BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES - APE NATION Movie Review

Hey guys! Just fyi, YES, I am fully aware that the photo at 3:11 is of actor Karl Malden, not Franklin J Schaffner. It is a photo of him accepting the Oscar for Franklin J Schaffner for Patton (the movie mentioned in the video). You don't need to keep telling me! It was a mistake made due to a mix up in my editing assets folder that I did not notice at first and has since been fixed for the future. Thank you!

Charlton Heston: "I'll only do this movie if Taylor gets killed off." Producers: "Got it. Taylor kills everyone." Charlton Heston: "... okay, sure."

The scene where they peeled off their faces freaked the hell out of me as a child. The only problem with this film is no Roddy McDowell.

I enjoy this film. It is my 2nd favorite of the series. I always thought how ironic that Taylor cries out in the first film about “them” blowing it up. HE then in the 2nd film reduces the entire planet to a cinder. He decides that neither man nor ape is worthy to exist.

Ursus was a pre-Vader Villan, the leather outfit including the helmet. When I saw Star Wars at age of 12, Vader remind me planet of the apes.

I just love the insanity of Beneath! The dream logic that drives the series from this point on is nonsensical but so much fun if you just go with it.

Nova carries this film. Her reactions are gold.

I had the reverse experience - This was the first Apes film I watched as a child, blew my mind and gave me a love of post-apocalyptic fiction that I've had my whole life.

I watched all the Apes sequels in a binge the first time too. From what little I knew, I expected Beneath to be some extended punchline. But then I found James Franciscus a charismatic lead, I really fell in love with Nova, and I was smacked upside the head with the Mutants and the Bomb cult. I found it really interesting

Films are a product of their time, and unless you grew up in the 1960s with the Cold War, Mutually Assured Destruction, the Vietnam War, and US cities burning with protests you can't understand how this film felt at the time of its release. I was 11 when the first PotA film came out and the film was mesmerizing, scary, and disturbing. It perfectly resonated with the mood and reality of the time. As a newly-minted teenager I saw Beneath and I completely loved it. The storyline of the scientists protesting against the military was exactly what we were actually experiencing every day due to the Vietnam War. We didn't have the hindsight later generations had about the Cold War and Vietnam War ending, we were in the middle of it and couldn't see a way out.

Despite the retread of the first half (meeting Nova, capture by gorillas, escape from Ape City), and the amount of obvious pullover masks, I think the new stuff with Ursus, the mutants (the costumes/makeup, sets and matte paintings are a fitting new, bizarre addition to this world) and the bleak ending are great enough to make it a worthy, memorable sequel. Plus the wonderful score by Leonard Rosenman!

The ending of the film still gives me chills after all these years!

It still blows my mind that the producers of the original Apes films fell ass-backward into an amazing cyclical story arc across a series of films they never intended to keep making.

I always liked beneath, it's my favorite sequel. I love all the action scenes and what a ending!

For me, this film drags until Brent and Nova flee into the underground cave. Up to that point, the film has pacing issues. But once Brent and Nova discover the underground subway, the film totally f-ing ROCKS!!!! The apocalyptic tone of the second half of this film is like an intense LSD trip or even a quasi-religious revelation.

I really wished they spent more time with the two astronauts in the mutant land, but of course, Chuck Heston could only have a limited screen time, and I wish they had a longer time fighting with the apes at the end.. oh well, the general ape was worth watching alone..

About the music, I used to work as a studio musician in Hollywood and when a film is rushed nobody is as rushed as the composer. Remember, they can't score a scene until the editor has finished cutting the scene, and sometimes the composer is only getting the scenes a few weeks before release. I was working on one film where we would record the music for a scene, then the composer would receive a NEW cut of that scene. (We were in LA, the editor was working in NY.) The music had to be thrown out, new music written then recorded. We spent most of one day just on one scene which the editor kept changing. When the film was released the music I recorded on that scene had been binned and due to the rush the composer had no choice but to use crappy synth music for that scene. The whole film was a mess, just a few weeks before release they fired the original composer and quickly hired a new one, who had to do what he could with the little time and budget remaining (due to the original composer using up most of the time and most of the budget). I'll bet that Jerry Goldsmith got a lot more time for the first film.

Of all the sequels "beneath"and "conquest"are probably my favourites

Here’s something that finally occurred to me with 50 something years of being a fan: after re-reading the novels, one line stuck out to me. The book talks about heading north at the end of the original film. That’s when it struck me. Ape City is not in New York. It’s in New Jersey. Something there all this time, and I never realized it...

Beneath is my favorite Apes movie. The weirdness is what I like.