Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes (1968) is about a space crew landing on a planet run by apes. Taylor and his crew come down somewhere unknown after a long voyage. There are talking apes there, and the humans are mute, unclothed, kept as animals. Because Taylor can speak he becomes a problem; the scientist apes are interested, the religious ones want him silenced. The ending is among the best known in cinema and will not be described here. Rod Serling wrote the early drafts; the sensibility he brought from The Twilight Zone is in the structure. The makeup design is John Chambers's work. The ape faces had a flexibility not seen before; the actors could use their facial muscles and the masks carried expression. Chambers received an honorary Academy award for it. There is a second half to Chambers's story. Years later he worked with the CIA: in 1980 a fake science fiction production was staged to extract six American diplomats from Iran, and Chambers took part in it. The man who built the ape makeup became part of a rescue operation. Charlton Heston leads. Jerry Goldsmith's score is not tonal; it uses percussion and unorthodox techniques, and it is one of the things that makes the planet foreign. It runs 112 minutes. Good for: classic science fiction, the sixties, and allegory. Less good for: the pace is slow, the makeup shows now, and the dialogue is didactic.