Beneath the Planet of the Apes

James Franciscus versus the mutant lunatics!

A great, dark sequel to the original classic that goes beyond the downbeat ending of the original and gives us an even more depressing one! No mean feat considering how bleak the ending to the first movie was.

I love this movie. The legendary James Franciscus (The Valley Of Gwangi) is astronaut Brent - sent to find the missing Taylor. He finds him, of course, deep beneath the ruins of a post apocalyptic city - imprisoned by psychotic mutants with the power of telepathy.

Meanwhile, those pesky apes are marching on the city to find out just what the hell is going on and what all the kerfuffle is about regarding reports of crucified apes and bleeding statues.

This all lead...

Classic Sci-Fi Adventure with a KILLER Ending

Of the five original "Planet of the Apes" films only the first one (1968) and this sequel, "Beneath" (1970), are truly great and worthwhile. The three prequels devolve in quality: "Escape from" (1971) has its points of interest and amusement, "Conquest of" (1972) is okay, but too one-dimensional, and "Battle for" (1973) is weak. "Beneath" is the only actual sequel, hence, both the original and "Beneath" should be digested as one long story.

The plot revolves around astronaut, James Franciscus, landing on the ape planet in search of Taylor & his crew. He makes contact with a primitive babe who knew Taylor (Nova, played by jaw-dropping Linda Harrison) and then embarks upon a quest to...

Enjoyable mostly due to returning cast members, this first sequel could have been so much more. Sadly, this has "money grab" written all over it. Heston was reluctant to return, and only agreed once promised his character Taylor would die. One can only wonder what might have been had he been more enthusiastic, perhaps a decent plot and script? Sigh...

Quite a far way off its predecessor, even if 'Beneath the Planet of the Apes' is still a good film.

Charlton Heston <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_the_Planet_of_the_Apes#:~:text=Although%20Charlton%20Heston,go%20to%20charity" rel="nofollow">reportedly</a> wasn't initially interested in returning for a sequel, though, to his credit, did in the end return briefly to tie up his character's loose end - and apparently even gave his fee to charity. That's why we don't see much of him here, which is a shame but given the aforementioned it came out well enough.

James Franciscus takes over from Heston and does a fine job, the latter is definitely the better of the two but Franciscus is passable. Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans and Li...

Charlton Heston's "Taylor" returns to top and tail this otherwise pretty poor sequel that features James Franciscus as "Brent". He, too, is an astronaut who is fleeing the wrath of the apes when he meets up with "Nova" (Linda Harrison). That's lucky because he's looking for "Taylor" and she was his gal for a while. Might she be able to lead him to him before the pursuing militia string them up? Well, she does lead him to an underground city that's populated with human religious zealots who have remarkable telepathic powers and worship a (golden) nuclear missile as their god. Yep, it's all a bit weak around the knees this. It's over scripted, there is nowhere near enough action to sustain it and I have never really understood Hollywood's fli...