Easter Ham

Today is Easter Sunday, and when I think Easter, I naturally think of Charlton Heston.  Besides his Religious Epics of the 1950s and his right-wing gun-nut political activism for the NRA in the 1990s Heston is probably best known for his Science Fiction films of the 1960s and 70s (and Khartoum - how could I forget Khartoum?).  So today, to commemorate a holiday about bunnies and candy (and something about some guy named Yeshua ben Yosef, I'm not sure though) I’m going to tackle a trio of dystopian films starring one of the greatest chewers of scenery ever and give you the

Charlton Heston Triple Sci-Fi Movie Extravaganza

Let’s go in chronological order, shall we?

And let’s dispense with the spoiler alert straight off because just about everyone knows the endings and surprise twists to these films.

"Yeah, kid, I thought he was great in El Cid too."

Planet of the Apes (1968) – A team of astronauts in hibernation crash on a distant planet hundreds of years after traveling through the galaxy near the speed of light.  The three surviving travelers explore the world they’ve arrived on and discover that on this planet intelligent apes rule while mute, savage humans are treated like despised animals.  After being separated from his companions and captured Taylor –  the leader of the group – now has to find a way to convince his simian captors that he is not only intelligent but also not worthy of extermination.

Where's Rod?

This movie is the best of the lot, and no wonder… it was co-written by Rod Serling, the genius writer behind The Twilight Zone.  In fact, this movie sometimes feels like an extended episode of that show and could be considered the first Twilight Zone movie (there was an actual TZ movie made in ’83 but I haven’t seen it).  The twist ending, of course, is pure Serling.  So is the dialogue.  So is the overall message and theme of the whole thing, which ties into the ending.

The United States Government at work.

And it’s the ending that makes this thing truly gripping and downright different, too.  The shocking revelation that Taylor was really on Earth the whole time completely flips the movie’s moral conflict upside down.   Dr. Zaius – the film’s main antagonist and source of anti-human vitriol – is *right*.  Man really is a savage, violent beast.  Look at the final result of what humanity did to wipe itself out at the end of the movie.  But at the same time the apes are not much better; in fact they are almost like (gasp) humans with all of the same prejudices, societal stratification and the corrupt suppression of truth in the name of order.  Yes, humans really are as bad as Dr. Zaius says they are – but is that a good  justification for the way they are treated?

The direction by Franklin Schaffner is superb.  The music score by Jerry Goldsmith is both awesome and revolutionary.  The special effects and ape makeup are great and mostly convincing.  And yes, the acting by Heston can go over the top, but it doesn’t happen that often and when it does it’s an asset to the movie.  Planet of the Apes is a science fiction classic, and is easily the best film of the three reviewed here.

Yeah, this is how I play too.  It's the only way I can win.

The Omega Man (1971) – Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth.  However, he is not alone.  A plague has wiped out most of humanity and turned the remaining few survivors into insane, nocturnal, zombie-like killers.  These infected mutants, calling themselves The Family continually try to kill Neville as he is the last reminder of the world that existed before the catastrophe.  But the “last man alive” is about to discover something that may give humanity –and himself – hope and the means to go on living in a hell of a world.

Hmm, Pasty skin, facial sores... so kinda like me as a teenager.

 From the best of the lot we go to the worst.  That doesn’t make this a horrible movie though, just a painfully mediocre one and definitely the least of Heston’s sci-fi efforts.  The moral conflict this time *tries* to be complex with Neville being given some flawed attributes and Matthias (the leader of The Family) being portrayed as not completely evil, but in the end we know who we’re supposed to root for.  The story has plotholes.  Characters do really stupid things for almost no reason at all.  

We all know the sistahs can't resist Chuck Heston.

The romance between Neville and Lisa is sudden and not developed that well – remember what I said about Charlton Heston and leading ladies (although to be fair Heston and Rosalind Cash have a lot more chemistry than Heston and Sophia Loren or… that chick what’shername… from Ben-Hur)?   I mean, I know that they’re two of the last people on Earth and that they have to start breeding, but I think I would give it a little more time between “get up against the wall and spread ‘em or I’ll blow your head off” and “I want to have your babies right now.”  And we’re never given a reason as to what the last woman on Earth finds attractive in Charlton Heston, except for the fact that he is Charlton Heston. 

I think this may be where his obsession with guns started.

The direction is tepid.  The music score is also pretty bland, which is a shame considering that it’s by Ron Grainer who gave us the themes for Doctor Who and The Prisoner, for crying out loud.  In addition The Omega Man is horribly dated – which is something I forgot to mention about the last film, by the way:  because of the setting and the fact that most of the actors in it are wearing ape masks, Planet of the Apes doesn’t date itself too badly (except for the “don’t trust anyone over 30” line).  The Omega Man is obviously a product of the early Seventies, which isn’t in itself a bad thing but the film throws it in your face all the time.  In all fairness though the movie is pretty cool for the first third when it’s just Heston trying to survive in a deserted downtown LA against undead plague zombies.  You can just tune out though once the love interest and the kiddies come in.

"Says here my library books are overdue.  Fine: $500,000."

Soylent Green (1973) – In a future where overpopulation overwhelms the globe and starvation is a very real threat the Soylent Corporation supplies half of the world’s food supply in the form of small, nutritious wafers called Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow.  Robert Thorn is a police detective in New York City in the year 2022.  Along with his partner Sol Roth he investigates the murder of a Soylent Corporation bigwig, which leads to government cover-ups, further assassination attempts and a shocking discovery about Soylent’s newest food product, Soylent Green.

Okay, so is this New York or LA?

Mmmm, Soylent Green....

This movie is infamous for its ending (“Soylent Green is PEOPLE!”) but its impact should be that it shows how horrible a world in which the few haves have so much and the many have-nots have so little really would be – that it would result in such a reprehensible method of feeding a massive population.  And that is the heart of all of the problems in the world, according to Soylent Green, and the film’s main message – the evils of overpopulation.  And we see this problem in the world today, although not quite to the level of this dystopian yarn (yet).  With populations of over one billion each it will be interesting to see how China and India deal with this issue.  China of course has instituted the One Child Policy, but they still have the question of how to feed all of their people (perhaps with… PEOPLE?).  India as far as I know has no method or plan for controlling their population.  Interestingly enough the United States does not have a hideous overpopulation problem right now and probably won’t (I hope) by 2022.  You never know, though… China and India could send us some of their surplus….

Why limit yourself to one woman?  This is the 70s, man.

Soylent Green falls square between the two preceding movies in the Heston Trifecta, being more serious, moving and intelligent than The Omega Man but less intelligent and more dated than Planet of the Apes.  In fact, it comes close to that film in terms of quality except for two things: the first is that it is more dated (apparently personal computers and cellphones no longer exist in 2022) and also that, once again we have a clunky romantic subplot forced into a movie that doesn’t need it.  The worst thing about it is that it’s even worse than the one for Omega Man… at least in that movie the love scenes served some purpose for the overall story.  Here they are completely superfluous.  And don't tell me it has something to do with feminism because that angle isn't developed at all.  Thorn has sex with glorified prostitute, Thorn leaves glorified prostitute.  What, did Heston have it in all of his contracts by the 70s that he have at least one nude scene in every movie with a woman at least half his age?

Where the film truly shines is in both its environmentalist and political social commentary (yes, try to wrap your head around that one – Charlton Heston in a socially progressive liberal movie) and in the interaction between Heston and Edward G. Robinson, who plays Roth.  It’s a pretty well-known fact that this was Robinson’s last film – he died soon after it was completed.  This makes all of their scenes together very poignant, and that’s even before learning that only Heston knew at the time about his colleague’s terminal cancer.  Therefore the tears shed in Roth’s death scene are real and just about moved me to tears.  Hearing two men profess their love for each other can be a beautiful thing.  Richard Fleischer’s direction is good but not awe inspiring, making Soylent Green a minor science fiction classic and an interesting product of a decade that gave us a lot of dystopian environmentalist warnings in celluloid form.

Well there’s your Charlton Heston Super Special.  I hope you liked it.

And you thought I would do The Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur just because today is Easter and I talked about Charlton Heston.

Sigh.  Okay.  I’ll give you a religious Charlton Heston movie image so we can go out on a pious note.

Charlton Heston died for your sins.