Planet of The Apes (1968 Film) - Plot

Plot

Astronauts Taylor (Charlton Heston), Landon (Robert Gunner), Dodge (Jeff Burton) and Stewart (an uncredited Dianne Stanley) are in deep hibernation when their spaceship crash-lands in a lake on an unknown planet, after a 2006-year voyage at near-light speed (during which the crew ages only 18 months due to time dilation). However, due to an air leak, Stewart's suspended animation equipment fails. The astronauts awaken to find her body desiccated and their ship sinking in the lake. They use an inflatable raft to reach shore. Before departing the ship, Taylor notes that the current year is AD 3978. Once ashore, Dodge performs a soil test and pronounces the soil incapable of sustaining life.

Despite this, as the three astronauts set off through a desert, they gradually encounter plant life. They find an oasis at the edge of the desert and decide to go swimming, ignoring strange and eerie scarecrow-like figures. While they are swimming, their clothes are stolen. Pursuing the thieves, the astronauts find their clothes torn to shreds, their supplies pillaged and the perpetrators — a group of mute, primitive humans dressed in torn clothes — contentedly raiding a cornfield.

Suddenly, clothed gorillas on horseback charge through the cornfield, brandishing firearms, snares, and nets. They capture the humans they can and kill the rest. While trying to flee, Dodge is killed, Landon knocked unconscious, and Taylor shot in the throat. The gorillas take Taylor to Ape City, where his life is saved by two chimpanzees, animal psychologist Zira (Kim Hunter) and surgeon Galen (Wright King). Taylor is housed in a cage with a girl whom he later calls Nova (Linda Harrison). Because of his throat wound he is mute.

Taylor discovers that the various apes, who can talk and are in control, are in a strict caste system: gorillas are the police, military, hunters and workers; orangutans, administrators, politicians, lawyers and priests; and chimpanzees, intellectuals and scientists. Humans, who cannot talk, are considered vermin hunted for sport and either killed outright, enslaved, or experimented upon.

Animal psychologist Zira and her fiancé, Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), an archaeologist, take an interest in Taylor, whom Zira has named "Bright Eyes". Taylor attempts to communicate by writing in the dirt, but what he has written is hidden by the girl Nova and Cornelius's boss, an orangutan named Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans). Eventually, Taylor steals paper from Zira and uses it to write messages to her. Zira and Cornelius become convinced that Taylor is intelligent, but upon learning of this, Zaius orders that Taylor be castrated.

Taylor manages to escape and during his flight through Ape City he finds himself in a museum, where Dodge's stuffed corpse has been put on display. When Taylor is recaptured by gorillas, he discovers his throat has healed and angrily shouts "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"

A tribunal to determine Taylor's origins is convened by the President of the Assembly (James Whitmore), Dr. Zaius, and Dr. Maximus (Woodrow Parfrey). Dr. Honorious (James Daly) is the prosecutor. Taylor mentions his two comrades. The court produces Landon, who has been subjected to a lobotomy that has rendered him catatonic.

After the tribunal, Dr. Zaius privately threatens to lobotomize Taylor if he doesn't tell the truth about where he came from. With help from Zira's socially-rebellious nephew Lucius (Lou Wagner), Zira and Cornelius free Taylor and Nova and take them to the Forbidden Zone, a taboo region outside Ape City that has been out of bounds for centuries. A year earlier, Cornelius led an expedition into the Forbidden Zone that found a cave containing artifacts of an earlier non-simian civilization. The group sets out for the cave, to answer questions Taylor has about the evolution of the ape world and to prove he is not of that world.

Arriving at the cave, Cornelius is intercepted by Dr. Zaius and his soldiers. Taylor holds them at bay, warning he'll shoot them if necessary. Zaius agrees to enter the cave to disprove their theories and to avoid physical harm to Cornelius and Zira. Cornelius displays the remnants of a technologically advanced human society pre-dating simian history. Taylor identifies artifacts such as dentures, eyeglasses, a heart valve and, to the apes' astonishment, a talking children's doll. More soldiers appear and Lucius is overpowered, but Taylor again fends them off.

Dr. Zaius admits that he has always known that human civilization existed long before apes ruled the planet and "the Forbidden Zone was once a paradise, made a desert of it...ages ago!". Taylor is skeptical, and prepares to search for answers. Zaius warns him that he may not like what he finds. Once Taylor and Nova have ridden off on horseback, Dr. Zaius has the gorillas lay explosives to seal off the cave and destroy the remaining evidence of the human society. He has Zira, Cornelius and Lucius charged with heresy.

Taylor and Nova, at last free from Zaius and the others, follow the shoreline and eventually discover the wreck of the Statue of Liberty, revealing that this "alien" planet is actually post-apocalyptic Earth.