Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) - film review

In 1991, North America is run by an oppressively fascist regime.  Eight years previously, a plague wiped out all domestic animals, and householders replaced these with apes.  Over time, these apes became adept at performing manual chores and are now treated as slaves, to be beaten and whipped if ever they turn aggressive.  The one ape to escape this maltreatment is Caesar, a chimpanzee who performs as a horseback rider in a circus owned by his friend Amando.   Caesar is the child of Cornelius and Zira, two apes who came from Earth’s future, a future in which the apes rule the world.  Twenty years ago, Caesar’s parents were murdered when it became clear that they posed a threat to mankind.  If ever Caesar’s identity were revealed to the authorities, he too would be killed.   Governor Breck doubts whether Cornelius’s child was shot, as the records claim.  By a twist of fate, Ceasar ends up being bought by Breck at an auction.  As he is subjected to an ape management course, Ceasar begins to loathe man for the way he exploits and abuses the apes.  If the opportunity rises, he will lead a revolution that will give the apes the confidence to take over the world...

The third sequel to the sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes (1968) picks up where the second ended, but with one niggling continuity error: the child of Cornelius and Zira has inexplicably changed its name from Milo to Caesar.  As the explanation as to how the apes achieved dominance over the Earth was comprehensively given in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), it can be argued that this film and its successor, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), are pretty well superfluous.  There are no further dramatic twists but it’s nice to see the saga played out and everything wrapped up by the end of the fourth sequel. 

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is a stylish production but suffers from a weak screenplay that tries a little too hard to make the connection with contemporary politics.  Instead of the subtle allegory of the original Planet of the Apes film, here we have to endure bouts of clumsy anti-discrimination, anti-slavery, anti-racist posturing that feels hollow and insincere.  Fortunately, the scripting deficiencies are pretty well masked by some superb work on the technical front. Particularly impressive is the remarkable action climax, which is shocking in its violence and realism for a film of this era.

Roddy McDowall is back as the principal ape, skilfully delineating the character he plays here, Caesar, from his previous chimp role, Cornelius.  The human protagonists are less memorable, although this is again a fault of the script, which fails to make the human characters interesting or believable.  Convincingly portraying the struggle between the human and bestial sides of his character, McDowall has no trouble carrying the film and gives what is arguably the best of his performances in the four Apes films he appeared in.

The film’s original ending, in which Governor Breck and his human aides are all violently murdered by the rampaging apes, was judged too bleak by a preview audience.  With some judicious re-editing and re-dubbing, the film was given a somewhat more optimistic ending, which allows the possibility that humans and apes might learn to co-exist peacefully (unlikely given what we have already seen in the first film in the series).   Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is marginally less entertaining than the previous sequels, but it still manages to be a compelling and well-realised piece of science-fiction fantasy, marred only by its imperfect screenplay.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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