 18_Planet of the Apes
(1968, dir. Franklin J. Schaffner)
Best Seen: Twentieth Century Fox DVD
Time Code: Chapter 27, 108:23
It’s the quintessential twist ending, a moment so iconic that you needn’t have seen the movie to be familiar with it. And any Simpsons fan can attest to its parodistic possibilities (Homer [thinking]: “Wait a minute: Statue of Liberty . . . that was our planet!”). So it takes a little empathy to appreciate the mindfuck in store for Apes’s original audiences as Charlton Heston rides up that beach to find a time-ravaged Lady Liberty poking out of the earth, a relic of a nuclear-fried New York. Still, the image today remains spine-tingling, and Heston’s overly dramatic yet apt reaction—“You maniacs!” etc.—sure sells the scene.
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