Planet of the Apes Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Linda Harrison Director: Franklin Schaffner
With an ending this good, the last thing you want anyone to do before you've seen Planet of the Apes for the first time is to reveal the climax that makes two hours of overwrought allegory worthwhile.
But it's unfair to pass such judgment on a film that was made more than 40 years ago, when the idea that man's folly would destroy our dear planet was still shocking, and Apollo 11 had yet to blast off for the moon.
And perhaps, back then, lines that simply substituted 'ape' for 'man' and 'simian' for 'human' in familiar epithets were considered clever. Now, clunkers such as 'the proper study of ape-kind is ape' (Alexander Pope), 'he never met an ape he didn't like' (Will Rogers) and a reference to 'the milk of simian kindness' weigh down an already cumbersome script.
Based on the 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle, the plot is driven by Taylor (Heston), an astronaut leading a voyage into deep space. Painstakingly, it is explained that although the crew have spent a mere six months out of orbit, a bending of the space-time continuum means 700 years have passed on earth.
The year is 2673 when we meet Taylor, wondering aloud from the captain's seat of the spacecraft, 'Does man, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother and keep his neighbour's children starving?' Stirring stuff, no doubt, for a society just catching their breath after the peak of the cold war.
Taylor and crew crash-land into a lake in a landscape that looks quite a lot like New Mexico. As they watch their rocket sink into the water (breathing perfectly well in this new atmosphere), the captain announces 'OK, we're here to stay' and lights a cheroot (as you do).