Beneath the Planet of the Apes

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 flirtation with the Heston-esque Franciscus who looked ok with his shirt off, but really offered very little when it came to characterisation. I quite liked the ending - I just wished it had maybe come half an hour earlier! More to come, no doubt - let's hope they are better.

Quite a far way off its predecessor, even if 'Beneath the Planet of the Apes' is still a good film. Charlton Heston reportedly 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 Linda Harrison do return, though the first two basically play second fiddle to others - including newcomer James Gregory's bunch of characters; Gregory is solid, fwiw. As for the film's other parts, make-up etc., it's basically the same as the original. The plot even feels similar for a fair chunk of this production, though it eventually goes its own way. I'm even more interested to check out the subsequent sequels, given the ending to this 1970 film was apparently intended - by those on the ground, so to speak - to be the final entry; the studio evidently wasn't in agreement.

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...