build expensive architecture based on a high level of technological know-how, he suggested having the planet appear primitive. This not only saved a lot of money but also set the standard for a new and influential approach to sci-fi visuals.
John Chambers (1922–2001) devised a prosthetic concept that replaced the old face masks. Each actor was able to maintain his or her onscreen identity despite having been re-imagined as a primate. This also allowed for the subtle and complex facial gestures for which these stars were known. If not for this, such top-flight performers would never have signed on for the project.
THEME
Aficionados love to debate how much creative input Rod Serling (1924–1975) had on this project. Claims range from his having written almost everything to an insistence that the famed final shot—Taylor discovering the ruins of the Statue of Liberty and realizing that he’s actually on Earth—is Serling’s single contribution. Though the issue may never be solved, and while other writers did join the creative mix, the quality should be credited to Serling, the piece fitting in perfectly with his body of imaginative fantasy work. As with so many Twilight Zone scripts, we here encounter satire on the class system (in this case, gorillas as the military, orangutans as administrators, chimpanzees as the scientists) and an attack on racism. As with Zone, themes are conveyed via a futuristic setting, allowing for liberal progressive ideology that might have offended large portions of the public if presented in a realistic form. There are visual puns (“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” with various apes incarnating those age-old images), while the ending suggests the possibility of an alternative Earth in some fifth dimension or a future that may yet be avoided via time travel by a dedicated individual. The anti-nuke stance vividly conveys a theme that all but dominated Serling’s classic TV series. Indeed, Planet of the Apes might be considered a theatrical film follow-up to the classic show.
TRIVIA
There would be four sequels and a short-lived TV series (1974), as well as a failed remake (Tim Burton, 2001) and a successful prequel, Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). By far, the best of the immediate follow-ups was the sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (Ted Post, 1970). Most of the original stars returned, with the exception of Roddy McDowall, who had committed to a simultaneous project. Actor David Watson replaced him as Cornelius in Beneath, but McDowall returned for all the other films and the TV series.