An astronaut crew crash-lands on a planet in the distant future where intelligent talking apes are the dominant species, and humans are the oppressed and enslaved.
The sole survivor of an interplanetary rescue mission searches for the only survivor of the previous expedition. He discovers a planet ruled by apes and an underground city run by telepathic humans.
Director:
Ted Post
Stars:
James Franciscus,
Kim Hunter,
Maurice Evans
The world is shocked by the appearance of three talking chimpanzees, who arrived mysteriously in a U.S. spacecraft. They become the toast of society, but one man believes them to be a threat to the human race.
Director:
Don Taylor
Stars:
Roddy McDowall,
Kim Hunter,
Bradford Dillman
In a futuristic world that has embraced ape slavery, Caesar, the son of the late simians Cornelius and Zira, surfaces after almost twenty years of hiding out from the authorities, and prepares for a slave revolt against humanity.
Director:
J. Lee Thompson
Stars:
Roddy McDowall,
Don Murray,
Ricardo Montalban
Ten years after a worldwide series of ape revolutions and a brutal nuclear war among humans, Caesar must protect survivors of both species from an insidious human cult and a militant ape faction alike.
Director:
J. Lee Thompson
Stars:
Roddy McDowall,
Claude Akins,
Natalie Trundy
A growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier.
Taylor and two other astronauts come out of deep hibernation to find that their ship has crashed. Escaping with little more than clothes they find that they have landed on a planet where men are pre-lingual and uncivilized while apes have learned speech and technology. Taylor is captured and taken to the city of the apes after damaging his throat so that he is silent and cannot communicate with the apes.Written by
John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
Two nine-foot statues of the Lawgiver were made. The original used in the first, second and fifth films ended up in Arthur P. Jacobs' back yard as the sole prop he kept from the movie. The other was given to Sammy Davis Jr. by Jacobs and was kept by him for many years. Jacobs kept the original Lawgiver statue in his backyard until his early and untimely death in 1973 at age 51. His widow, Natalie Trundy Jacobs, kept the statue in her backyard even as she moved residences. Several movie stars and celebrities can be found in photo archives standing next to the Lawgiver statue, including Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Kim Hunter, Andy Warhol and a pregnant Natalie Wood. In December of 1998, Natalie Trundy Jacobs sold the original Lawgiver statue through an online auction hosted by The Time Machine, a web-based memorabilia retailer dealing in photos and celebrity autographs. The winning bidder was an avid "Planet of the Apes" collector, Ed Gogin of Orange County, California, who outbid 20th Century-Fox, which wanted the Lawgiver statue for its archives and marketing purposes. In December of 2010 Gogin was featured in Hollywood Treasure: Joe's Judgment Day (2010) with his other "Apes" memorabilia. The copy of the Sammy Davis Lawgiver statue was sold at his IRS estate auction for the singer's unpaid back taxes to a Hollywood actor and friend of Roddy McDowall. This Lawgiver statue was featured in the 1998 AMC documentary, Behind the Planet of the Apes (1998), as part of AMC's 30 Year Anniversary campaign "Apes Go Classic". See more »
Goofs
At the crash site, the bubbling that erupts from below the spacecraft is evidently to represent air escaping as it is sinking. However, the bubbling we see shows telltale signs of being created by sublimation of carbon dioxide ice. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
George Taylor:
And that completes my final report until we reach touchdown. We're now on full automatic, in the hands of the computers. I have tucked my crew in for the long sleep and I'll be joining them soon. In less than an hour, we'll finish our sixth month out of Cape Kennedy. Six months in deep space - by our time, that is. According to Dr. Haslein's theory of time, in a vehicle travelling nearly the speed of light, the Earth has aged nearly 700 years since we left it, while we've aged ...
See more »
No one I know under 40 had seen this film, though we all joked about it as being a stereotypical "bad" film based on rumors. the title, and clips seen here and there. Finally one weekend when I was working until 2:00 a.m. I went home and there was a sequel on late night TV, during the 30 year Planet of the Apes marathon. It made me curious about the original and I tracked it down. I have to say it blew me away!
The film is philosophical, creative, absorbing and scary. Excellent commentary on religion and just about everything else. I strongly recommend to anyone who has not seen it. So far I haven't even been able to convince my friends to see it because there seems to be such a strong prejudice against it and some sort of entrenched belief it must be bad; in fact it is one of the finest films I've seen and I can see why it is a classic.
If you enjoy films that make you think you simply can't dislike Planet of the Apes.
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No one I know under 40 had seen this film, though we all joked about it as being a stereotypical "bad" film based on rumors. the title, and clips seen here and there. Finally one weekend when I was working until 2:00 a.m. I went home and there was a sequel on late night TV, during the 30 year Planet of the Apes marathon. It made me curious about the original and I tracked it down. I have to say it blew me away!
The film is philosophical, creative, absorbing and scary. Excellent commentary on religion and just about everything else. I strongly recommend to anyone who has not seen it. So far I haven't even been able to convince my friends to see it because there seems to be such a strong prejudice against it and some sort of entrenched belief it must be bad; in fact it is one of the finest films I've seen and I can see why it is a classic.
If you enjoy films that make you think you simply can't dislike Planet of the Apes.