Planet of the Apes

ANNIVERSARY CLASSICS SCI-FI WEEKEND PRESENTS
PLANET OF THE APES (1968)
50th Anniversary
Saturday, March 17th, 2018 at Ahrya Fine Arts at 7:30 PM
In Person: Oscar-nominated makeup artist Daniel Striepeke

This landmark sci-fi movie opens with a spacecraft landing on a distant planet, some 2000 years in the future. Charlton Heston and two surviving astronauts discover that the planet is ruled by intelligent apes who consider humans to be an inferior species. The movie was a box office and critical success, spawned four sequels, a TV series, and several reboots (the most recent just last year). In addition to Heston, the cast includes Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, and James Whitmore as the apes and Linda Harrison as one of the mute humans on the planet. Franklin J. Schaffner (later an Oscar winner for Patton) directed the screenplay by Rod Serling (the creator of The Twilight Zone) and Michael Wilson (A Place in the Sun, Lawrence of Arabia), from a novel by Pierre Boulle, who also wrote The Bridge on the River Kwai. John Chambers earned a special Oscar for his ingenious makeup, and the film was also nominated for costume design and for Jerry Goldsmith’s avant garde score. Pauline Kael wrote, “Planet of the Apes is one of the best science-fiction fantasies ever to come out of Hollywood,” and she added, “Leon Shamroy’s excellent color photography helps to make the vast exteriors (shot in Utah and Arizona) an integral part of the meaning.” The climax, in which Heston finally discovers his “destiny,” is one of the most memorable in all of science fiction. The film entered the National Film Registry in 2011. (March 17 at 7:30 PM).

Format: DCP