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Cast: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter
UK Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Charlton Heston has had many memorable lines of dialogue over the years: The opening monologue to Armageddon; that speech as a gas station attendant in Wayne's World 2 - oh, and countless historical epics such as The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur. But few were as memorable as: "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"
No prizes for guessing that the movie was Planet of the Apes.
In those pre-Star Wars days, sci-fi smashes were a rare beast but thanks to a clever script by Twilight Zone's Rod Serling (among others), this tale of an astronaut who crash lands on a world ruled by simians was a sheer delight.
The fact that Heston was the he-man hero helped things enormously. Swarthy, tanned and oozing charisma, he was piping hot property and the perfect star for an audience to relate to. Especially as the premise was so outlandish.
The film was produced by Arthur Jacobs who had worked on the most expensive musical ever filmed at the time, Doctor Dolittle, with Rex Harrison as well as a musical version of Goodbye, Mr Chips, with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark.
Heston was contacted in 1965 to see if he was interested in the pivotal role of Taylor.
"I was approached by Arthur Jacobs with Pierre Boulle's novel Planet of the Apes and a remarkable series of paintings of scenes in the picture that Arthur envisioned and it attracted me," he recalls. "I liked the idea of the talking monkeys and the different civilisation. It was simply a marvellous idea for a movie."
The late Roddy McDowall admitted a few years before his death that giving a performance inside a monkey mask would be quite a task.
"Arthur Jacobs personally offered me the part of Cornelius on a plane flight back from London. I accepted immediately intrigued by the technical challenge of acting inside the elaborate make-up."
McDowall's performance was so impressive it kept him in work for years through most of the sequels (and prequels) and the subsequent TV series.
Roddy's character Galen in the TV spin off even graced a few patterned jumpers in the early Seventies when Ape fever was at its most contagious.
Make-up artist John Chambers deserves a special mention for designing the masks and assorted oddments which transform the film's stars from humans to believable apes.
He worked on the project for six months prior to start of filming, spending much time in the experimental laboratory where he and his associates perfected new paints, materials, adhesives and techniques.
Aside from Heston and McDowall, Kim Hunter, perhaps best known up to that point for her Oscar-winning performance as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), gave a memorable performance as Zira, one of the most unusual doctors in the movies.
"My agent sent me a copy of the script and wanted to know if I was interested." she recalls. "I thought it was fascinating. Eventually it came through and they flew me out to LA for the costume tests so I figured I'd be going to the costume department. Right? No, I went to John Chambers department. And I couldn't believe it, what we had to go through to get all of that on. It took about five hours the first time."
A new Apes movie will be released next year and although there's no news of a cast yet, the production calibre looks great.
Penned by Sleepy Hollow's Andrew Kevin Walker, Speed's Graham Yost and Batman's Sam Hamm - not to mention make-up effects by Terminator veteran Stan Winston - it looks like this is one load of monkey business that stands to make more than just peanuts at the box office in 2001.
© 2000 Roger Crow
