Article Title: Why are They Messing with My Apes?

Edition: August 2001
Category: Horizons
Author: Brett Campbell
Article:

Flashback to Childhood: Remake of Planet of the Apes

This summer sees the theatrical release of a film, which I greet with what I can only describe as a hesitant curiosity. The film is Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes.

Why do I feel reluctant to see this film? It's because the original 1968 classic Planet of the Apes is my favorite film of all time. I loved it when I was a kid and I still love it today. This film comprises a large part of my childhood memories, so it is the '68 Planet of the Apes that will always be my Apes.

I saw it back in the autumn of 1968, when I was an eight year-old kid whose imagination was fed on fantastic fare like Star Trek and The Outer Limits.

I saw it at the Capitol Theatre in Montpelier, when it was a true, old-style movie house with a massive silver screen and huge theater curtains that parted at the start of a movie and closed at its end.

Scary, But Once Was Not Enough

I saw it on a Friday night in October of 1968 with one of my fourth-grade pals and his dad. I returned to it on the following night with my older brother and my dad. My dad passed away less than ten years later, when I was barely eighteen. This is one of a handful of films that I have precise memory of seeing with him.

I remember the curtains parting to the Twentieth Century Fox logo and fanfare and the screen revealing the most unique and bizarre pattern of huge swirling stars that my eight-year-old eyes had ever beheld. I remember thinking and feeling, "Uh-oh, this is gonna be scary," as the eerie theme song played. I also remember being thoroughly enchanted and intrigued by a movie like never before, for two nights in a row.

On Saturday night, the second night of seeing the movie in a packed theatre, the ushers unclamped the velvet-covered ropes that barricaded the balcony stairways. Us kids, dragging parents in hand, stormed the rear of the movie house to occupy the prime, upper-level seats. Please understand that for an eight-year-old who loved going to movies, especially cool movies, this was a big deal! The movie-going experience, like the movies themselves, was very different back then.

So for nearly two hours, two nights in a row, over thirty years ago, I was transfixed by the most amazing cinematic world I had ever encountered. I remember hiding my eyes on the second night when the camera revealed the corpse of the female astronaut who died in her suspended animation booth, because this shot had terrified me so much on the first night. I remember the fantastic shots of the swirling, tumbling barren landscape, as the ship entered the planet's atmosphere and crashed into a lifeless sea.

He Was "So Damned Ugly"

I remember the audience reactions to all the great moments that transpired on the screen. I remember their burst of applause when Taylor (Charlton Heston), the lone surviving astronaut who had temporarily lost his power of speech to a bullet wound, finally regained his voice and told those dirty apes to take their stinkin' paws off of him. I remember their laughter as fiancée chimps Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowell) stole their first on-screen kiss and again when Zira reluctantly agreed to kiss the departing Taylor good-bye, even though as a human he was "so damned ugly."

I most of all recall their reaction to the film's shock ending, which has deservedly achieved renown as classic. I will never forget the stunned gasps from the adults in the audiences, then dead silence, and then a burst of applause as the end credits rolled. I could tell from their hushed murmuring as they rose from their seats that this was a film unlike anything they had ever seen before.

Challenged To Think Critically

I know that Planet of the Apes certainly made me think about things at a young age that I'd never thought about before. It made me ponder how humankind has come to view itself as the peak of evolution and dominant species on this planet and to question what it is, if anything, that really separates us from the animals. I also had a vague understanding that the film's villain, the orangutan Doctor Zaius (Maurice Evans), was motivated more by fear than mere hatred and that this made him a more believable, sympathetic and "human" villain.

One of the most cherished memories I have is that my dad also liked the film a lot, so even to this day I know it had to be pretty cool. I will try to watch the remake with the same eyes full of wonder I had as a small boy in the 1960's, but the new Apes has a hard act to follow, and, as I see it, a lot to live up to.

You have reached the end of the article.

Select the following link to see all the listings in the Horizons category: Horizons
Select the following link to see all the listings in the August 2001 edition: August 2001
Select the following link to go back to the index page: Index
Select the following link to go back to the introduction page: Introduction