his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy

Went to my local shoestring arthouse flea-pit last night to see the original Planet of the Apes flick. Odd to sit down and watch in full a movie that you’ve effectively seen many times over, but only through the accumulation of a patchwork of quotation and parody, plus random chunks presumably half-watched over the edge of a book on the tiny screen of summer Sunday TV re-runs as a child in the 1980s. As a result, the story is doubly spoiled: not only do you know where it’s going, you already know most of how it’s going to get there, and the few steps that are revelatory are not particularly impressive. But somehow, even that doesn’t quite prepare you for the affect of the thing, the aspect that transcends the high-end B-movie material. Yes, the ape make-up is still pretty impressive—almost endearingly camp in hindsight—and arguably the star of the show. But you realise that the film’s success had nothing to do with the acting, the action, the plot or the dialogue—all of which…