So two weeks ago, if you'll recall, I walked you through a legitimate sci-fi classic called Planet of the Apes, its first totally bonkers sequel (yes, it was an Apes movie with upside-down crucifixions), and its second kinda stupid sequel (the villain was preoccupied with a distant, distant future). To recap what we have learned: Apes will come to replace man by 3955 (or perhaps 3978). The world will end that same year when Charlton Heston uses a millennia-old bomb to blow up the planet. We know there's a stable time hole somewhere above Earth, and it can be passed through in both directions. And, thanks to a speech made by Dr. Cornelius, we know that apes will come to speech and dominance in the next 500 years or so. The chronology of the films was already kind of dodgy, and we're about to really mess things up in a few films that take place in the near-future. Strap in, my lovelies. We're going to complete our polite and baffled stroll through these monkey movies, even if it kills us. Welcome back to the latest in The Series Project here on CraveOnline.
The fourth film in the Planet of the Apes series is dark and way too serious. Let's take a look at...
CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (1972)
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson
J. Lee Thompson had previously directed Cape Fear and The Guns of Navarone. This guy knows his action. Odd, then, that this film should seem so haphazard.
So we are now in the future. It is 1991. A plague has wiped out all the world's cats and dogs, and apes (gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees) have been produced by the score to replace our beloved housepets. Okay, I'm going to address this right away. I can maybe see small docile chimps as house pets (I'll mention Michael Jackson's chimp Bubbles), but who, upon the loss of their golden retriever, would think to get a gorilla? Apes are large and unwieldy creatures. Sure, they're much smarter than cats and dogs, but, from what I understand, require a heck of a lot more care and training. Now I can picture a future where apes have become such common pets that a care system, pet supply stores, and chimp clothing has been widely distributed amongst the people, but it has been less than 20 years since the events of the last film. I don't think such a system could really be implemented.
What's more, apes are not merely pets, but are now being trained to do menial, minimum-wage tasks. They mop floors, make beds, mix drinks, wait tables...
Wait. What? What sane society would employ an ape workforce? Apes are not beasts of burden. They're primates. I should point out here that all the apes in this movie are actually human actors in ape suits, so they look like the apes from all the previous films. The sociological parallel is, of course, plainly obvious: The apes represent an oppressed racial minority, and the film is rife with slavery imagery. Apes are black people. Plain and simple. This world is also seeing a kind of labor crisis. Many humans are protesting the rise of an ape workforce, and they resent that apes are keeping them out of a job. The better, more intelligent apes are auctioned off to wealthy families, and lesser-trained apes are given janitorial tasks. There are several scenes of picket lines.
The film was shot in the then-brand-new Century City office complex in southern California. Most of the original complex is still standing, and you'll find that it does look clean, white and kind of futuristic. L.A. natives will have a grand time trying to spot the actual locations in the movie, and may even make the trek to see them. Any Apes fan should make this a vacation destination.
Our story kicks off with Armando (still Ricardo Montalban) still secretly hiding Cornelius and Zira's now-adult chimp son. The son, named Milo after Sal Mineo's character from the third film, is also played by Roddy McDowall. Milo looks a lot like Dr. Cornelius, but is swarthier and more mean-spirited. All apes are essentially slaves, and have to wear special jumpsuits. Milo has been instructed never to speak in front of people, as he is still wanted by the same administration that would have killed him in the third film (this time, the government is represented by prolific Tony-winning actor John Randolph). Again I have to wonder, why are people concerned with the centuries-hence legacy of this one chimp? The world won't end until the mid-3900s, and apes aren't scheduled to become intelligent for another 488 years or so. I think we're kind of in the clear here. And now that they know about a nuclear war, and they've seen intelligent apes from the future, don't you think world leaders would be a little more careful about where they put their nukes?
Nothing doing, Milo is still under suspicion, and it's early in the film when Armando is taken into custody and interrogated about the possible whereabouts of his potentially talking chimp son. Armando, just before his arrest, hides Milo in the work force, and Milo, silent all the while, sees first-hand – and for the first time – the inside workings of the ape training facilities. Apes need to become used to fire if they're going to be cooking meals, so humans put them in a room and fire flame-throwers at them. Milo, being intelligent and civilized, it scoped out by his new human masters, and is auctioned for a high price. Milo also begins to form a kind of kinship with his animal brothers, sharing bananas with them, and teaching them to be polite. He becomes especially militant when he learns that Armando was killed by other humans. Eventually, too, the very government agent that's looking for Milo buys him as a servant. Milo is asked to open a book and select a name. Milo opens a Bible and selects “Caesar” as his name.
Let us now render unto to Caesar what is Caesar's.
Caesar breaks out of his home every night, and makes his way back to the ape training facility to train the apes how to steal from their masters (guns and weapons mostly), and how to screw things up in the kitchen (he trains one ape how to replace cooking oil with kerosene). Caesar feels that if apes become incompetent enough at home, then they'll be shipped back to the ape training facility to be re-conditioned. Once they are there, they can mobilize, and stage an ape uprising. It's in Caesar's scheme where the true weakness of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes begins to show: the film assumes we have much too much sympathy for the apes. It was easy to sympathize with the apes in the last film, as they were intelligent creatures whom we had grown to know over the course of three movies. In this one, even though the apes are played by human actors, we know that they are not intelligent. They are animals. Caesar's plan is to sort of force them into human intelligence by force of will over the course of a few weeks. It doesn't work that way. I, for one, felt a certain anarchy in training an ape how to start fires. Indeed, were it not for the serious music and dialogue, this film might play as a comedy.
Caesar also takes a girlfriend in the form of another chimp. Does that count as bestiality? If a human were thrown back in time and had sex with a protohuman of some kind, say a neanderthal, would that count as bestiality? We're of the same genus, sure, but we're not technically the same species. These are important questions to ask.
Anyway, Caesar ends up staging his ape uprising, and the final 30 minutes of the film are devoted to an extended riot scene wherein humans and apes have gunfights and storm various buildings. The film's tone is dark and dour and dead serious, but the sight of the apes screaming and fighting with people is undeniably campy. Unlike in the first Apes film, this one doesn't bother to transcend its silly imagery. The film ends, as all the Apes films do, on a staggeringly tragic note, as Caesar, standing on a staircase, the city burning behind him, declares that apes are now going to be man's superiors, and he fully intends to enslave all of humanity. People and apes look on in horror, shocked at his lack of remorse. Chimps are pacifists, huh? Wasn't this uprising supposed to happen in a few centuries time?
Conquest of the Planet of the Apesis, despite its darkness and aggression and illogic, kind of the center of the series. What is, after all, the central question behind the Apes movies? How did apes become intelligent, and man dumb? It is the eventual rise of the apes that all the films have been kind of pointing to. Here we finally get to see it. I still much prefer the implication in the first film that apes kind of grew to become intelligent after humanity had wiped themselves out. I like the pleasantly apocalyptic idea of a new ape civilization growing from the ruins of ours. That the humans had dealings – and even started wars, as we'll see in the fifth film – with intelligent apes, kind of demystifies the series for me.
Well, we have a solid legacy now, and the apes have risen. What of Earth now? Let's find out in...
BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (1973)
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson
This was the cheapest of the Apes films, and it kind of shows. The bulk of the film seems to have been shot in a large field in the mountains of California. The story is insular, and the chronology doesn't make much sense again. Or maybe it does. Let's see where we are.
The film is told in flashback from the year 2670. The Lawgiver (John Huston, yes, John Huston) is telling ape history to a group of ape and human children. He recounts the first turbulent days of ape and human interaction following the great war. He flashes back to about AD 2002. Between this film and the last one, humans have indeed blown up the Earth. Apes have indeed enslaved humans, although it's much more a respect thing than a forced labor thing. Humans can speak and work alongside apes, but are deferential to ape laws, and must address apes with respect. Other humans who have survived the war are still living in the ruins of New York, paranoid about radiation. My guess is it's these guys who will turn into the skinless ghouls from the second film.
Caesar is there, is still played by Roddy McDowall, and seems to be fostering a new philosophy of peace and togetherness. He leads a society of intelligent apes. Apes, it seems, have all become clothes-wearing intelligent beings by this point. Maybe the radiation mutated ape minds and made them smarted. Heck, radiation has done crazier things in the movies. Apes also may not have many laws yet (Caesar is constantly reminding apes of the non-violence rules), implying that the society is new, and they're working out the kinks.
A human assistant named MacDonald (Austin Stoker) tells Caesar that there may be old film reels of his biological parents somewhere in the ruins of New York. Caesar. MacDonald also implies that Caesar should know about the events of 3978 ('55?) for some reason. Quit obsessing about the end of the world! It's still too far afield to do anything about it! If you received an accurate prophecy that Earth would be blown up in 2000 years, what would you do? Caesar has less reason to be concerned than even the humans, too, as he has already staged the ape uprising. His society is not in imminent danger. But go to the Forbidden Zone they do, provoking the ire of the humans who live there, and accidentally setting off a chain of events that will eventually lead to a 30-minute climax where the apes and the humans have a violent gun battle.
The gorillas, as we know well by now, are a violent lot, and a certain gorilla named Aldo (Claude Akins) wants to war with the humans. The bulk of the film is devoted to discussions on how to prepare for the inevitable climax, as both sides prepare and hem and haw over the battle. Battle for the Planet of the Apes is kind of dull, and any sort of social rhetoric is totally gone. I guess after you've already passed by (in between films, mind you) the big poignant nuclear war that so colored the ending of the first Apes film, there's nowhere else to go. Aldo also accidentally kills Caesar's young son Cornelius, violating the first ape commandment, “Ape must never kill ape.” When the truth comes to light, there's a weird scene where a bunch of apes chant “Ape has killed ape!” for a good solid three minutes.
The only real virtues of these last two Apes movies are their afternoon serial end-of-the-world thrills. Their glorious and trashy reveling in honest-to-goodness apocalypse porn. Sure, they're silly, the dialogue is goofy, the tone is somber, and the chronology is often fudged, but their sheer audacity earns them a lot of points. One can be forgiven, I think, for loving the campy glory of Conquest and Battle.
There is then an epilogue where they haul John Huston back, and we see him teaching humans and apes alike. Maybe the implication is that the events of the fifth film has altered the way humans and apes interact, that they are truly equals, and that the end of the world is no longer nigh. If that were the case, Battle would be the only film in the series that doesn't end on a horrifying note. Of course, maybe the implication is that The Lawgiver was incorrect in his historical story, and the events of the fifth film were the result of misinterpretation of historical documents. If that were the case, well, then the ending tone is ambiguous. We know there is an intelligent ape Lawgiver, and that he teaches children. That is all. Sorry about the film, guys.
Roddy McDowall would also play an ape in the short-lived 1974 Planet of the Apes TV series. The series followed two human astronauts lost in the distant future, and took place probably between the first and second movies. It was a one-hour show, and it lasted 14 episodes. If you've heard of a 1981 feature film called Back to the Planet of the Apes, then you've been duped. Back was a TV miniseries which reedited two episodes of the TV series together. In 1975, there was also an animated Apes series called Return to the Planet of the Apes, and was made by the same studio that put together that 1978 Fantastic Four animated series that no one recalls with clarity. Return lasted for 13 episodes, ending in 1976. Ape fever had, by then, entirely died down, and the Apes movies would take a hiatus for 25 years. It's likely that the spectacle of 1977's Star Wars had put the damper on wacky, thoughtful and comparatively low-key films like Apes.
And, wouldn't you know it, before the remake trend began in earnest, we'll have...
