13 Planet Of The Apes Facts That Will Blow Your Mind

5. It Became A Commentary Of The American Race Riots

With Cornelius and Zira's son, Caesar, brought into the equation, we got to see how Colonel Taylor's "crazy upside-down world" got started. But in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), we also switched our sympathies from the persecuted humans of the early films to the oppressed and enslaved simians. This time it was the human race that held the whip hand, and the ever-younger POTA audience in the 70s was happy to cheer every time an actor in a latex monkey mask rose up and killed a human in uniform. The whole thing may have looked cheesy - declining budgets meant Conquest exhibited the modest production values of the average 60s/70s TV science-fiction show - but just reflect for a moment on how subversive the concept was. Critics were queasy about the civil rights allegory. The Village Voice noted how the latest series entry had been "transformed into a simple-minded metaphor for racial conflict in America€ there is enough here to make even a redneck cheer at the association of apes and blacks, however human those apes might be€" By the time it got to the riot scenes, the film was still a riot of fun for everyone who ever fantasised about giving society/humanity the finger. The only disappointment comes in its re-cut closing moments, when it abandons its hairy belligerence in favour of a kinder, gentler Caesar, seemingly bridging the gap with the final entry in the original cycle - a 'kids' movie', as ordered by Fox. It may be a vain hope, but it would be interesting to see a 'director's cut' which let Caesar's bloody uprising go all the way to its crazed conclusion