Planet of the Apes is a 1968 science fiction film in which an astronaut finds himself 2,000+ years in the future stranded on what he believes to be another planet, in which humans enslaved by apes. It starred Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore, James Daly, Linda Harrison, Robert Gunner, Lou Wagner and Woodrow Parfrey.
The movie was adapted by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling from the novel La Planète des singes by Pierre Boulle. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner.
It won an honorary Academy Award for John Chambers for his outstanding make-up achievement. It was nominated for Best Costume Design (Morton Haack) and Best Music, Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a Musical).
The humans can't talk and are made to work by the apes. This is similar to the relation of yahoos and Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels. The apes are divided: the warriors are gorilla-like, the politicians orangutang-like and the scientists chimpanzee-like.
Planet of the Apes was followed by four sequels:
In 2001 the United States Library of Congress deemed the original film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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