April of the Apes: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

When it comes to Conquest of the Planet of the Apes – the fourth installment in the simian time-travel franchise – I can’t quite say whether I would have preferred the title to be Panic on the Planet of the Apes or Riot for the Planet of the Apes. (The conquest, you see, happens largely off-screen, after this movie ends.) It’s certainly the most violent of the Apes films, particularly in the unrated version that found its way onto Blu-Ray, and at times it seems as though the violence is merely an end in itself. But for all its low-budget sturm und brutish allegorical drang, Conquest is a compelling installment in a perennially strange series.

Twenty years after his parents arrived on earth, the talking chimpanzee Caesar (Roddy McDowall) has been hiding from the government under the protection of circus owner Armando (Ricardo Montalbán). While the rest of the world domesticates apes to replace the dogs and cats that perished in a global pandemic, Caesar becomes the unlikely hero of a revolution after his secret is uncovered by the forces of the sinister Governor Breck (Don Murray).

 

Conquest is somewhat unique among the Apes films in that it exists in two different versions: there’s the 1972 theatrical release and the more recent (and, as far as I can tell, fan-preferred) unrated version that debuted on Blu-Ray circa 2009. While the differences are largely negligible, with the unrated version featuring more graphic and startling shots of blood and violence, the ending is bracingly different. I’ll throw up a spoiler warning, although I wonder whether it’s possible to spoil a closed-loop time travel story: in the theatrical release, Caesar heeds his better angels and talks his fellow apes out of violence, while in the unrated version, Caesar embraces the use of force and encourages the gorillas to execute Governor Breck.

 

When I first saw Conquest ages ago, it was the theatrical version, but having watched the unrated cut for “April of the Apes,” I can’t imagine going back. The darker, more fatalistic ending gives Roddy McDowall the centerpiece he deserves; in a dramatic monologue that is equal parts Shylock and Richard III, McDowall mouths a somber and grim portrait of humanity, invoking the darkest chapters of American history while positing himself as a Darwinian emperor ape. In this closing soliloquy, dark and chilling enough to elevate the entire film, McDowall’s Caesar reminded me very much of another science-fiction fable of revolt – HBO’s Westworld. And like the violent delights of the android theme park, the precarious peace of Conquest’s earth, Caesar insists, would have violent and inevitable ends. (One also cannot ignore the unanticipated lasting potency of the film’s civil rights metaphor, all the more heated in 2021, when Caesar’s essential thesis revolves around which lives matter.)

 

While McDowall is doing simian Shakespeare, the rest of the film is bogged down by cheap effects and on-the-nose metaphors. The first two Apes films featured an incredible prosthetics technique by John Chambers, but by the time we get to Conquest, we’re lucky if more than two apes at once are sporting that innovative makeup effect; instead, the bulk of the cast is sadly restricted to low-budget pullover masks, at once inexpressive and unconvincing. It’s a plus for Caesar, who stands out all the more, but it is overall to the film’s detriment, especially since the film does not invest much time in ape characters like Natalie Trundy’s Lisa (who, in the theatrical version, masters the power of speech in time to soften Caesar’s hardened heart).

 

Similarly, the villains of the film are thoroughly undercooked, evil for the sake of being evil without much in the way of motivation or character development. Doubtless the makers of the Andy Serkis mo-cap trilogy took note, as this was something the Serkis films greatly improved upon, particularly with Woody Harrelson’s unsettling Colonel in War for the Planet of the Apes. In Conquest, though, the antagonists are little more than Nazi stormtroopers, callously engaging in barbaric modes of torture without the self-awareness to realize that their shiny black boots and crisp black clothing telegraph their inherent villainy to the world. There’s a shining moment of insight when MacDonald (Hari Rhodes) chooses a side and turns against the other humans, but the film bludgeons the point home when MacDonald and Caesar repeatedly call attention to the fact that the black MacDonald is “a descendant of slaves.”

 

So much of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes isn’t subtle, though perhaps that’s asking too much of a franchise that involved Rod Serling only once. Still, like Escape from the Planet of the Apes, there is something of The Twilight Zone in Conquest, particularly in the darker unrated cut. There is a tragic sense of inevitability as the series winds down; in attempting to avert the planet of the apes, the human slavers end up creating it. There can be no peace through subjugation, the film warns, yet it is a lesson that Caesar seems not to have learned. Like Ben Affleck’s Batman, Caesar is blinded by his rage and his pain – yet the film is stronger and more chilling without the theatrical cut’s moralizing (and ultimately inert) denouement. While it’s very short and subsumes substance for spectacle, one can’t help but be won over by Conquest’s potent go-for-the-jugular approach – but none of it would work if it weren’t for Roddy McDowall treating this sci-fi hokum like Elizabethan tragedy.

 

Put another way, this might not be how we imagined the birth of the planet of the apes (nor does it quite align with the versions we heard from Cornelius or Dr. Zaius), but in the moments when it stays out of its own way Conquest is very nearly better than a fourth film with no budget has any right to be.

 

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is rated PG. Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by Paul Dehn. Starring Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Natalie Trundy, Severn Darden, Hari Rhodes, and Ricardo Montalbán.