Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes/
Battle For The
Planet Of The Apes (Limited
Edition CD Soundtrack)
Sound:
B Music: B/B-
The final
feature film installments in the original Planet
Of The Apes series still had something to offer, but its cutting-edge ideas
began to run into 20Th Century-Fox’s need for hit films and the
money merchandise (aimed at kids especially) brought the studio. The final films are Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes (1972) and Battle For The Planet Of The Apes (1973), which are films 4 &
5. Conquest
remains the only time in U.S. film history where an armed
revolt succeeded, while Battle deals with the fallout of all the
conflicts the best it could.
While we
wait on Fox to reissue the films in anamorphically enhanced DVDs, we have this
terrific double feature soundtrack edition of the last two films’ music from
Film Score Monthly’s FSM soundtrack label, limited to only 3,000 pressings, so
fans will want to go to www.filmscoremonthly.com
to check into this CD, the awesome Leonard Rosenman score for Beneath The Planet Of The Apes CD that
is also a limited to 3,000 pressings (reviewed elsewhere on this site), and
many other exclusives.
Conquest offered Tom Scott, the third
composer for the series, who came up with yet another unique work of music the
series was becoming known for. The 14
tracks here demonstrate raw music choices, a conflict between electronic (read
police state) and acoustic (read persons and apes who want to be free)
sensibilities done on a very clever level, and an amazing diversity that keeps
the music and the narrative going. This
also helps built suspense. This also
includes Revolution, the final track
for the original ending where the apes kill all in their way, revised when the
studio felt Roddy McDowall’s Caesar was too subversive. Those who have seen the film know he went
from Malcolm X and Karl Marx to Fred Rogers in one speech. Despite that distraction and negation in the
film, this barely heard piece fits in very well with the entire score, showing
Scott (especially with a low budget, as the great booklet explains) really
pulled off something remarkable.
Battle has Rosenman’s return, in what is
a prequel to the first two films and sequel to Conquest (leaving Escape
From The Planet Of The Apes the time-travel anomaly of the series where the
future of the film is simply not preventable).
Considering there was not much to score for this final and most watered
down of the vintage era of the franchise, though a masterwork as compared to
Tim Burton’s recent gutting of it with his highly inane “reimagining” of it,
Rosenman still came up with some memorable music cues, if in vain. A familiar, happy signature in the title
theme was abused into making the entire franchise seem like a kiddie, fun,
slap-happy adventure series it was not, but the whole of the score is not that
condescending. It is no match for his
work on Beneath The Planet Of The Apes
overall either, but has many moments worthy of that impressive score.
The PCM
CD sound on both scores offers solid performance, even on the occasion where
the sound is monophonic, as it is on six of the Conquest tracks and the nice final bonus track, which is Lalo
Schifrin’s theme to the live action TV series that Fox issued a few years ago
in an impressive DVD set. The theme
sounds better here than on any of the episodes on that DVD, though. Neither the episodes nor the music from the
underappreciated sister animated series Return
To The Planet Of The Apes have been issued in either format yet, but they
deserve to be. This CD, however, is another
winner.
- Nicholas Sheffo
