Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
1972  PG  SCIENCE FICTION  1h 28min
CAST— Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalbán, Natalie Trundy, Hari Rhodes
MUSIC— Tom Scott  DIRECTOR— J. Lee Thompson

     A darker vision of Earth, circa 1991. In the ‘80s a virus wiped out all dogs and cats so the next choice of pet were monkeys and apes. Now simians are treated as slaves. But remember Ricardo Montalbán from Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)? For the past twenty years he’s been raising the offspring of Cornelius and Zira, and Caesar is the only ape on Earth with advanced, human-like mannerisms. Of course this makes him a threat to the rest of humanity’s apes, so he goes incognito as a dumb ape, infiltrating the world of the captive. He soon sees the brutality his fellow apes face daily and figures enough is enough; he stages a massive revolt. Soon it’s ape vs. man in a battle that sees the city streets a violent mass of teeming flesh and fur. Will mankind prevail or will tonight be the dawn of a planet of the apes? Entertaining, if only to see the put upon apes stick it to the man. As previously mentioned, this is a darker, far more grim vision than previous Apes films, but necessary for the Apes mythology to progress.
OUR RATING— ** ½
PRECEDED BY— Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)
FOLLOWED BY— Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)