Conquest of the Planet of the Apes *** (1972, Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalban, Natalie Trundy, Severn Darden) – Classic Movie Review 5750

Director J Lee Thompson takes the helm in 1972 for the fourth of the five original Planet of the Apes films (a short TV series followed) in which the apes, who are being used as slaves, rebel and take revenge on man.

Roddy McDowall (the Ape leader, civilised simian Caesar), Don Murray (stage governor Breck), Ricardo Montalban as Armando, Natalie Trundy as Lisa and Severn Darden as Kolp are all back for another intelligent and exciting chunk of sci-fi monkey business that got the box-office tills ringing yet again.

How time flies – it’s set in the distant future of 1990.

Also in the cast are Hari Rhodes, Lou Wagner, John Randolph, Asa Maynor, H M Wynand and David Show.

Thompson returned for the final segment of the original series: Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).

It follows Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) and Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971).

The series continued on TV in 1974 as the Planet of the Apes series that only ran for 14 episodes before Planet of the Apes (2001) was revived as a one-off by Tim Burton, and rebooted in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, followed by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5750

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com