CREDITS PLANET OF THE APES, 1968 dir: Franklin Schaffner Charlton Heston Roddy McDowall Kim Hunter Maurice Evans

“Oh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was... We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up!”

First there was Pierre Boulle's novel, Monkey Planet, then Franklin Schaffner's movie, then the seventies TV series and now Tim Burton's 're-imagining'.

The desert planet, run by apes, is the desert around Page, Glen Canyon and Lake Powell, northern Arizona.

The ape village sets were built on the Fox Ranch in Malibu Creek State Park, Las Virgenes Road off Mulholland Highway, south from Route 101, northwest of LA.

The final scene, when Taylor (Charlton Heston) realises heís been on Earth all along, was filmed at a secluded cove on the far eastern end of Westward Beach, between Zuma Beach and Point Dume, Malibu. Ignore the wide curving beach by the carpark and clamber over the rocks to the east until you get to the quiet, and often deserted, little beach surrounded by cliffs.

‘Calima’ – birthpplace of ape civilisation: Trona Pinnacles, near Ridgecrest

For Tim Burton's 2001 're-imagining', of the film with Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth and Helena Bonham-Carter, ‘Calima’, where the ape civilisation is born – and where Wahlberg discovers the ruins of his spaceship – is the spectacular Trona Pinnacles near Ridgecrest, central California. You may recognise the striking rock formation from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.