The fourth of the series, "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" is the 2nd best of the entire run, after the original entry. It is also the basis for the recent re-boot "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". I saw this movie in the theater when I was a kid and the ending scared the wits out of me.
The movie had a very small budget but more than made up for it with the very solid writing and some excellent acting by the principal cast, Roddy McDowell, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalban, Severn Darden and Hari Rhodes.
Montalban sets up the story very well as Armando, the kindly circus master who has hidden the intelligent ape, Caesar, for a couple of decades. But when Caesar blurts out his anger at the humans who are mistreating an ape, he has to go into hiding while Montalban tries to cover for him, at the cost of his life. The "speciest" gov't is now determined to find the intelligent ape that they feel certain now exists. Caesar goes "native" by becoming a mute simian servant of the humans but fomenting revolution all the while behind the scenes.
Hari Rhodes' character is particularly interesting. An aide to the bigoted governor played by Don Murray, as a black man and descendant of slaves his heart is more with the apes than it is with his own people. He provides Caesar some crucial support at key moments in the show and then has to make an appeal to the ape's "humanity" at the end when the apes are about to massacre their human prisoners. But as Caesar points out, he's not a human and simian ideas of justice may not jibe with human concepts.
The "Ape" movies were well-known for their downbeat endings. Now nearly every story you see, no matter how grim, has to have some sort of hopeful ending but not the "Ape" series. In episode 1 Taylor discovers that he's on Earth all along in one of the most stunning endings in movie history; in part 2 the world is utterly destroyed in a final war between the humans and apes; part 3 has Caesar's parents being murdered; part 4 the apes have overthrown the human race. Only in part 5 do we finally have a "happy" ending of centuries in the future when men and apes have finally learned to live in peace.
The movie had a very small budget but more than made up for it with the very solid writing and some excellent acting by the principal cast, Roddy McDowell, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalban, Severn Darden and Hari Rhodes.
Montalban sets up the story very well as Armando, the kindly circus master who has hidden the intelligent ape, Caesar, for a couple of decades. But when Caesar blurts out his anger at the humans who are mistreating an ape, he has to go into hiding while Montalban tries to cover for him, at the cost of his life. The "speciest" gov't is now determined to find the intelligent ape that they feel certain now exists. Caesar goes "native" by becoming a mute simian servant of the humans but fomenting revolution all the while behind the scenes.
Hari Rhodes' character is particularly interesting. An aide to the bigoted governor played by Don Murray, as a black man and descendant of slaves his heart is more with the apes than it is with his own people. He provides Caesar some crucial support at key moments in the show and then has to make an appeal to the ape's "humanity" at the end when the apes are about to massacre their human prisoners. But as Caesar points out, he's not a human and simian ideas of justice may not jibe with human concepts.
The "Ape" movies were well-known for their downbeat endings. Now nearly every story you see, no matter how grim, has to have some sort of hopeful ending but not the "Ape" series. In episode 1 Taylor discovers that he's on Earth all along in one of the most stunning endings in movie history; in part 2 the world is utterly destroyed in a final war between the humans and apes; part 3 has Caesar's parents being murdered; part 4 the apes have overthrown the human race. Only in part 5 do we finally have a "happy" ending of centuries in the future when men and apes have finally learned to live in peace.