lanet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston, hit the big screen in 1968 to great acclaim. Since its first showing, the film (and its startling surprise ending) has never left the public consciousness, and was so popular it spawned many sequels. The makeup and masks for the movie were fairly advanced for the time, allowing emotion and dialogue without too much difficulty. By today's standards, however, they were quite primitive.
Now comes Tim Burton into the fray, modernizing the classic tale, with makeup and special effects far superior to the 1968 film--which should come as no surprise. Enter Rubie's Costumes, with costume masks for the consumer designed from the new film that actually seem to have character and detail that go far beyond other masks of their kind.
Three of the masks in the mid-price
range were made available for review: Thade, a respected and ruthless chimpanzee in the ape army; Attar, the most feared warrior in the ape army; and a generic Gorilla Warrior.
Thade is a vinyl 3/4 mask with molded hair. The eyes have painted whites, with circular holes where the pupils should be. The nose and mouth have breathing holes which supply comparatively good ventilation.
Attar is a latex full-head mask with helmet, surrounded by cowling that simulates small metal plates wired together. The eyes are fully open, with no painted white portion. The skin is jet-black and well textured. Attar’s molded hair and beard are complemented with synthetic fiber hair. Attar's black helmet is adorned with a silver flourish to indicate rank and etched red symbols around the border.
The Gorilla Warrior mask is similar to Attar, but its face is different enough not to confuse. The helmet is brown, as is the protective cowling. The mask has identical features to Attar’s, without the fiber hair. Both helmets have a nautilus-shell motif on the sides, as if the helmets were meant to be carved from aged seashells.
Great masks for great apes
Gorilla costumes and masks have been popular with the Halloween crowd as far back as, and perhaps even before, the release of 1933’s King Kong. Most of those masks, even in recent years, have not been very gorilla-like, but a bizarre parody of the gorilla face. Even masks based on the 1968 film lacked something.
For King Kong’s remake in 1976, Rick Baker (most famous perhaps for his Cantina masks in Star Wars) studied gorilla faces and took pains to accentuate the differences between humans and apes to ensure that his Kong didn’t look like a human in a mask. His achievements put him in demand, and he has since done many more gorilla costumes for movies such as the 1984 Tarzan remake, Greystoke, Gorillas in the Mist, Mighty Joe Young and, indeed, this newest version of Planet of the Apes. These masks benefit greatly from Baker’s knowledge of gorilla features.
Thade’s mask has realistically painted multitoned skin, and a sculpt that is so accurate that it’s easily recognizable as Tim Roth’s character as seen even for brief seconds in the trailer for the upcoming film. Because this mask’s eye holes are cut from painted eye whites, the eyes take on a certain realism in any situation.
Attar and the Gorilla Warrior masks share many of the same design features. Great care was taken to ensure the two masks differed, though. The faces are recognizably different from each other, and even details such as skin tone, the size of the nose and the etched markings around the helmet ridge are different between the two.
Attar’s face is wrinkled, with vast circles under and around the eyes, and with the fiber hair, he can look rather fierce. The Gorilla Warrior’s facial skin is pebbled and wrinkled, which differentiates it from Attar, to show ruggedness, or perhaps age. This mask has a particularly delightful lifelike realism.
If these masks are placed correctly, the wearer's eyes become the gorilla’s eyes in a way that is eerily realistic. With an application of jet-black eye makeup, this mask can look truly creepy. Slated for wide release, even to Toys R Us, these masks could be a favorite for the 2001 Halloween season.
