Beneath the Planet of the Apes picks up moments after Taylor (Charlton Heston) and Nova (Linda Harrison) make their fateful discovery in the Forbidden Zone. Just as Taylor disappears, a second spacecraft lands, bringing astronaut Brent (James Franciscus) to the planet of the apes. While Brent sets off in search of Taylor, aided by the chimpanzee scientists Cornelius and Zira (David Watson, Kim Hunter), Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) and General Ursus (James Gregory) mount an expedition into the Forbidden Zone in search of food. What they find in the Forbidden Zone, though, is worse than starvation – a horrible reminder of what created this planet in the first place.
Devising a sequel to Planet of the Apes would have been an unwelcome challenge for nearly anyone. Rod Serling and original novelist Pierre Boulle both took a stab at it, their pitches ultimately rejected by the studio. (Serling made several pitches, some involving a second crew of astronauts and a second time/space voyage for Taylor, while Boulle wrote a screenplay called Planet of the Men, in which Taylor led an uprising of humans against the apes.) Equally challenging was Charlton Heston’s disinterest in doing a sequel and the story limitations he required for his participation (prefiguring, in a way, Harrison Ford’s love/hate relationship with reprising his role as Han Solo on three separate occasions). One senses, then, the herculean task of extending the Ape Saga, and the forces who bring us Beneath do not appear to have risen to the undertaking.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes was, after the Star Wars films, among the first sequels I ever saw, and it taught me a valuable lesson – sequels are almost never as good as the original. (More shared territory, it seems, from Monster March.) I said last week that there was nothing about Planet of the Apes that demanded a sequel, especially given the film’s game-changer ending that makes the final statement on the planet. Planet of the Apes was a totality, tied in a bow by its Rod Serling ending; it had much in common with an extended episode of The Twilight Zone, and I can think of very few Twilight Zone episodes that would have been much improved by a sequel.
Still, there was room to grow. There was the looming question of what would happen to Zira and Cornelius once Dr. Zaius returned to Ape City, though disappointingly the film never quite explores that. Instead, it’s monkey business as usual, and there’s no mention of the trio’s experience in the Forbidden Zone (which is, perhaps, how Dr. Zaius would want things, anyway). Unfortunately for Beneath, Zira and Cornelius are shunted to the side rather quickly. With McDowall away directing his own film, the brief recasting of Cornelius is distracting, especially given the inclusion of recap footage featuring McDowall, and David Watson, though competent, lacks the vocal color McDowall brought to Cornelius. However, we welcome seeing Zira, who becomes a kind of franchise den mother, but she’s given nothing much to do besides perform cursory assistance to newcomer Brent.
When it comes to the subject of Brent, he is lamentably little more than a bargain basement version of Taylor – a fair-haired bearded human who comes from the stars and is mystified by the planet he’s discovered. After losing his crew, he meets up with Nova, journeys to Ape City, befriends our chimpanzee scientists, and makes his way into the Forbidden Zone, where he learns the dark secret of the planet of the apes. It reads familiar because it is familiar: it is exactly the journey Taylor undergoes in Planet of the Apes, but James Franciscus lacks the screen presence of Charlton Heston, to say nothing of how unengaging it is to see a new protagonist tread the same boards one more time.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes is not exactly a remake, though, for it adds something substantially new to the franchise. I’m not speaking merely of the gorilla General Ursus, who is an intriguing foil for Dr. Zaius and for the humans (“The only good human,” he growls, “is a dead human!”). Ursus is good hammy fun, and I do wish we’d seen more of him in the franchise beyond this one film. But I’m speaking particularly of the answer to the question posited by the film’s title – what really is beneath the planet of the apes? The answer is a gang of mutated humans with psychic powers, grotesque scarring, and a church of death which worships the last atomic bomb in existence. I have never liked these characters, and I still feel they’re out of place in this franchise. For one, the morality fable is even more on the nose with their inclusion; yes, we know atomic weaponry is no good, very bad, don’t do. This allegorical unsubtlety, coupled with the low-budget sci-fi makeup and set decorations, would seem to belong more properly to something like the original Star Trek series. Moreover, every moment we spend with the mutants is a moment we don’t get to spend with the apes, and that’s a criminal offense in my book.
Planet of the Apes is ultimately a franchise that zags when you think it will zig – not because the story merits a zag but often because the zag is more cost-effective and will extend the life of the franchise into a strange new direction. I promised not to spoil the ending of the first Planet, and I certainly won’t give away the ending to Beneath, which almost feels like a sporting challenge to the writers of any possible third film. “Let’s see you get out of this one!” scripter Paul Dehn seems to say. It’s an anti-cliffhanger from which there seems to be no escape, and yet a scant year later, we would see exactly that – an Escape from the Planet of the Apes, scavenged from the literal detritus of the preceding two films.
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