"Planet of the Apes" - Novel by Pierre Boulle

Ahhhhh Yeah! "Planet of the Apes" is definitely one of my all-time favorites. Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and American Movie Classics (AMC) brings this film, and its sequels, to life dozens of times throughout the year, but they can also be rented from Netflix. "Planet of the Apes," or "Monkey Planet" was written by Pierre Boulle in 1963. The novel is well followed by the ground breaking, and award winning film which was released in 1968. "The Planet of the Apes" (1968) stars Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, and Maurice Evans (remember this old dude, Samantha's father from Bewitched?). There was a remake in 2001 which starred Mark Wahlberg and Helena Bonham Carter, with a smal role by Charlton Heston (one of his last roles), but the original is FAR SUPERIOR! The original film was followed by sequels which finally resulted in a pentalogy (five films in total). Each of the sequels were good to me, some of the reviews were not so kind for the third through fifth films: "Planet of the Apes" (1963), "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).

Following the films, there was a very imaginative television series, several cartoon series, and comic books. "Planet of the Apes" has gained legions of fans througout the years, and if you've never seen it, you should put all five of the originals into your Netflix queue and watch them in order. The 2001 version is really all that bad, in fact, the makeup & settings alone are enough to watch the film (it's Tim Burton's stuff Baby), I'm just a diehard fan of the original.





If you have lived underneath a rock and you have no idea what "Planet of the Apes" is all about, here is a very brief synopsis: Astronauts land on a wierd planet which can sustain human life, it looks very Earth-like in parts -- Astronauts journey through strange planet and come upon a lush jungle filled with mute, pre-historic looking humans -- Astronauts study the humans who seem not to really notice them -- after a short while, the humans seemed to be startled by something and they react much like a herd of animals do when they are being hunted -- Astronauts spot the menace that is hunting the humans.....large talking apes on horses (gorillas to be exact)complete with rifles, nets, and atrocious attitudes towards the humans -- very soon the astronauts realize that they too are being hunted, then what follows is a total breaking loose of all Hell..... "Planet of the Apes" is the perfect dystopian work of fiction.

*There is to be yet another remake of this film which is currently in production.