PLANET OF THE APES—“Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!” In the long ago wack zone of 1968, those who couldn’t locate psychedelic aid to help them make sense of 2001: A Space Odyssey could feed their growing pessimism about the future and our place in it by following Charlton Heston into the year 3978. Adapting Pierre Boulle’s speculative novel, Rod Serling and Michael Wilson’s clever screenplay, the presence of a venerable star to elevate a then-discounted genre and terrific production embellishments in makeup, music scoring and locations made for a critical and box office hit, a silverback troop leader spawning four sequels of descending quality, two TV series, a so-so 2001 remake and its quartet of entertaining prequels. “Human see, human do.” *

After their spacecraft crash lands on some unknown world, astronaut ‘Taylor’ finds he and his companions have light-sped thru the time barrier, more than two thousand years after their launch from Earth. Timing becomes alarming when they discover their new frontier is run by gorillas (with horses and guns), orangutans and chimpanzees, lording it over a despised race of primitive human foragers. Taylor’s intelligence and his stunning—to his captors—ability to speak finds sympathy from chimpanzee scientists ‘Cornelius’ (Roddy McDowall) and ‘Zira’ (Kim Hunter), and he sees comely company in ‘Nova’ (Linda Harrison), fellow human prisoner. But orangutan bigshot ‘Zaius’ (Maurice Evans) shares the cemented simian attitude that people are only good as hunting trophies, menial slaves or experiment specimens.

“Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.”

Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner (who’d done Heston’s underrated The War Lord), shooting in California (Zuma Beach hosting the sand-sunk Statue of Liberty) and further afield in Arizona and Utah, getting otherworldly vistas courtesy of Lake Powell and Glen Canyon, the bizarre vibe is set and held by Jerry Goldsmith’s electronic-inflected music score, a superb atonal concoction that’s a vital mood creator. Among his earlier assignments, he’d aced warm-up winners of weird for the unappreciated thrillers Seconds and The Satan Bug. His masterfully eerie work netted an Oscar nomination, as did the Costume Design. John Chambers received an honorary Oscar for his state-of-the-art Makeup.

The script deftly comments on rifts and trends in (then contemporary) society thru the guise of our simian brothers-in-fur, and was savvy enough to leaven the surreal action and bleak prognosis with humor that related to the mindset of the day in one liners like “Remember, never trust anybody over 30“. Heston had the right physical presence (at 44 nearly as fit as he’d been a decade earlier rowing oars as Ben-Hur) and cynical/macho demeanor to flesh out believable survival heroics. McDowall, Hunter and Evans surmount the makeup and retain their individual characteristics to such a keen degree you stop noticing the painstakingly applied adornment and concentrate on their precision-deployed delivery. And of course there’s that classic surfside finale.

“I never met an ape I didn’t like.” Sweating—manfully—under makeup: James Whitmore, James Daly and Woodrow Parfrey. 112 minutes.

* Cogerson calls it 9th in ’68, ringing up $42,900,000. Other sources suggest ten million less. Whatever the harvest, the $5,800,000 cost (17% of it for makeup and that facet’s crew of 80) was eradicated and chimp change won’t mean beans in 3978. Bananas could come in handy.