Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

The majority of the outdoor scenes were shot in and around the University of California, Irvine campus, which was designed by futurist architect William L. Pereira, and was only six years old at the time of filming. Much of the production centered around the Social Science complex, which was designed by A.C. Martin & Associates and was still under construction during filming. Careful use of camera angles and editing made a handful of buildings and exteriors feel more like action spread across an entire city.Some exteriors, and all of indoor sets were all filmed at the Fox backlot in Century City, Los Angeles.

The script opened with a fugitive ape being shot by the police. As they walked to it, the body would be revealed to be covered in open wounds and scars, showing the horrible living conditions of the slave apes. This was cut, again, for being too gruesome.

This is the only film from the original Planet of the Apes (1968) series of five that was not rated G, and the only entry released without a pre-title sequence. Reason: the opening was deemed too violent, and the producers wanted to avoid an R rating. The opening showed police on night patrol shooting an escaped ape and discovering his body covered with welts and bruises that are evidence of severe abuse. (Governor Breck and MacDonald refer to this incident in a scene that survived the final cut.) That and many other bloody images were deleted after a pre-release print was shown to a preview audience. The opening scene appears in the novelization and the comic book adaptation of the movie. On November, 2008, the Blu-Ray unrated version restored many of those graphic scenes, but not the pre-credit opening (after the film was re-edited, some shots from the deleted opening were used in a later scene added that had Caesar captured at night, probably the reason the opening was never resurrected on disc).

An original script draft showed more of the rapid evolution of the apes from primitive to intelligent and showed the progression of apes from pets to slaves.

Writer Paul Dehn conceived the film as a simian take on the American Civil Rights movement of the time. Ironically, Dehn was English but brought an astute sensibility to the project. (Not surprisingly, the film was very popular with black audiences.)