Movies

In a futuristic world that has embraced ape slavery, Caesar, the son of the late simians Cornelius and Zira, surfaces after almost twenty years of hiding out from the authorities, and prepares for a slave revolt against humanity.Screenwriter Paul Dehn wrote the film incorporating references to the racial conflicts in North America during the early 1970s. This is evident, as the theme is about apes becoming servants and slaves. Now, it is not really explained how the chimpanzees go from being normal chimps to the more humanoid apes we see in this film. But I guess we are supposed to just pretend these are all real chimps.The message is a bit strong, but maybe made more sense at the time. Today it seems like they tried too hard and it almost seems silly.

The film's battle scenes were deliberate imitations of the Watts Riots. Black and Latino audiences cheered the hardest. Some white racists found the film deeply frightening.Sammy Davis Jr called the film series the best films that were ever made about racism. This film might be the most successful and powerful slave revolt ever shown on film.

Roddy McDowall's back in action here in a very interesting concept for a film, being set in an alternate reality where apes have evolved into basically mute people with only Caesar being able to speak. The apes are treated like slaves and eventually Caesar has to rise them up to fight their masters in a bloody battle for liberty, it's very interesting and Roddy McDowall is great fun to watch.6/10: Good standard film, with nasty villains and some terrific fight scenes