CHARLTON HESTON : PLANET OF THE APES: GALLERY AND REVIEW

CAST:

Charlton Heston (Colonel George Taylor), Kim Hunter (Zira), Roddy McDowall (Cornelius), Maurice Evans (Dr Zaius), Linda Harrison (Nova), Robert Gunner (Landon), Jeff Burton (Dodge), James Whitmore (President of the Assembly), Lou Wagner (Lucius), James Daly (Honorious)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Franklin J. Schaffner, Screenplay – Rod Serling & Michael Wilson, Based on the Novel Monkey Planet by Pierre Boulle, Producer – Arthur P. Jacobs, Photography – Leon Shamroy, Music – Jerry Goldsmith, Photographic Effects – L.B. Abbott, Art Cruichshank & Emil Kosa Jr, Makeup – John Chambers, Art Direction – William Creber & Jack Martin Smith. Production Company – Apjac/20th Century Fox. USA. 1968. 
  

SYNOPSIS:

A space mission that left Earth in 1972 crashlands on an alien planet. Due to Einsteinian relativity, it is now the year 3978. The three surviving crew led by Captain George Taylor trek across a desert. They come to a civilisation only to discover that on this planet humans are dumb and the culture is ruled by talking apes that regard humans as mere animals. Taylor is captured and taken to the Behavioural Science laboratory of the chimpanzee scientists Cornelius and Zira. He becomes a cause celebre when it is discovered that he can talk. However, Taylor’s existence becomes a threat to the Minister of Science Dr Zaius who wants evidence of his existence eliminated to protect ape society.

COMMENTARY:

This is the film that started off the money-spinning series. Planet of the Apes was one of the biggest science-fiction successes in the period before Star Wars (1977) and the era of the science-fiction blockbuster. It produced a then unprecedented four sequels and two tv series spinoffs (see below), even a popular Marvel comic-book.

Planet of the Apes was an adaptation of an up until then not-so-well-known novel Monkey Planet (1963) by French writer Pierre Boulle, who was best known for the book that became the basis of The Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957). As has been snidely noted in regard to both River Kwai and Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boulle’s books tend to make better films than they read as novels. Monkey Planet tells the same story as Planet of the Apes but in a heavy-handed and polemic way. Planet of the Apes may be a rare case of the film adaptation having fine-tuned and refined the themes of the book. 

The script for the film comes from Michael Wilson, a screenwriter who was blacklisted during the 1950s (who had also uncreditedly worked on the script for River Kwai), and Rod Serling, who became a genre legend as the creator, host and principal writer of tv’s genre landmark The Twilight Zone (1959-63). After the cancellation of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling began to take on film script work, delivering works that had a strong and ardent political voice with the likes of Seven Days in May (1964) and The Man (1972). The early scenes here with Charlton Heston delivering a series of lengthily embittered comments on the human condition are pure Rod Serling, run through as they are with the frequent cynicism that beset much of The Twilight Zone and certainly dragged down Serling’s later series Night Gallery (1969-72). (It appears that Rod Serling delivered the early draft of the script – a much more elaborately scaled version, which was closer to the book, and featured the apes living in a technological world analogous to our own – and that this was later rewritten by Michael Wilson).

Planet of the Apes is not exactly a believable scenario. Indeed, it may count as one of the most incredulous uses of astronauts failing to question the fact that they are on an alien planet and encounter aliens who just happen to speak English. The twist ending is a classic, no doubt – in fact, it is probably one of science-fiction cinema’s most potent and haunting images – but in retrospect is it any surprise? Nevertheless, what must be said is that Rod Serling, Michael Wilson and particularly director Franklin J. Schaffner do much to make the basic premise believable. Planet of the Apes could easily have toppled over into a cute, gimmicky one-gag novelty.

However, any idea that the film is going to be a cute jokey treatment is dispelled the moment we first see the apes – riding on horseback, shooting at and hunting the humans, then standing over the slaughtered bodies to pose for photos. These scenes are directed with a dramatic urgency with the camera perpetually on the move and make for a bold, exciting beginning.
 

 

In the middle of the film, the tone changes. The violence of the early scenes is replaced by social satire. Sometimes the satire does not always sit easily. At its worst, it is merely gimmicky mimicry with people in ape masks satirising human religious services, posing for photos and particularly the apes doing a ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil’ gag at the trial. (This latter was in fact a shot that was ad libbed on the set and kept in after the dailies made people laugh). At its best, Planet of the Apes swings a giant satire on the Scopes Monkey Trial, biting at religious fanaticism with a vehemence and in the end turning around to use the apes to deliver an embittered comment on the human condition. Rod Serling and Michael Wilson hit their stride during the trial scenes and particularly the dialogue put into mouthpiece character of Dr Zaius, which has a literacy that ranks among the best of screen science-fiction. 

Planet of the Apes is an extremely well made film. The director was Franklin Schaffner, who had previously made the Mediaeval epic The War Lord (1965) and would go onto big-screen historical dramas such as Patton (1970), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), Papillon (1973) and one other science-fiction film The Boys from Brazil (1978). The opening scenes have some beautifully expansive widescreen photography. The Death Valley locations evoke the atmosphere of an alien planet with stunning regard and the eerily atonal Jerry Goldsmith score makes a hauntingly evocative background to the scenery. 

The performances are all excellent. The usually stocky, inexpressive Charlton Heston even gives a fine performance as Colonel Taylor. Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter give charmingly chirpy performances and Maurice Evans is excellent as Dr Zaius.  

There were four sequels to Planet of the Apes:– Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). All but the last are well worthwhile. The series was subsequently spun off into a tv series Planet of the Apes (1974), which only lasted one season and was occasionally better than many dismiss it as. This was followed by an animated series Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975). Roddy McDowall played three different chimpanzees throughout the different incarnations, appearing in all except Beneath and the animated series. The films established arguably the most elaborate Future History of any science-fiction film series, although both tv series disrupt the continuity established by the films. The film was remade as Planet of the Apes (2001), which was regarded with general disappointment, and this led to a prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) explaining how the apes became intelligent. Behind the Planet of the Apes (1998) is a documentary that traces the making of the series in some detail. The film, especially the ending, has been parodied in Spaceballs (1987), Hell Comes to Frogtown (1987), Madagascar (2005) and The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009), even an episode of The Simpsons (1989– ).

    

Review:HERE
Images:Marcus Brooks.

MIA FARROW: ROSEMARY'S BABY: WILLIAM CASTLE AT THEBLACKBOXCLUB

CAST:

Mia Farrow (Rosemary Woodhouse), John Cassavetes (Guy Woodhouse), Ruth Gordon (Minnie Castevet), Sidney Blackmer (Roman Castevet), Ralph Bellamy (Dr Abraham Sapirstein), Maurice Evans (Edward ‘Hutch’ Hutchins)

PRODUCTION:

Director/Screenplay – Roman Polanski, Based on the Novel by Ira Levin, Producer – William Castle, Photography – William A. Fraker, Music – Krzysztof Komeda, Makeup – Allan Snyder, Production Design – Richard Sylbert. Production Company – William Castle Enterprises USA. 1968. 

SYNOPSYS:

Actor Guy Woodhouse and his wife Rosemary move into a new apartment. In no time, they befriend their neighbours, the aging Castevets. Rosemary soon becomes pregnant. However, when her obstetrician prescribes herbal medicines, which the Castevets provide, Rosemary becomes increasingly sicker. She becomes suspicious of the strange coincidences that start to occur around her and comes to believe that the Castevets, her obstetrician and even Guy are a conspiring coven of Satanists and that the child she is carrying may have been fathered by the Devil.

COMMENTARY:

Coming out around the same time that Time Magazine printed its famous ‘Is God Dead?’ cover in April 1966, this witty and highly enjoyable adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel was an opportune success that spawned the entire occult cycle of the 1970s. Rosemary's Baby gave birth to The Exorcist (1973), The Omen (1976) and a vast body of imitators of all three films, concerning themselves with either the practice of Satanism, Satanic or malevolent children and pregnancies, possession and the Anti-Christ. Up to the point that Rosemary's Baby came out, themes of Satanism and the occult had almost entirely been considered taboo topics on American screens. The English and continental horror film had broached the subject several times before with the likes of Night of the Demon/Curse of the Demon (1957), Night of the Eagle/Burn, Witch, Burn (1961), Eye of the Devil (1966) and the same year’s The Devil Rides Out/The Devil’s Bride (1968). The only major American film to do venture onto the topic was Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim (1943), which has many similarities to Rosemary's Baby with its theme of a girl in New York City uncertain whether there is a conspiring cabal of Satanists around her – but that experienced censorship problems.

  

Rosemary's Baby was based on a 1967 novel by Ira Levin. Ira Levin was a popular novelist who had written the thriller A Kiss Before Dying (1953) and would go onto create the best-selling works that became the basis of films such as The Stepford Wives (1975), The Boys from Brazil (1978), Deathtrap (1982), Sliver (1993) and The Stepford Wives (2004). The film rights to the book was purchased by William Castle, the producer/director who became famous in the 1950s for gimmick films such as Macabre (1958), House on Haunted Hill (1959), The Tingler (1959) (1959), 13 Ghosts (1960) and Homicidal (1961). William Castle had originally intended to film Rosemary's Baby himself. In perhaps the most astute artistic choice he ever made, Castle recognised his limitations as director and handed the reins over to a young Roman Polanski. Although from all accounts the concord between William Castle and Roman Polanski was not always a smooth one, it was a wise decision – one shudders to think what would have happened had William Castle brought his crude and pedestrian directorial style to bear on the story. [Castle can be spotted in the film as the man smoking a cigar waiting outside the phone box where Mia Farrow is calling her gynaecologist]

The name of Roman Polanski is one that always comes underscored by phrases like ‘dark –’ or ‘flawed genius’. Born in France in 1933 of Jewish parents, Polanski grew up in the ghettos of Krakow and saw his family go to the Auschwitz concentration camp under the Nazis, while he himself survived. In the 1960s, Polanski began to develop a name for himself as director first with his surreal shorts and then the acclaimed Polish-made feature Knife in the Water (1962). His artistic breakthrough was the astounding Repulsion (1965), a subjective film set inside the paranoid fantasy of a woman whose sanity was crumbling. Polanski then made the black comedy Cul-de-Sac (1966) and The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), which spoofed the Hammer horror film, before he was recruited by William Castle. Ahead for Polanski would be his artistic peak during the 1970s where he made works such as MacBeth (1971), Chinatown (1974) and the surreal identity exchange film The Tenant (1976). Into the 1980s and beyond, Polanski has made variable works such as Tess (1980), Pirates (1986), Frantic (1988), Bitter Moon (1992), Death and the Maiden (1996), The Ninth Gate (1999), The Ghost Writer (2010) and Carnage (2012), and gaining great kudos with the Holocaust film The Pianist (2002)

Almost invariably, any discussion of Roman Polanski is one that is undercut with stories of his personal life – such as how in 1969 the Manson Family murdered his American wife Sharon Tate. Most famouly, there was his flight from justice when he was brought up on charges of unlawful consent after having sex with 13 year-old Samantha Geimer in 1978 – although Polanski was prepared to plea bargain, he then learned of the possibility of a prison sentence from a hardline judge and fled the US on bail and has since remained resident in Europe fearing arrest should he ever return to the US, which flared up again in 2009. Even the film of Rosemary's Baby is overshadowed by real-life tragedy – the Dakota apartment block that served as the location for the Woodhouse/Castevet apartment was the location outside where Mark Chapman shot John Lennon in 1980.

Roman Polanski’s horror films (Repulsion, The Tenant) establish him as a master of internal horrors. They start at a point of normalcy and accumulate detail, building to a point that almost indistinguishably crosses the threshold of normality into out-and-out psychosis. It is an approach precisely suited to Ira Levin’s book. In fact, the film is an adaptation of astounding faithfulness – Ira Levin himself has called it “the single most faithful adaptation of a novel to ever come out of Hollywood”. (In an interview, William Castle amusingly speculated that the reason for this was that Polanski, in conducting his first ever adaptation of another writer’s work, was simply unaware that he had the freedom to improvise on the written text). 

Here Roman Polanski is having much more fun than he did in his abovementioned self-scripted horrors – Rosemary's Baby is a wonderfully jolly film that at the same time as it is hinting at creepy goings on around Mia Farrow also sits aside and invites one to laugh at the basic silliness of Satanists in present-day New York. Polanski manages the giggly, hysterical balance just right. Indeed, Rosemary's Baby is what one might call the first post-Val Lewtonian horror film. In producer Lewton’s films, the central menace hovers perpetually in a state of ambiguity about whether it is real or being imagined by the protagonists and audience. (See Cat People (1942) for discussion of Val Lewton’s films). Although, Rosemary's Baby is a film where you are not so much hovering between belief and doubt, as in a Lewton film, but between belief and laughing at the paranoid absurdity of the situation. A second viewing of Rosemary's Baby reveals some of the extraordinary subtlety that Polanski places into the characterisations – the inconsequential details that slyly creep in in the way that John Cassavetes gets Mia Farrow to eat the mousse, the reverse psychology he plays in getting her to go to dinner with the Castevets, Maurice Evans’s seemingly innocent complaint about his missing glove. By the time that Polanski arrives at the Scrabble game scene, the effect is one of extraordinary eerieness. 

In a film filled to a person with excellent performances, Mia Farrow is standout. Farrow gives a superb performance of frailty and vulnerability – indeed, Rosemary's Baby is possibly the best piece of screen acting that Farrow has ever done. You can almost see her nervous spirit valiantly trying to assert itself. About the time she begs into a coin-phone, “You’re thinking “My God, this poor girl has completely flipped, but ...”,” and “He sleeps in pyjamas now – he never used to before. He’s probably hiding a mark,” the whole audience is in love with her vulnerability. Both Sidney Blackmer and the great Ruth Gordon give warm, witty performances as the eccentric Castevets – Polanski seems to take a leaf from Night of the Demon in portraying the Satanists not as Mephistophelean and sinister, but as jolly and eccentrically likeable ordinary folk.

Rosemary's Baby is really a film that embodies the dark converse side of the American dream. John Cassavetes and Mia Farrow’s domestic rhapsodies over finding the perfect apartment, his job aspirations and rising success, the news of the arrival of the baby could be the sort of soap opera froth in favour of the American nuclear family ideal that had stepped out of Good Housekeeping in the previous decade. Of course, this is sardonically overturned. Indeed, the perfectly droll ending the film arrives at with motherhood triumphant uber alles is one that signals that the world has indeed been completely overturned, that God is finally dead and that Satan is now at home in the bosom of ordinary Family Values. It is as dark and twisted, if not even more subtle, in its vision of the world turned upside down as Night of the Living Dead (1968), which came out the same year and showed America literally being devoured. 

Look What’s Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976) was an unnecessary tv movie sequel. Ira Levin later wrote a sequel Son of Rosemary (1997), although this has yet to be filmed. More recently, Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes production company, which has been behind a number of horror remakes in the 00s, attempted a Rosemary's Baby remake but gave up, saying they could not think of any new twists to add to the story.  

Review: Richard Scheib 

Images: Marcus Brooks