by M.G. Wood

Charlton Heston had long and storied career in Hollywood as a dependable leading man that could deliver the goods. Long before Mr. Heston was pigeon-holed as a right wing tool, he was considered a man of great character and honor.

As the story goes, Universal was hemming and hawing about the fact that Orson Welles dare even consider getting anywhere near a camera, insisting he only act in the film TOUCH OF EVIL(1958). Mr. Heston stepped in and said either Orson Welles directs TOUCH OF EVIL, or I walk, thus giving the great genius another shot at a Hollywood film.

Of course the studio hated the finished product after Welles re-wrote and filmed a masterpiece out of what surely would have been just another schlock B Noir. The twist to the story is that Charlton Heston was the man Universal wanted to direct. Mr. Heston gave up the chance to cash an extra paycheck and direct a vanity project so that a true artist shunned by the Hollywood establishment could work again, made doubly poignant given the fact that TOUCH was Welles last great film before becoming a cartoon parody of himself in Earnest and Julio Gallo ads and Laugh-In cameos.

When Mr. Heston’s career started to wane in the late 1960's, he made an unusual choice for an old-fashioned 20th Century movie star known for playing historical figures and the occasional cowboy, he decided to try that nutty Hippie-Dippy mind-bending genre known as Sci-Fi. What resulted were three classics in quick succession: PLANET OF THE APES (1968), THE OMEGA MAN (1971), and SOYLENT GREEN (1973).

"Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape."

Based on an original screenplay by the master Rod Serling (another artist in exile), PLANET OF THE APES was a massive box-office hit, and with good reason. While Kubrick was wowing the hard-core Science Fiction aficianados with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, director Franklin J. Schaffner’s PLANET OF THE APES pleased the elite as well as the popcorn crowd with an entertaining mix of action, melodrama and social commentary.

Richard Matheson’s novel I AM LEGEND had been adapted into a screenplay by the novelist himself, but no studio would touch it as written due to the graphic violence and (uh-hum) apocalyptic tone. The most faithful production wouldn’t hit the screen until 2007 with Will Smith’s faithful, albeit flat I AM LEGEND. Charlton Heston apparently was compelled to make OMEGA MAN after reading Matheson’s novel on a cross-country flight. Alas, the finished product resembled very little of I AM LEGEND, but still turned out to be a cult hit among the Hippies who flocked to see it in smoke-filled midnight screenings across the nation.

(Being only a mere child in 1971, I can’t personally attest to this, but I can’t help thinking the irony in the theatre would have been palpable had the Hippies been sober while watching the now famous scene where Mr. Heston watches the documentary WOODSTOCK and mouths word for word the action on the screen before exclaiming with great relish, “They don’t make like they used to!”)

"Soylent Green is people!"

If this quote is a spoiler to my faithful readers, I apologize. But, what the hell? If you’re past the age of 12, you should have seen SOYLENT GREEN by now! With a fantastic final performance by Edward G. Robinson (another Hollywood Rightie), SOYLENT GREEN is a brilliant morality tale for the waning years of the 20th Century; at times a tension-filled family drama, a scathing indictment of an American society obsessed with youth (we hadn’t seen nothin’ yet), and ultimately a great Sci-Fi thriller deserving it’s rightful place among the classics.

It remains as clear the ice-cube floating in your 10-year-old scotch that Mr. Heston chose these particular Sci-Fi projects for a reason. All three are none too keen on a future born of liberal politics of “free-love” and “diversity-training”. No, all three films scream one thing: the future will be a vast wasteland of shelled-out buildings filled with brain-dead zombies run by a power-hungry group of “damned dirty apes” while our elderly patrons of wisdom and age-old truths will be processed into an unholy super-food.