This is where it all begins. But I won’t hand out bonus points for being first, because the inaugural Planet of the Apes doesn’t need ’em. Why? Well, for starters, the world-building is impeccable, as are Jerry Goldsmith’s score and John Chambers’s prosthetics. Charlton Heston’s gung-ho astronaut, Taylor, and a pair of expendably bland crewmates crash-land on a planet ruled by intelligent, talking apes (although Taylor never quite puts together why they’re speaking English… the clues were right in front of you all along!). Our homo sapiens hero quickly becomes the loin-clothed prisoner (along with a mute woman, Linda Harrison’s Nova) of the wise apes running the show, including Maurice Evans’s Dr. Zaius—an orangutan leader with the judgment of Solomon, a belief in law and order second only to Chicago mayor Richard Daley, and a mad scientist’s impulse to castrate his human captives. Behind pounds of putty, Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter play the sympathetic chimps, Cornelius and Zira. Heston, over the top even for him, makes a four-course meal out of his dialogue (“Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”).
Serling’s rug-pulling, sting-in-the-tail ending is, of course, iconic. As Taylor and Nova stand on the beach, the camera pulls back to reveal the Statue of Liberty in ruins. This is not the past. This is not another planet. This is a post-Armageddon Earth. “You blew it up!” yells NRA Moses in his greatest For Your Consideration moment. Then silence, despair, the sound of waves, and end credits. God, the late ’60s really knew how to close a movie. Franklin J. Schaffner’s Planet of the Apes was released the same year as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—two trippy sci-fi parables with religious overtones and apes smashing shit up. You could make the argument that Planet of the Apes is the better movie (although I won’t), but I will suggest that it’s way more fun to watch with nachos on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
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