Director: J. Lee Thompson
Cast: Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalbán, Natalie Trundy
Have I Seen It Before: Yes, but I’ve always had a dim view of that era in the series post-Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) but pre-Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) was just not worth re-visiting.
Did I Like It: And that memory largely bears out here. Conquest is largely perfectly fine b-sci-fi fare. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had thought that this film and its follow up, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) were produced as a precursor for the short-lived Planet of the Apes TV series. I didn’t get that sense, at least here. This is a fully realized, if flawed, movie.
Montalbán is here, which is always welcome, but departs the proceedings early, sort of for a plot reason, but one imagines far more because the film could only meet his quote for just so many shooting days. The makeup for the various apes have again taken a turn, not necessarily in a sense of artistry (read: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) but as a question of tonnage. Escape avoided problems with dwindling resources by populating the affair with only three Ape actors. Here, the planet is back, baby, but it feels like the vast majority of those whose would take up Caesar’s (McDowall) call to arms are wearing masks which would have been far, far in the background when Charlton Heston still rocked a loincloth.
None of that is inherently wrong. There are plenty of cheap films, and even genre films (Halloween (1978) immediately comes to mind, or any early Carpenter) that are an absolute delight. What’s wrong is that the series has lost its nerve. Every movie in the series has an ending that makes one feel (to varying degrees) genuinely surprised. Here, everything has an inevitable quality. Then again, when Planet of the Apes (2001) felt obligated to throw in a twist ending, things didn’t work out so well. Maybe I’m being unfair, but after three wild endings in a row, one can’t help but think that ideas were running thin.