Planet of the Apes

While some people have greeted the remake of the classic Planet of the Apes with relish, I prefer the original. It's one of those flicks that is easy to find in the back of your local rental place or even on the Internet. I encourage you to take an evening and rent it. You will notice details you forgot when you saw the movie the first time.

The concept is both simple and stunningly sophisticated. A manned space ship encounters a strange force field. They send a chimpanzee into the field as a test, to see what happens. When they lose contact with the chimp, the orders are given to avoid the field. Yet, one of the astronauts steals a shuttle and decides to try and rescue the chimp. The ship then loses contact with the shuttle.

The Astronaut goes through the force field and crash lands on a strange planet. He is shocked when he discovers that the planet resembles Earth, but is run by all sorts of apes! The gorillas rule society by enslaving humans they find. He is even more shocked when he discovers that the gorillas have learned to speak. While the book is fascinating, seeing the gorillas walking about in the movie is even better. Planet of the Apes used amazing special effects before such things became commonplace. The realism is just phenomenal.

As most of us know, the astronaut discovers that it was actually his long lost chimpanzee pal that had crash landed on the planet and had been the progenitor of the race of talking Apes. And just when we think the human will escape and find a way back to Earth, he discovers to his horror that he is actually on Earth, the Earth of the future!
If that's not enough to send you running to the video store, I don't know what will.