Touch of Evil

 Year:  1958

Director:  Orson Welles

Screenplay:  Orson Welles, based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson

Starring:  Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, Marlene Dietrich, Zsa Zsa Gabor

Running Time:  111 minutes

Genre:  Crime, thriller, film noir

In an unnamed town on the Mexican-U.S. border, a wealthy American businessman and his girlfriend are killed by a bomb planted in the car.  Upstanding Mexican cop Miguel Vargas (Heston) and his new bride, Susie (Leigh), witness the explosion and cut short their honeymoon while Vargas becomes drawn into the investigation, coming up against powerful, corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan (Welles).

This is one of the best, as well as one of the last, of the classic film noir.  The term film noir was coined by French film critics to describe a run of stylish American thrillers and crime dramas that featured bleak, cynical and often nihilistic attitudes, and which flourished in the 1940s and '50s.  Based on the 1956 novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson, this is a surprisingly dark thriller, with it's striking visuals, including run-down locations, off-kilter camera angles, extreme close-ups, grotesque characters, and stark, black and white photography, the film has a genuinely nightmarish feel.  The main flaw is its racially insensitive casting, with white actors, such as Charlton Heston and Marlene Dietrich, cast as Mexican characters.  Although it is worth pointing out that the Mexican Vargas (albeit played by Heston) is the noble hero, while the white American Quinlan is the chief antagonist.  In the character of Hank Quinlan, Orson Welles creates one of the screen's most memorable monsters.  A racist, corrupt cop who plants evidence to frame suspects, and has all the powerful people in the town in his pocket, and who seem to orbit him like satellites around a planet.  The ageing, gargantuan Quinlan, an alcoholic, who constantly eats candy bars, and walks with a cane, he seems almost to be falling apart in front of our eyes, and yet there are flickers of the tattered remnants of nobility in his small, narrow eyes, and in his relationship with ex-lover Tana (Marlene Dietrich under very heavy makeup), who appears to be the only person who really knows and cares about him, there is a kind of tenderness, making him more damaged than truly evil.  A miscast Charlton Heston (who looks kind of like a young Sean Connery here) is okay, and Janet Leigh is good as Vargas' new wife, Susie, even if she doesn't have much to do.  The scene where she is attacked in a remote motel almost foreshadows her most famous role in Psycho (1962).  The film was taken away from Welles and re-edited by the studio without his approval.  For example, in Welles' version there are no opening credits, and the film opens with a famous sequence where a ticking time bomb is placed in the boot of a car.  An unsuspecting couple get in the car and drive off.  We follow the car through the streets, there is no score, instead we hear street sounds:  Music spilling from bars and restaurants, police whistles, car noises, muffled conversations, and then the car explodes.  In the release version, the credits are splashed over Welles' carefully composed shots, and the street sounds replaced by loud, brassy music.  A furious Welles penned a 58 page memo outlining his vision for the film.  In 1998, the film was restored and re-edited according to Welles' instructions.  Now it can be seen for the masterpiece it is.

Orson Welles, Victor Millan, Joseph Calleia and Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil

Planet of the Apes

 Year:  1968

Director:  Franklin J. Schaffner

Screenplay:  Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, based on the novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle

Starring:  Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Maurice Evans, Kim Hunter, James Whitmore, James Daly, Linda Harrison

Running Time:  112 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction

Three astronauts crash-land on a seemingly desolate planet, in the far future.  As they explore, they discover, to their horror, that humans are mute, primitive creatures, and apes have become the dominant species, having developed language, technology and society.  

Based on the 1963 novel by French author Pierre Boulle, this has become one of the most influential science-fiction films ever made.   The film opens with the four astronauts in suspended animation, crashing into a lake.  Stewart, the only woman on the ship, has died due to a leak in her suspended animation capsule. The survivors: macho, cigar-chomping cynic Taylor (Charlton Heston), square-jawed, idealistic patriot Landon (Robert Gunnar) and ambitious scientist  Dodge (Jeff Burton), soon discover that 2978, two thousand years after they set out, and believe that they are on an alien planet.  As they explore they discover a tribe of humans, who are hunted by armed gorillas on horseback.  In the course of which, Dodge is killed, Landon knocked out and Taylor shot in the throat, rendering him temporarily unable to speak.  Taylor is locked in a kind of zoo, where he has to convince the chimpanzee scientists researching him that he is an intelligent being.  The film builds itself up quite slowly, the apes don't appear at all until quite well into the film, with a lot of time being spent on the bickering between the three astronauts.  Early in the film Taylor states that he joined the expedition because he wanted to find "something better than man".  The apes have an organised, fairly placid society (or so it seems), if very hierarchical:  Orang-utans are the leaders, judges, priests and teachers; Gorillas are the military and law enforcement and Chimpanzees are kind of the middle-class.  In the Pierre Boulle novel, the apes have a technologically advanced society, however the filmmakers deemed it easier, and cheaper to have the apes in a more primitive society.  The look of the ape village, and the costume designs are impressive.  However, it is fair that the ape make up (which won an honorary Academy Award for John Chambers for astounding make-up achievement) hasn't aged well and looks slightly comical today at times, and you might question why apes living in the 3978 would speak and write English.  The script was written by Michael Wilson, who worked on Bridge on the River Kwai, another Boulle adaptation, and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, and it was Serling who came up with the film's iconic conclusion, which is possibly one of the most famous movie endings of all time.  Heston is good at the heroics, snarling lines such as "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"  Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter as sympathetic chimpanzees Cornelius and Zira, and Maurice Evans as orange-utan Doctor Zaius do very well, acting under layers of heavy ape makeup.   The film has plenty of action, and there is some good humour (such as sulky teen chimp Lucius (Lou Wagner) moaning about the older generation, and three orang-utan judges doing the "Three Wise Monkeys", and Zira's reaction when Taylor moves to kiss her, telling him: "But your so ugly!"), however it is also an intelligent film depicting a world where the balance of power has reversed, and where humans are treated by apes, much the same as how humans have treated apes in our own world ("You lead me around on a leash!" Taylor snarls.  "We thought you were inferior" explains Zira).  Linda Harrison plays Nova, one of the mute humans, who the ape scientists want to mate with Taylor, and who eventually forms a mutual attachment with him.  However, she really doesn't have much at all to do.  The film ends with a shocking twist ending, and the final image packs a punch no matter how many times it has been parodied and references in the years since.

Chimpanzee that!:  Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter and Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes