The allegory—river journey as journey into darkness of the human heart—was ripped directly out of Joseph Conrad's classic novel, Heart of Darkness, which provided the inspiration for Apocalypse...

First, just make sure you know what we're talking about.Okay, now let's talk juxtaposition.Coppola uses the juxtaposition of contrasting images and themes throughout the film. Probably the best exa...

Nothing good ever happens when you get off the boat. Nothing. Zip. Nada. As Chef mumbles after his brief tiger encounter, "Never get outta boat."If you're not attacked by tigers, you'll stumble int...

General Corman gets all philosophical (and a little melodramatic, in Shmoop's opinion) on Willard when discussing why Kurtz must be killed: CORMAN: Well, you see, Willard, in this war, things get c...

Surfing is an all-American pastime: think Beach Boys and people chugging kale shakes before heading back to the shore. Kale—yuck.That's why it's crazy to see helicopters blasting away at the Viet...

A ferocious man-eating tiger is one of the terrors the crew encounters. Willard and Chef see it when they venture on shore and look around in the jungle. When the tiger jumps out toward them, they...

Puppies. Who doesn't love themselves some puppies? After the crew foolishly guns down a group of Vietnamese civilians whom they mistake for hostiles, they take a puppy from their boat. We see Lance...

No big secret: in the 1960s, lots of people were doing drugs. LSD was the hallucinogen of choice, easily available and affordable. There are lots of old people (hey—who you calling old?) around w...

Scantily clad women dancing seductively in front of soldiers who've been isolated, sexually deprived, and in a constant state of anxiety and stress—add alcohol and what could possibly go wrong? W...

If you're stuck in Vietnam on the same boat as Capt. Willard and you're looking for some light reading material to distract you from the horrors of war, you can pick up a newspaper and read an arti...

Kurtz may enjoy cutting off heads, but he's a man of many interests. Poetry is apparently one of his passions. Kipling's "If" In one of the American photojournalist's babbling speeches, he tells Wi...

Putting severed heads everywhere just screams "Dark Ages." Maybe Kurtz could try getting pastel lamp shades and laying down some tatami mats? We get the sense Kurtz thinks that having severed heads...

When Willard hacks Kurtz to death, it syncs up with the scene of Kurtz's followers ritualistically killing a water buffalo outside—just like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon syncs up with The W...

Kurtz dies murmuring these words: KURTZ: The horror…the horror… It's his version of saying, "Seacrest out." But what is "the horror," other than a quotation from Heart of Darkness? It coul...