Planet of the Apes, 1968 - ★★★★

You can also find this review on Letterboxd

Week 4 of the Letterboxd Season Challenge, 60s Blockbuster Week.

I have never seen any of the Planet of the Apes movies, neither the old ones nor the reboots. So I went into this pretty blind, even though I knew the twist ending which I'm not gonna tell.

The basic plot is, a crew of 4 is, after being asleep for a long time, now landing on a planet. They don't know which planet it is but they know it is more than 1000 years from when they started. After a few days of wandering they find unintelligent humans, naked and not able to talk. Shortly after they met, they are attacked by Apes and George Taylor (Charlton Heston) is captured by them. He soon realises on this planet, Apes are like humans while humans are like animals. When they find out he is intelligent, some of them want him dead, while others want to experiment on him.

I watched a german dub with my dad, and in german dubs I feel like the voice acting can change a lot when it comes to acting, so I'm not 100% sure but for me, the acting was good, Charlton Heston did a great job being a loveable asshole. Linda Harrison was good as Nova, who didn't have to talk at all. She was very believable, I think.

I love the ape-costumes. Maybe you know that I'm a big fan of practical effects and makeup effects and that is exactly what we get here. They look awesome and to be honest, I didn't even think about that they were fake.

The story is just awesome. It feels very much like a long episode of the twilight zone, probably because it was written by the inventor of the twilight zone, Rod Sterling. There is a twist ending but not one that just happens and changes everything. I feel like if you watch the movie without knowing it, you are able to guess it before it is revealed.
Also it's one of those endings that doesn't ruin the movie for a second watch, it is still very enjoyable if you know it. I had a blast.

The action is good, especially for a movie that old.

I enjoyed the camerawork, there was stuff they don't usually do like one scene were Heston runs over the camera and it turns and films him head down.

All in all I'm glad I finally watched it, it still holds up and is lots of fun. I rate it 4 out of 5 stars.