Planet of the Apes (1967) vs. Soylent Green (1973)

I got two new DVDs the other day and I thought I’d have myself a little Charlton Heston Sci-Fi fest. Before I get into the individual movies, here’s what I learned about both.

While both movies take steps forward in improving race relations in film, (in Soylent, Heston’s boss is black, there are several other black characters, and race is never mentioned by anyone; in Apes, one of the spaceship’s crew is black, and the whole movie is a metaphor for how stupid we were putting the Africans into slavery and thinking them an inferior species) both films also completely ignore the women’s lib movement. The phrase “all men were created equal” apparently includes people of different races, but not women.

In Apes the women of the film are nothing more than fuck buddies. The crew of the spaceship includes one attractive blonde bimbo who dies mid-voyage. Was she the chief science officer? The ship’s engineer? Nope. Heston all but says later in the movie that she was there just to propagate the species. (Although if this were true, this makes little sense. As anyone who’s seen Dr. Strangelove knows, to successfully repopulate the earth with appropriate diversity there would have to be much more women than men in the crew, instead of one woman to three men. Thus confirming that she was more there as a fuck buddy to keep the men sane than anything else.) Then there is the female savage that Heston gets setup with on the Planet of the Apes. Of course she’s drop dead gorgeous (if a little dirty). And of course the apes throw her in with Heston in order to mate like two pandas in a zoo. Not only that, but when Heston escapes he insists on taking the girl with him. It’s definitely not for her lively conversation; she can’t talk. Hmm… There is one bright spot though. The one ape that does listen to Heston and who is compassionate towards him and mankind is a woman. Of course she can’t get anything done without Cornelius…but then maybe I’m just pushing my analysis too far.

You thought that was bad, wait until you see Soylent Green. Other than the few old maid librarians you see towards the end of the movie, there are only two ways of life for women shown in this movie. You are either attractive and sell your body to a man in order to live in a nice apartment, or…you’re dead on the street somewhere. These apartment whores are affectionately known in the movie as “Furniture” (like the Librarians are nicknamed “Books”). You become Furniture to escape the poverty on the streets below. If you are Furniture your job is to act like a housemaker/harem girl, cooking the food, tidying up the house, and “entertaining” whenever your apartment owner wants you to. When your owner dies you stick around with the apartment until someone else comes along, and they decide if they want to keep you just like they would the color of the walls. Heston meets one such girl investigating her owner’s death. He then fucks her because he can (more on what cops can do later) and she somehow falls in love with him (probably because she wants a protective male force in her life). Yowza.

Anyway, on to what I thought of the movies (aside from all the women bashing stuff). Soylent Green had a lot of neat ideas wrapped in a pretty no frills plot line. In the future the world is overpopulated. New York City now houses 44 million people (half of which apparently are unemployed). The world’s resources are disappearing and global warming has made it 90+ degrees all year long. Since most real foods disappeared long ago the Soylent Corporation manufactures food from ocean life (the only place where there aren’t humans) and gives it out at ration lines sponsored by the government. There are all sorts of colors, Green just being the most recent (and the most nutritious). Of course, food and water frequently run out, so all cops have the alternate job of riot duty a few times a week. Their method of riot control is probably the coolest ever. They have “Scoops” which are pretty much dump trucks with bulldozers attached. They drive into the crowd, scoop the people up and just throw them into the back of the truck. It’s pretty hilarious.

Anyway, Heston is a cop investigating the assassination of the Soylent Corporation. Heston lives with his “Book” who does all of research for him (apparently you have to have a roommate now because of housing shortages. The stairwells are filled with people sleeping on the stairs. Also books are quite rare now, which is why you need a “Book”, because most people don’t own books, and therefore can’t read.) Cops can pretty much get away with anything they want. They are frequently corrupt (Heston steals all sorts of rare items from the Soylent guy’s house; cops bicker over who gets the money for his body) because you can’t do anything to the cops (the sentence for hitting a cop is hanging, I think). Heston figures out that the Soylent guy was killed because he knew too much and that it disturbed so that they were afraid he would tell everyone. Of course Heston doesn’t figure out what the secret is until the end (I don’t feel like I’m giving anything away by saying Soylent Green is People.) Even the ocean is now empty of life, and humanity’s only hope is to recycle itself. In not so many words, Heston’s response to that is “Yuck!” (or something like that).

There’s not anything special about the movie, but it’s competently shot and interesting for the most part. Worth a rental when you’ve got nothing better to do.

(B)

Planet of the Apes I really liked. There is some really great cinematography in it, the soundtrack kicks ass and the story is miles above the garbage of the remake. If the remake only incorporated half of the ideas from this movie it would have been a hundred times better. As it is the remake is just a bloated action movie with nothing going for it. I found the action in the original more compelling anyway.

You know there is something screwy with ape science when one of Heston’s inquisitors asks him to prove he is a rational being by telling them parts of the ape religion. What does that have to do with anything? If an ape doesn’t know the ape religion by heart does that mean he isn’t a rational being? I’m very confused.

But anyway, the movie does ask an interesting question about which society is better: the one of man or of ape. Man was so destructive that he destroyed his whole race. On the other hand, while the apes don’t war amongst themselves, they do segregate the classes between Gorilla, Orangutan and Chimp (as well, if you want to think of it that way, with Man.) Is society better off not knowing about its destructive past as Dr. Zaius believes, or does it have a right to know and grow from the semi-religious science into true science as Cornelius relates? Where does one draw the line in the march for progress? Good questions all. Debate amongst yourselves.

Anyway there is lots of cheese in this movie and lots of hammy moments and lines, but overall it’s very entertaining. I especially like the little touches, like the Gorillas getting their picture taken over the bodies of dead humans they just hunted, or the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil gag at Heston’s hearing. The museum of natural history was a nice touch too with the stuffed human dioramas. Overall I give this a:

(B+)