LogFAQs > #913088452

What I Think: I feel like I'll land somewhere in the middle on this one, with a lot of loud, boisterous opinions on either end, so I'll just talk about what really struck me during this film: Roddy McDowall is a freaking stellar actor. In fact, of the two Roddys on this list, he was the best. In the past, I hadn't really come to appreciate his abilities except sparingly. Weirdly, his performance in That Darn Cat of all films is really, utterly hilarious. He's in so blasted many films and yet he often plays second fiddle to bigger actors or actresses. At the same time, he carries himself with that classic mid-20th century British decorum that you just can't find nowadays. He also has such a great range of emotion - I wish he had been cast as the Riddler at some point; he would've been brilliant. Anyways, that was me diverging from the standard 'blah blah monkeys' write-up to gush about my boy Roddy." ~scarlet

"Despite a few odd moments in the intro (what was up with that weird camera zoom in on Heston's laugh? I swear I was about to enter a Bee Gees video), this film's storytelling and pacing holds up very well. Even though I already knew that they had indeed returned to Earth and surmised that the humans that had sent them on their journey had killed one another, it was still a really novel concept. Of note, this is the one and only Apes film I have watched. I had never seen this one or any of the new films until this project began. I'm sort of glad at that since it's possible that my opinion on it could have been tainted if I had seen a newer version with better graphics and special effects. For when this was made, it was very good and believable once you settled in." ~Charon

"Sort of like with Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the main clip I had seen from this prior to watching the full movie was, of course, the twist ending (though, it's hard to imagine the twist being a suprise, even if I hadn't known in advance). What surprised me was hpw it ended up there. I went in expecting a lone human space adventurer exploring a world taken over by talking apes. I DIDN'T expect a heavy examination on the division between religion and science and their place in government. The movie makes you root for a narcissistic jerk (who takes a primal woman as a trophy wife?) and I have to kind of commend it for that." ~Johnbobb

"Despite its outlandish concept on paper, Planet of the Apes never manages to be preachy in its messages, simply laying the groundwork for some interesting thoughts that may cross your mind by the time its all over. With classic movie moments galore and Hestons great performance, Planet of the Apes is an enjoyable what-if scenario for our doomed planet, with a fantastically killer ending." ~Snake

"I for one find it amazing that Planet of the Apes did well enough to warrant so many sequels and a hard reboot/prequel. I mean... it's so damned ugly! Okay that was an in-joke. I know technology has come a long way, but look at the human actors portraying apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey which was made before this movie and somehow looks a hundred times more realistic- a thousand even! All I can do is laugh at the campy nature of it all. I feel like I would have enjoyed this more having gone in with no knowledge of all the parodies and all the quotes made of certain scenes because nothing in this movie really surprised me aside from the "Eve" of the group dying at the very beginning and the rest of the crew aside from the captain dying somewhere in the middle." ~Genny
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"It is too easy being monsters. Let us try to be human." ~Victor Frankenstein, Penny Dreadful