Released at 1972 this was the fourth movie of the five that this reach the end of not that far behind. This was the conquest of the Planet of the Apes when the Apes revolved against the humans to set up the planet of the apes. This movies stars Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalbán, Natalie Trundy & Hari Rhodes. It was produced using a small budget of $1.7m and went onto make a profit, making $9.7m at the box office. The plot will be a short one so I may just add the critic scores here. IMDb gave this one a 6.1/10 and Rotten Tomatoes gave it straight down the middle 50%. Ok the plot if I haven’t ruined it already.
A space disease has wiped out all of the dogs and cats in the world and the government has become a series of police states that took apes in as replacements pets. This was all told as a prediction from Cornelius and Zira the apes that had travelled back in time to be able to warn the world what was coming. Their son was secreted away and is still alive hidden in a circus. Called Caesar he is taken to a town where he sees apes performing menial tasks and brutally attacked when disobedient and shouts aloud which nearly blows his cover but as the Circus master is taken the blame he runs off, he is captured and then trained into slavery by violence and is eventually sold to Governor Breck who puts him to work and he is assigned to MacDonald who sympathizes with the apes and Caesar reveals himself to him. He assists the Ape to begin to overthrow their brutal masters and begin a new war of the planet.
There are many overtones in this whole saga. The apes being used as slaves and then finding sympathy in the guise of an African American has many implications that this movie is not shy to approach and attack. It says this is not right and this is the violence that this leads to. If this as around today I have no idea what type of reception it would receive but I hope it would be one of understanding and acceptance. There a few movies that dared to touch the subject and one of the ways would be to make it a sci-fi movie to allow them to broach the subject. This is not only a good story but an uplifting one at that. My score is well ahead of the critics and I that I remember the scenes of the battles when the apes and gorillas are running in the streets at night dressed in red overalls. I remember being young and watching this being completely spooked as there was something eery about this with gorillas running around with guns. OK the gorilla’s masks are not very convincing but still to a young boy they were as scary as hell and to think this is what my planet is to become is a scary site. Of course, these movies have been redone and if I am honest, I haven’t really given them a chance as after the first one I haven’t kept up to speed so they maybe better but I wouldn’t know at this stage.
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