Planet of the Apes (1968)
Charlton Heston stars in this classic science fiction based on the French novel of the same name that has so far spawned four sequels with another in the works and one remake. Three astronauts crash land on a strange planet where apes are the dominant spices and humans are mute beasts hunted and enslaved by the apes.
It took a while for this film to get made due to budgetary concerns and worries about the ability to make up people as convincing apes, when the film was finally made it won an Oscar for make up. The story does take a little while to get to the actual human/ape interaction but the early parts are shot in the stunning landscape of Arizona and Utah which does seem fairly alien to those of us used to greener landscapes.
What the story is really about is the question of if man is violent by nature and this is what concerns the apes about a talking human and reflects the protagonists reasons for leaving earth in the first place. Being somewhat departed from the cold war not it is sometimes hard for us to remember the spectre of global apocalypse that seemed to hang over earth at the time but it is important to put the film with in the context of the time it was conceived.
4/5 a classic with one of the all time great endings (not to be spoiled).
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