Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) on Netflix
In a world where apes are enslaved, a circus ape named Caesar is brought into the city to hand out flyers. Armando, who raised him, warns him against speaking in public.
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Plot summary
A space-borne pandemic wipes out every dog and cat in North America by 1983, and the government becomes a series of police states where chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans serve as slave labor. The chimpanzee scientists Cornelius and Zira had described that world in testimony given in 1973, before they were killed. Their baby, believed dead, grew up in hiding with the circus owner Armando, riding horses in his show. In 1991 the grown ape, named Caesar, enters a city to hand out circus flyers, and Armando warns him not to speak in public. After Caesar shouts at the sight of a gorilla being beaten and drugged, Armando takes the blame and tells him to hide among the apes, where he is caged with orangutans, conditioned for slavery and bought at auction by Governor Breck.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
The film originally ended with the apes executing Governor Breck, but after a June 1972 test screening in Phoenix drew a strong negative reaction to the graphic violence, producers reworked the ending even though they lacked the budget to reshoot it.SPOILER
To soften the ending, Roddy McDowall recorded a complement to Caesar's final speech and editors leaned on close-ups of Caesar's eyes and on footage of the gorillas hitting Breck with rifle butts played backwards, implying they were acquiescing to his directive of non-violence, which assured a lower rating.- Thompson highlighted the film's conflicts with color, putting the humans in black and muted colors against the apes' colorful suits, while Don Murray suggested his own black turtleneck and rehearsed after translating his dialogue into German "to get this kind of severe feeling of the Nazis".
- TV producer Irwin Allen lent the production props from his other shows, including Seaview jumpsuits from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and computer consoles originally built for The Time Tunnel, which were repurposed as the Ape Management set.
- The script and novelization describe a pre-title scene in which night-patrol police shoot an escaping ape and find his body covered with welts and bruises from severe abuse. An article by Dale Winogura in the Summer 1972 Cinefantastique shows it being shot, but it is unknown why it was cut.
- Screenplay writer Paul Dehn said he had a complete chronology of the series' circular timeline mapped out and checked every supposition in a new script against the chart. Told by Arthur Jacobs that this would be the last film, he fitted it to the beginning of Apes One.
