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

  

Rosemary's Baby

Year of Release:  1968
Director:  Roman Polanski
Screenplay:  Roman Polanski, based on the novel Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
Starring:  Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy
Running Time:  131 minutes
Genre:  Horror

New York City, 1965:  Rosemary Woodhouse (Farrow) and her ambitious actor husband Guy (Cassavetes) move into a spacious apartment in a classy building, which has a dark history of murder, witchcraft and cannibalism.  Shortly after moving in, the Woodhouse's meet their eccentric elderly neighbours, the Castevets.  When Rosemary falls pregnant, she becomes increasingly suspicious of the Castevets, and convinced that she is being targeted by a Satanic conspiracy, of which her neighbours, friends, and even her husband are part.

This is possibly one of the most influential horror films ever made.  At the time, horror tended to be gruesome drive-in fare, or classier Gothic productions based on Edgar Allan Poe stories, or about Dracula, Frankenstein and other classic monsters.  In this film horror is brought bang up to date and into the heart of Manhattan, it's also aimed squarely at an older audience, Rosemary and Guy are young, but they are certainly not teenagers, and the film deals with pregnancy and middle-class ennui.  It also takes it's time, in a period where horror films rarely lasted much over an hour an a half, this has a generous running time of two hours plus.  It also doesn't look like a horror film, with the opening shots floating over New York City, with the opening credits appearing in pink copperplate lettering to the strangely eerie lullaby, the discussions about pop culture and news events, the evil Satanists worrying about stains on the carpet and having most of the film take place in broad daylight, this is more like a comedy-drama about a disaffected young woman.  The most memorable horror moments come in the genuinely disturbing surreal nightmare sequences, where Rosemary is attacked by a demonic creature, the morning after, in another deeply problematic scene Guy cheerfully informs her that he had had sex with her while she was passed out, he casually brushes off Rosemary's shock and distress at this.
The film is a very faithful adaptation of Ira Levin's book, in fact pretty much everything that is in the film is in the book.  The main difference is that at the end, the film still leaves it ambiguous as to whether anything supernatural is happening at all.  In fact the entire film could be read as it all being in Rosemary's mind.  This was because writer / director Roman Polanski had a strong aversion to the supernatural.  The horror in the film becomes more due to urban isolation and paranoia, a favourtie theme of Polanski's.  Rosemary is alternately abandoned or patronised by her selfish husband, she doesn't have a job, apparently, and spends most of her time rattling around on her own.
The film boasts some fine performances, particularly Mia Farrow, sporting an iconic hairstyle, combining frailty with steel.

Baby blues:  Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby