Review: Planet of the Apes (1968)

Planet of the Apes

Rating

Director

Franklin J. Schaffner

Screenplay

Michael Wilson, Rod Serling (Novel: Pierre Boulle)

Length

1h 52m

Starring

Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly, Linda Harrison, Robert Gunner, Lou Wagner, Woodrow Parfrey, Jeff Burton, Buck Kartalian, Norman Burton, Wright King, Paul Lambert

MPAA Rating

Review

It’s not often that changes made to a filmic adaptation makes for a better picture. Planet of the Apes shows where adaptors find the best elements of the source material and add only what is necessary to make it a stronger film.

Four scientists are sent into space for an extended journey. Hundreds of years after their journey began, they awaken, one astronaut down. Crash landing on a remote planet, they discover a society built by talking apes. The gorillas form the military, the orangutans the theocrats, and the chimpanzees the scientists. The leader of the team, George Taylor (Charlton Heston), struggles to protect himself and his crew as the machinations from Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) but a question of survival is always at the forefront of their struggles.

Charlton Heston was mostly a mediocre actor. While his performances here and in Touch of Evil are solid, he never quite found a way to make a name for himself as anything more than a stoic, aggressive performer whose type, like that of contemporary John Wayne, seldom varied. While his act here is perhaps a little too defiant and a little too unflappable, it worked for the screenplay’s needs. That’s probably why he was chosen and which would many years later lead him to a dubious and horrifying career peddling firearms for the gun manufacturing industry.

More compelling are the actors playing the various apes. Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, and Evans are all convincing in spite of hefty makeup minimizing their ability for facial expressions. Hunter is the best at getting past that with her eyes and body language though McDowall and Evans are strong in their roles as well. Were it not for their characters’ varied curiosity and empathy (McDowall and Hunter) and zealous and pomposity (Evans), the film might have felt more hokey than it already did. Grounding it with those performances saved the picture. For the time, this type of makeup was revolutionary and it showed. It’s part of the varied and evocative production design that keeps the film feeling fresh and pointed all these years later.

Originally meant for Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, Michael Wilson helped retool the concept into a feature-length project, maintaining much of the incisiveness that would have been the hallmark of a Twilight Zone episode. It also maintained the novel’s clever sociopolitical commentary, a feat difficult at a time when the HUAC (House Unamerican Activities Committee) had almost destroyed many of the great Hollywood screenwriters. This included Wilson for whom this was his second screenplay written after returning to Hollywood. It’s not shocking that he was able to code so much commentary into a film that was ostensibly meant to make money at the box office. And it did, spawning several mediocre sequels and providing the impetus for a modern resurgence of the material finding added contemporary discourse.

The film warns the audience of othering those who are different from you. While much of Planet of the Apes comments on racial tensions of the period its eloquence of purpose and foresight of struggles that continue to plague us, some of which are still racial in nature. It allows its timely themes to remain relevant and that’s the best we can hope for with science fiction as a milieu.