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FILMSmthean^PLANET OF THE APES•I(At the Empire)Screenplay by Michael son and Rod Serling, based on the novel by Pierre Houlle,Director; Franklin J.ner. Producer: Arthur P. .Jacobs Released by 20th tvry-Fox. Cast: Charleion Heston, Roddy McDowell. Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans.sethsaofWwBy Dennis Stack(A Member of The Star's Staff)Planet of the Apes may C'c have worked as a novel, but as a movie it is a spectacular and ludicrous failure.Charlton Heston is an American spaceman whose ship lands sg on what is taken to be a distant diplanet. He and his fellow crew-h.1:theticover that it is ruled by apes h; with roughly the same mentality slt; as our ancestors of the Dark wAges, The planet's humans are L hunted and caged animals.What then emerges is a clum- blt;sy attempt to caricature man- Gland as a hopelessly brutal spe- i acips. The apes, who favor boots and leather clothing, have allaaclthe cruelty, arrogance and dogmatism that we see in ourselves | r . In other words, the movie -supposed to be a kind of mir- jIIru~l 4 n ie 4 Ur. ror: WTiat we are to see is the«true, ugly image of ourselves— one that is made even more viv- 4d by a tricky but science-fiction ending.Now I don’t accept any thesis (hat implies we are no good. Wei44are all, to some degree, part de-U vil and part angel, part beast a and part poet. Mankind surely “ has a better past and an infinite-*Iv better future than thisand (I assume) the novel onHwhich it is based suggest.Even if the message true, the sight of Mai Evans, Kim Hunter and R Me Do wall done up in apewould seem ridiculous. Perhaps Pierre Boulle’s book has some Ifind of word magic that makescharactersfor heavies like the Evans ape,truly monsti sion, Deluxe..equivalent magic.The moviemakers seemhave realized this lack and soibowmg failure was sure anyway, they occasionally threw in a handful of corn or a ham. Thus we have such monk■1eyshines as Human See man Do, I’ve Never ..\pe I Didn’t Like and “See No Evil, Hear No Evil,Evil.’
Newspaper Details
Kansas City Star
Kansas City, Missouri, US
Thu, Apr 11, 1968
Page 11
Full Page
Clipped by
Rotten T.
USA 19 Jun 2020
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