Sounds from the Forbidden Zone

When they were distributing Planet of the Apes in 1968, 20th Century Fox marketed it to reach the widest audience possible. Up to that point and with a handful of notable exceptions—Things to Come (1936), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), This Island Earth (1955), Forbidden Planet (1956)—science fiction movies were routinely dismissed by the studios and public alike as fodder for juveniles and adolescents. Between its prestige cast (Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore) and topical themes of creationism vs. evolution, slavery and racism, Planet of the Apes tapped into a huge crossover demographic. Fox offered schools and religious organizations literature proclaiming the film’s relevance as a tool for discussion on scientific and theological issues. They hyped John Chambers’s inventive makeup work. And in the lofty tradition of Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago, they first released the picture with an intermission—even though it ran under two hours. (The break came after Taylor barks, “Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”)

Among its many irregularities, Planet of the Apes boasted a unique, quasi- avant-garde musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, then Fox’s in-house composer. Goldsmith’s overall contribution to film and television is enormous, but this score in particular shuffled rhythms, instruments and playing methods to enhance the picture’s sense of dislocation. The download offered here is the original soundtrack issued by Project 3 records. Copy and paste the URL:

http://rapidshare.com/files/49316621/PlanetApes.rar.html