The Forgotten ‘Planet of the Apes’ Script That Somehow Included Topless Gorilla Strippers
· Vice
Prior to Tim Burton’s involvement with the Planet of the Apes series, Home Alone director Chris Columbus was hired to helm a reboot of his own starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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Batman scribe Sam Hamm wrote a script for the proposed film during that time, and the story he came up with was pretty out there, to say the least. Hamm’s screenplay starts with an ape crash-landing a spaceship on Earth, which causes a plague that affects only babies. For whatever reason, the infants age rapidly and die in a matter of hours, with some growing full heads of hair and others being stricken with arthritis.
The script also features an odd blend of violent imagery and goofy humor. When three scientists travel to the crashed spaceship’s planet of origin, they’re quickly taken captive by apes, and one of them ends up getting his throat slit. The other two are then caged in the back of a transport truck, where they witness gorillas tossing human bodies into mass graves. All the while, the apes can be heard whistling and cracking jokes.
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As the truck approaches an area referred to as the Ape Highway, we’re treated to a montage of silly ape-themed billboards. One such advertisement is for a Simpsons-like cartoon series called The Simians. There’s even a sign for Wheaties cereal, which, on this planet, is known as “The Breakfast of Chimpanzees.” Our protagonists go on to discover a vast theme park on this stretch of road that features a giant statue of Mickey Mouse—in monkey form.
This is in addition to the story’s weird sexual elements. In one scene, the two surviving scientists have sex while a chimp zoologist watches them with a “warm, almost motherly smile” on her face. Later on, the male scientist tries to escape and eventually gets chased into a strip club. The establishment in question is described as being “Straight out of Showgirls,” complete with “horny chimp tourists stuffing cash into the g-strings of topless GORILLA DANCERS.”
Hamm’s take on things reportedly didn’t get the warmest reception from 20th Century Fox, and both he and Columbus stepped away from the project, leaving the door open for Burton to put his spin on things shortly thereafter.
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