Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Director:

J. Lee Thompson

Writers:

Paul Dehn (written by)
Pierre Boulle (characters)

Release Date:

30 June 1972 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

All new! The revolt of the apes. The most awesome spectacle in the annals of science fiction!

Plot:

In a futuristic world that has embraced ape slavery, Caesar, the son of the late simians Cornelius and Zira, surfaces after almost twenty years of hiding out from the authorities, and prepares for a slave revolt against humanity.

Plot Keywords:

Ape | Future | Rebellion | Revolution | Slavery

Cast

Roddy McDowall	...	Caesar
Don Murray	...	Breck
Natalie Trundy	...	Lisa
Hari Rhodes	...	MacDonald
Severn Darden	...	Kolp
Lou Wagner	...	Busboy
John Randolph	...	Commission Chairman
Asa Maynor	...	Mrs. Riley
H.M. Wynant	...	Hoskyns (as H. M. Wynant)
David Chow	...	Aldo
Buck Kartalian	...	Frank - Gorilla
John Dennis	...	Policeman
Paul Comi	...	2nd Policeman
Gordon Jump	...	Auctioneer
Dick Spangler	...	Announcer

Runtime:

88 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

West Germany:16 (nf) | Brazil:12 | UK:12 (video re-rating) (2003) | UK:15 (video rating) | UK:AA (original rating) | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | USA:PG | Finland:K-18 (DVD rating) | Canada:PG (Canadian Home Video rating) | Germany:12 (re-rating) | Australia:M | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Avenue of the Stars, Century City, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

This is the only film from the original Planet of the Apes (1968) series of 5, that was not rated G, and the only entry released without a pre-title sequence. Reason: the opening was deemed too violent, and the producers wanted to avoid an R rating. The opening showed police on night patrol shooting an escaped ape and discovering his body covered with welts and bruises that are evidence of severe abuse. (Governor Breck and MacDonald refer to this incident in a scene that survived the final cut.) That and many other bloody images were deleted after a pre-release print was shown to a preview audience. The opening scene appears in the novelization and the comic book adaptation of the movie. On November, 2008, the Blu-Ray unrated version restored many of those graphic scenes, but not the pre-credit opening.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Throughout the film, the apes have human-looking feet, and not the ape-shaped feet as in the earlier films. This is most apparent when the apes are strapped to the electrical torture device, to which the feet are visibly bound.

Quotes:

Lisa: N-No...

Movie Connections:

Featured in "The Rotten Tomatoes Show: Watchmen/Shuttle/12 (#1.2)" (2009)

The nadir of the series

You watch this movie, with its depiction of humans (with a single exception) as either mindless order-following automata or mustache-twirling stock villains, and you have to ask yourself: Is this what the filmmakers think people are like? Well, no, of course not. This is what the filmmakers think *other* people are like.

And that, far more than decreasing budgets or continuity errors, explains the inferiority of the APES sequels to the original.

Great satire--indeed, great art--is always an examination of *us*, of what *we* are like. This is what the original film did so well and why it is still remembered so fondly. By this point in the series, however, the filmmakers were simply sneering at "them," defined as all those people who didn't attend film school or vote for McGovern. It's a nasty, bigoted little piece of hackwork which tries to pass itself off as clever satire.