April 21, 2016
Released the same year Stanislaw Lem published His Master’s Voice, Planet of the Apes is a classic. While Lem examines the limits of human intelligence as his characters attempt to decipher an extraterrestrial transmission that may contain instructions for a weapon (much like the 2016 film Arrival), this film explores similar territory by stranding an intrepid astronaut, Charlton Heston, on an unfamiliar planet.
Heston is no Burt Lancaster, but he delivers an immortal line at the end of the film as he metaphorically and literally pounds sand. You may be familiar with the twist at the end of the movie, but few people realize that this scene is the origin of the idiomatic phrase “go pound sand.”
The film also inspired this earworm from The Simpsons: