Product Description: Astronauts Taylor, Landon, and Dodge are in deep hibernation when their spaceship (non-canonically known as Icarus) crash-lands in a lake on an unknown planet in 3978 after a 2006-year voyage at near-light speed (the crew ages only 18 months due to time dilation). The astronauts awaken to find that their fourth companion and only female, Stewart, has died in space due to an air leak and that their ship is sinking in a lake. They use an inflatable raft to reach shore. Once there, Dodge performs a soil test and pronounces the soil incapable of sustaining life. Taylor suggests they are on a planet in the constellation of Orion some 320 light years from Earth but admits he is not sure.

The crew abandons their spaceship. The three astronauts set off through the desert, finding first a single plant and then others. They find an oasis at the edge of the desert where they decide to take a swim, ignoring strange 'scarecrows'. While they are swimming, their clothes are stolen. Pursuing the thieves, the astronauts find their clothes in shreds and the perpetrators — a group of mute, primitive humans — contentedly raiding a cornfield. But shortly, the astronauts and other humans are being pursued by gorillas on horseback. Dodge is shot and killed during the pursuit, while Taylor and Landon are captured and taken back to Ape City; Taylor is shot in the throat, but survives due to the surgical efforts of two chimpanzee scientists, Zira and Galen. Upon his recovery, Taylor is put in a cage with a woman, Nova, who was captured on the same hunt. Due to the throat injury, he has temporarily lost his ability to speak.

Taylor discovers that the apes, who can talk, are in control and are divided into a strict class system: the gorillas as police, military, and hunters; the orangutans as administrators, politicians and lawyers; and the chimpanzees as intellectuals and scientists. Humans, who cannot talk, are considered feral vermin and are hunted and used for scientific experimentation...

Whatever one's politics, we can be certain that the four sequels, storied or screenplayed by Paul Dehn (who was not with credentials himself, helping out with: Zefferelli's Taming of the Shrew, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and Goldfinger), represent a devolution of the cinematic art. But, then, how could it be otherwise, given the first movie's credentials: screenplay by Michael Wilson (who wrote or had a hand in: A Place in the Sun, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell and Lawrence of Arabia) & Rod Serling (need we say more) and Directed by Franklin Schaffner (who previously worked in television, but soon to direct Patton, Papillon and Boys From Brazil). The ending, in some ways like the closing of the door of the first Godfather film, both invited and warned against a sequel.

Coppola had more than simply better luck, he had Coppola and everyone else associated with the first movie that wasn't killed off, and he had a budget. But Planet of the Apes had lost both its director and its writer. The producer of all five movies (and little else, by the way), Arthur P. Jacobs, knew a good thing when he saw it. Each subsequent movie, which would appear annually beginning in 1970, and was granted increasingly dwindling resources so that, as they say, every dollar can be seen up there on the screen. Unlike Wilmer, the cheaper the suit, the cheaper the patter.

Even so, there's entertainment value, if not art, right up to the last moment. I'm actually quite fond of the third movie (Escape), even though it feels made for TV, and it's nice to see Ricardo Montalban reappear in the fourth (Conquest). Speaking of reappearances: quick now, which was the only film that did not feature Roddy McDowall?