Planet of the Apes - Behind The Scenes

Planet of the Apes (1968) – Behind The Scenes

Planet of the Apes (1968)

Astronauts Taylor (Charlton Heston), Landon (Robert Gunner), Dodge (Jeff Burton) and Stewart (an uncredited Dianne Stanley) are in deep hibernation when their spaceship crash-lands in a lake on an unknown planet, after a 2006-year voyage at near-light speed (during which the crew ages only 18 months due to time dilation). However, due to an air leak, Stewart’s suspended animation equipment fails. The astronauts awaken to find Stewart’s body desiccated and their ship sinking. They use an inflatable raft to reach shore. Before departing the ship, Taylor notes that the current year is 3978 A.D. Once ashore, Dodge performs a soil test and pronounces the soil incapable of sustaining life.

Scenes from the first parts of the movie were shot around Lake Powell. Despite this, as the three astronauts set off through a desert, they gradually encounter plant life. They find an oasis at the edge of the desert and decide to go swimming, ignoring strange scarecrow-like figures. While they are swimming, their clothes are stolen. Pursuing the thieves, the astronauts find their clothes in shreds, their supplies pillaged and the perpetrators — a group of mute, primitive humans — contentedly raiding a cornfield. Suddenly, clothed gorillas on horseback charge through the cornfield, brandishing firearms, snares, and nets, which they use to capture whatever humans they can and kill those they cannot. While fleeing, Dodge is killed, Landon is knocked unconscious, and Taylor is shot in the throat. The gorillas take Taylor to Ape City, where his life is saved by two chimpanzee scientists, animal psychologist Zira (Kim Hunter) and surgeon Galen (Wright King). Upon awakening, Taylor — now housed in a cage with a girl whom he later calls Nova (Linda Harrison) — discovers that his throat wound has rendered him mute.

Taylor discovers that the apes, who can talk, are in control and are divided into a strict caste system: the gorillas as police, military, hunters and workers; the orangutans as administrators, politicians, lawyers and religious clerics; and the chimpanzees as intellectuals and scientists. Humans, who cannot talk, are considered feral vermin and are hunted for sport and either killed outright, enslaved for manual labor, or domesticted as pets and used for scientific experimentation. Zira and her fiancé, Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), an archaeologist, take an interest in Taylor. Taylor attempts to communicate by writing in the dirt, but his writings are hidden by Nova and Cornelius’s boss, an orangutan named Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans). Eventually, Taylor steals paper from Zira and uses it to write messages to her. Zira and Cornelius become convinced that Taylor is intelligent, but upon learning of this, Zaius orders that Taylor be castrated.

Taylor manages to escape and during his flight through Ape City he finds himself in a museum, where Dodge’s corpse has been stuffed and put on display. Shortly thereafter, Taylor is recaptured by gorillas; finding that his throat has healed, he angrily addresses them, shouting "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" (This quote would become one of the most famous parts of the film.) Back in his cell, Taylor is separated from Nova and the warden Julius (Buck Kartalian) sprays Taylor with water. The apes hold a tribunal to determine Taylor’s origins run by the President of the Assembly (James Whitmore), Dr. Zaius, and Dr. Maximus (Woodrow Parfrey) with Dr. Honorious (James Daly) as the prosecution. Taylor tells of his two comrades and at this point the court produces Landon, who has been subjected to a lobotomy that has rendered him catatonic.

The final scene was filmed on a stretch of beach between Malibu and Oxnard in California. After the tribunal, Dr. Zaius privately threatens to lobotomize Taylor if he doesn’t lie about where he came from. With help from Zira’s socially-rebellious nephew Lucius (Lou Wagner), Zira and Cornelius free Taylor and Nova, taking them to the Forbidden Zone, a region outside of Ape City subject to an ancient taboo that has remained quarantined for centuries. A year earlier, Cornelius led an expedition into the Forbidden zone and found a cave containing artifacts of a previous non-simian civilization. The party then set out for the cave, to answer the questions Taylor has about the evolution of the Ape world and to prove he is not of their world. Arriving at the cave, Cornelius is intercepted by Dr. Zaius and his soldiers. Zaius agrees to enter the cave, to disprove their theories and also to avoid any physical harm to Cornelius and Zira. Cornelius displays the remnants of a technologically advanced human society pre-dating simian history. Taylor identifies some of the more recent artifacts as dentures, a pair of prescription glasses, a heart valve and to the apes’ astonishment, a talking children’s doll.

Dr. Zaius admits that he has always known that human civilization existed long before apes ruled the planet. He explains that "the Forbidden Zone was once a paradise, [man] made a desert of it… ages ago!" Once Taylor and Nova have ridden away on horseback, Dr. Zaius has the gorillas lay explosives to seal off the cave and destroy the remaining evidence of the human society while having Zira, Cornelius and Lucius charged with heresy. Taylor and Nova follow the shoreline and eventually discover the charred remnants of the Statue of Liberty, thus revealing that this "alien" planet, that previously had a human civilization long before apes ruled, is actually post-apocalyptic Earth.

Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner

Produced by Arthur P. Jacobs

Screenplay by Michael Wilson, Rod Serling

Based on La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle

Starring

Charlton Heston

Roddy McDowall

Kim Hunter

Maurice Evans

James Whitmore

James Daly

Linda Harrison