Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Studio: Tcfhe Release Date: 11/04/2008 Run time: 97 minutes Rating: G Product Description

A great Planet of the Apes sequel

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is by no means "a very bad film" as the first reviewer here put it. It's actually a very well thought out film that does reflect some of the social upheaval in the United States during the late 60's and early 70's. Planet of the Apes films have always been a comment on the social climate during the period they were made.

Conquest is the darkest film of the Apes series, and the two different versions on the Blu-ray disc have varying levels of violence. The uncut version is very in your face and bloody and ends on a very violent note, which if you discount the fifth movie in the series Battle for the Planet of the Apes, makes a perfect transition to the first Apes film which is set after Conquest chronologically. In the first Apes film men are hunted for sport by apes, used for medical experiments and treated like animals. It was a pretty violent film for it's day as well.

The PG rated version of Conquest ends on a much more upbeat note that the timeline may have changed and that things might not end up so badly. There is still violence but not as much blood as the uncut version. It's really great to be able to see both versions of the film so that you can see where the film makers originally intended it to go and what the test audiences did not like about the movie before it was re-edited.

The film was directed by J. Lee Thompson who also directed The Guns of Navarone. And the look of the film is very deliberate. I suppose one could complain as the previous reviewer did that the artistic use of colors in the film is distracting, but I feel it shows that the creators of this film actually put some thought into how they wanted the audience to react to the characters and environments on the screen. One also has to remember that this movie was made several years before Star Wars came on the scene and changed the way we look at special effects in science fiction films. But for the period it was made in the costumes and effects are very well done. Personally I love the look of the city in the film but then I'm a bit of a apes fan to begin with.

Anyway in my opinion this is my favorite of the Apes sequels. If your an apes fan or you've seen the first three but never checked out the fourth, the Blu-ray version is the one to get. You get to see both versions of the film in very good video quality with great sound as well.
November 22, 2008

a very bad film

This film is a celebration of violence and riots. It was written as a "blacksploitation" film in the early 1970s. Its very white creator decided that what his target audience wanted was a vision of revolution through race riots with no ambiguity whatsoever. Kill. Kill. Kill.

And so what we get is a society where the dull-witted ape proletarian serves the evil white men. Until, that is, according to offical socialist doctrine, the great educated revolutionary ape pseudo-Lenin comes among the dull-witted masses and teaches them how to rise up against and murder their oppressors.

The original cut of the film is provided as an so-called unrated version. The most notiable thing about the "unrated" cut is its bleak ending. The main ape character of the film essentially calls for a war of genocide against humans and the film ends as his happy minions carry out his orders and beat all the gathered up defeated humans to death. The commentary claims that this a message of non-violence but I don't see how.

The theatrical version differs in that the main character steps back from violence at the end and there is a speech about how mercy is a good thing and how everyone should try to get along.

The artistic look of the film is lame and blindly obvious. Good Apes are dressed in bright colors while evil humans are all dressed in black sweaters. And the film is very cheaply done. The main outdoor set is the plaza at century city. A bunch of concrete office buildings.

This is a bad movie because it looks cheap, celebrates violence and makes all its points in a blindly obvious blunt over the top way. The only "apes" film worth watching is the first. November 15, 2008

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