Planet of the Apes (1968): The Banned Alternate Ending and Hidden Secrets They Tried To Hide

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Planet of the Apes, 1968 [music] is one of  the most shocking sci-fi films ever made.

[00:00:05]A story where humanity's worst fear isn't  the unknown, but itself. But the version you saw almost ended in a completely different  way. Did you know that in the original script, Taylor was killed by a sniper and never reached  the Statue of Liberty? Or that the man who built the ape faces later used those same skills  [music] to help the CIA rescue hostages from Iran?

[00:00:28]Today, we're uncovering 16 hidden truths about  Planet of the Apes 1968, including shocking Easter eggs that reveal a secret connection  to the Star Trek and Batman universes.

[00:00:40]Number one, the ending that would have erased  the most famous [music] shot in cinema.

[00:00:46]In the drafts leading up to the final screenplay,  Taylor never made it to the Statue of Liberty.

[00:00:51]He was shot and killed by an ape sniper bullet  while fleeing into the Forbidden Zone. Nova, pregnant with his child, escaped alone into the  wasteland, vanishing with the unborn baby. That would have been the ending. No crumbling monument,  no [music] existential horror, just a conventional tragic death and a pregnant woman disappearing  into the desert. But during the final rewriting stages, Rod Serling's Statue of Liberty concept  was locked in as the definitive conclusion.

[00:01:20]One revision saved what became the most iconic  [music] final shot in movie history. Number two, the spaceship that sounded like the Batmobile.  When Taylor's [music] spacecraft tears through the atmosphere and crashes into the lake, that  roaring engine sound wasn't created for this film.

[00:01:37]Sound designers Herman Lewis and David Dondorf  were working with a tight budget, so they pulled effects straight from the 20th Century Fox sound  library. The specific jet engine roar used for the crash sequence was the exact same sound effect  used for the Batmobile in the Batman TV series, which had been airing on the same studio lot just  2 years earlier. So, the vehicle that carried an astronaut to the End of Civilization, shares its  voice with Adam West's car. Number three, the man who works for the CIA. John Chambers, the makeup  artist who designed every ape prosthetic in this film, had a secret parallel career that wouldn't  be revealed for decades. Operating under the code name Jerome Callaway, Chambers began creating  disguise kits for CIA agents in the early 1970s.

[00:02:25]Then in 1980, CIA officer Tony Menddees recruited  him for the most audacious rescue operation of the Cold War. Six American diplomats were hiding  in Thrron during the Iran hostage crisis and Chambers helped build their escape. [music] He  set up a fake production company called Studio 6 and used his Hollywood credentials to make a fake  sci-fi film called Argo. The diplomats walked out of Iran posing as a Canadian film crew. Chambers  received the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit, the AY's highest civilian honor. The story  stayed classified until 1997 and became the basis for Ben Affleck's Argo, which [music]  won best picture. John Goodman played Chambers.

[00:03:07]Number four, Edward G. Robinson was secretly  fired for over 30 years. The official story was that legendary actor Edward G. Robinson left the  production because the heavy ape makeup was too physically demanding for a man his age. [music]  It sounded reasonable. Everyone accepted it.

[00:03:26]But the truth, revealed decades later  by makeup designer John Chambers himself was far less dignified. Robinson refused to shave  off his beard, which made it impossible to apply the ape prosthetics properly. He even tried to  commission an independent makeup artist [music] to build a custom appliance around the beard.  Chambers went to producer Arthur P. Jacobs and told him Robinson had to go. Jacobs had  already been looking for a cheaper replacement and used the dispute as justification. Robinson  was paid off and replaced by Maurice Evans.

[00:03:58]Both sides agreed to the health reasons cover  story and it held for three decades. Number five, the improvised gag that embarrassed the director  during Taylor's hearing before [music] the ape tribunal. The three orangutane judges briefly  pose in the classic see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil arrangement. [music] That moment  was never in any draft of the screenplay.

[00:04:22]Director Franklin Shaner improvised it during a  rehearsal almost as a throwaway. H suggested they actually film it, but both men expected it would  be cut in editing. When it survived into the final film, they were reportedly embarrassed. Test  audiences had found it amusing, and the studio kept it in because the film was getting too dark  and needed a moment of levity. What started as an onset joke became one of the most referenced  images from the entire movie. Number six, Rod Serling recycled his own Twilight Zone.  Rod Serling didn't just write the screenplay, he essentially rebuilt it from pieces of his own  Twilight Zone episodes. I shot an arrow into the air from 1960 features astronauts crash landing  in a desert, convinced they're on an alien planet only to discover they never left Earth. That's the  exact same twist as the Statue of Liberty ending.

[00:05:16]People are alike all over. also from 1960 stars  Rody McDow, who would later play Cornelius, as [music] an astronaut captured by aliens and  put on display as a caged exhibit that directly mirrors Taylor's imprisonment in the film. [music]  The Rip Van Winkle caper involves characters waking from suspended animation to find a dead  companion, which mirrors the film's opening.

[00:05:39]These aren't [music] vague thematic echoes. They  share specific plot mechanics, character dynamics, and structural beats. The film is essentially  Serling's ultimate Twilight Zone story, one too big for television. Number seven,  Bert Lancaster said no for the fifth time.

[00:05:56]Bert Lancaster was offered the role of Taylor and  turned it down. That alone isn't unusual. What's unusual is that this was the fifth time Charlton  H inherited a role Lancaster [music] refused.

[00:06:09]The previous four were The Ten Commandments,  Ben Hur, The Agony and The Ecstasy, [music] and Cartoon. Other actors considered for Taylor  included Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, John Wayne, and Rock Hudson. Lancaster's repeated refusals  essentially built H's career as Hollywood's go-to epic leading man. Number eight, actors segregated  themselves by species. During breaks in filming, something strange happened that nobody planned.  Actors in ape makeup naturally and unconsciously grouped themselves by species. Gorillas sat with  [music] gorillas. Oranging ate with orangutans.

[00:06:49]Chimps gathered with chimps. Nobody instructed  them to do this. Nobody encouraged it.

[00:06:54]It just happened organically every single  day. Cast members including Rody McDow and Lou Wagner who plays Lucius later confirmed it  on a film about hierarchy and tribalism. The cast accidentally created a realworld social experiment  that proved the movie's own thesis. Number nine, the novel's double twist that was too strange  for film. Pierre Boule's 1963 novel La Planet Des has a twist far more shocking than anything  in the movie. The story uses a framing device that the film abandoned entirely. Two astronauts  discover a message in a bottle floating in space.

[00:07:33]Inside is a manuscript. The written account of a  human traveler trapped on the ape planet. The hero of that account named Uliss eventually escapes and  returns to Earth only to find that apes have taken over there, too. But then the novel pulls back one  final time to reveal its most shocking twist. The two astronauts reading the message are themselves  chimpanzees, and they dismiss the entire account, refusing to believe humans were ever intelligent.  The reader was inside the twist the whole time.

[00:08:02]This double twist was considered too  difficult to translate to cinema.

[00:08:06]Tim Burton's 2001 remake actually came closer  to Boule's ending, and audiences hated it.

[00:08:13]Number 10, the man who made Spock's Ears also  made Every [music] ape. John Chambers didn't just revolutionize makeup with this film. Two  years earlier, he had created the pointed Vulcan ears worn by Leonard Nemoy as Spock on Star  Trek the original series. Both franchises, born within 2 years of each other, owe their most  distinctive alien looks to the same artist. What made Chambers uniquely qualified was his [music]  background. Before Hollywood, he had spent years creating artificial facial features for disfigured  World War II veterans. work that taught him how to make prosthetics look like living tissue rather  than rubber. Number 11. H wrote the final speech on the day they shot it. Taylor's anguished  breakdown at the Statue of Liberty, "You maniacs, you blew it up. Godamn you all to hell," was  not in the shooting [music] script. Charlton H wrote those words himself on the day they filmed  the scene. The production had the ending location, the half-bburied statue, the dramatic setup, but  no dialogue for the moment of discovery. H filled the silence with a raw, furious outburst that  became one of the most quoted lines in cinema, and Shaner made another bold decision. No  music. The scene plays against nothing but crashing waves, which makes the horror land  harder than any orchestra could. Number 12, Dr. Zas knew everything. Most viewers remember  Dr. Zas as the stubborn antagonist who refuses to accept the truth about Taylor. But watch the  film again and something becomes clear. He's not denying the truth. He already knows it. When he  tells Taylor, "Do not look for it. You may not like what you find. He's not guessing. He knows  exactly what's in the forbidden zone." He knows what Taylor will discover. And he knows it won't  matter because no one in ape society will believe a human. After Taylor rides away, Zas immediately  orders the archaeological cave destroyed and charges Zer and Cornelius with heresy. He's not an  ignorant leader. He's a deliberate coverup artist, protecting his civilization from a truth  he considers too dangerous to survive.

[00:10:22]Number 13. The producer bought the rights  before the book was even published.

[00:10:27]Producer Arthur P. Jacobs purchased the screen  rights to Pierre Belaloo's novel in 1963 before it had even been released to the public. Beloo  himself thought the story was unfilmable and privately considered it one of his weakest works.  Jacob spent the next several years pitching the project to every major studio in Hollywood and was  rejected repeatedly. What finally got Fox to say yes had nothing to do with the script's quality.  The studio's other big budget genre bet, Dr. Dittle was spiraling wildly over budget. [music]  Planet of the Apes suddenly looked like a cheaper, safer alternative. One studios financial panic  became another film's greenlight. Number 14. 80 makeup artists created a Hollywoodwide shortage.  John Chambers needed roughly 80 makeup artists for the large crowd scenes. That was so many that  several other productions at other studios were reportedly delayed because there simply weren't  enough makeup professionals left in Hollywood.

[00:11:27]At the start of filming, each ape transformation  took about 6 hours, but Chambers developed an assembly line training system that cut the  process to roughly 3 hours by [music] the end of production. Actors couldn't eat solid food  while in prosthetics. They survived on milkshakes and soft foods consumed through straws. The studio  publicly claimed the makeup budget was $1 million.

[00:11:51]Producer Mort Abrahams later admitted the  real number was probably less than half that, but a million sounded more dramatic. Number 15.  The film opened one day before everything changed.

[00:12:03]Planet of the Apes went into wide release  on April 3, 1968. [music] One day later, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.  A film about racial hierarchy, oppression, and a society that maintains power through willful  ignorance was suddenly playing in theaters across a nation convulsing with grief and rage. The film  ran through the summer and autumn of 1968, one of the most turbulent periods in American history.  Its themes about who gets to be called civilized and who gets caged were no longer science  fiction allegory. They were the evening news.

[00:12:39]Number 16. The movie tells you the truth from the  very beginning. Here's the secret hiding in plain sight. The film essentially tells you it's Earth  from the opening act, but 1960s audiences never caught it. The planet has a breathable atmosphere  identical to Earth's. It has Earth vegetation.

[00:12:56]The apes speak English, not alien English, actual  English. There are horses. The archaeological dig turns up human dentures, a pacemaker, and a  talking baby doll you could buy in any American toy shop. Taylor's own ship was programmed  to return to Earth. Every clue is there.

[00:13:14]But in 1968, [music] audiences accepted casual  interstellar travel and human-looking aliens as standard sci-fi conventions without question.  Soviet probes wouldn't reveal Mars and Venus as dead, lifeless worlds until the early 1970s. So,  the uniqueness of Earth's biosphere wasn't yet common knowledge. The twist worked not because  the film hid the truth, but because audiences weren't yet trained to look for it. Planet of  the Apes isn't really about apes. It's about us.

[00:13:44]About what happens when a civilization decides  that some truths are too dangerous to know?

[00:13:49]So, here's the question. If Dr. Zas were  alive today, what truth would he be burying?

[00:13:55]Drop your answer in the comments. [music] If  this video surprised you, hit like and subscribe because we've got more hidden truths coming from  [music] the films you thought you already knew.