In 'Conquest of the Planet of the Apes' it's now 1991 and 'Caeser', the child of Cornelius and Zira from 'Escape from the Planet of the Apes' is now 18 and the world has changed remarkably in less then 20 years. In 1983 a virus (that in a throw away line is said to have come from space) has wiped out all the dogs and cats on Earth. Now even though the world is aware of time traveling talking apes from a future where apes rule and man is a beast, apes are quickly adopted as pets in mass numbers, at least in North America. Rapidly that 'pet' status is changed to that of slaves when the apes prove easy to train and capable of menial tasks from janitoring, and waitering, to even hair styling. Supervised by a now quasi-fascist state (there are people in very SS style uniforms walking around) it is a recipe for ape rebellion.
Because he can talk and through a series of events Caeser (played by Roddy McDowall, Cornelius in two of the earlier films) becomes leader of this rebellion and the ape insurrection, said to have developed over around 500 years in the pervious film, quickly starts having victories, after a fashion. There is a prolonged riot / revolution sequence at the end of the film that wears thin, but was obviously intended as a kind of allegory for actually race riots in the period this movie was made. Some intriguing ideas but so far the hardest to sit through of the Apes films I've seen. **
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