"You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!" And so laments Charlton Heston's George Taylor in one of sci-fi cinema's most infamous scenes, as his cynical, battered hero looks upon the ruins of the Statue of Liberty and realises... that it was Earth all along. Planet of the Apes is often lambasted for being too on the nose and - in retrospect - somewhat dated, but to criticise the movie for those reasons is to miss the point of it all. This intoxicatingly mad, thrilling, satirical mess of a motion picture, which sees an astronaut crashing landing on the titular planet which he finds is ruled by humanoid apes, has a lot of intelligent things to say about race and sex. If Planet of the Apes is best remembered today for its shocking twist ending (is there seriously anybody out there who is still unaware of what it entails?), there is still so much more here to enjoy; indeed, Apes is remarkable in the way that it throws so many ideas into the melting pot and manages to implement them in and amongst a blockbuster. Yes, it's camp, and yes, some of it looks a little iffy now, but the scope and drama mark this out as essential science-fiction; the most interesting aspect, perhaps, is that of Charlton Heston's protagonist, who has to be one of the most resentful and agitated heroes in all of cinema - a role he totally nails.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
