Beneath the Planet of the Apes

Ted Post
1970

It's sad to see how far production values dropped in the first sequel to this legendary franchise. The ape makeups come off even more rubbery, with awkward mouth movements and a plastic hardness less apparent in the original. Chuck Heston appears briefly in the beginning (as this one starts exactly where the last left off), and hands the reigns over to shameless Heston lookalike James Franciscus, who's crashed on the planet in nearly identical circumstances to Taylor. The satire of conflict between religion, politics, and militarism in ape society is painfully trite, but things get cooking once Brent stumbles onto a cave-dwelling race of bomb-mutated humans worshiping a golden doomsday nuke. In contrast to the lousy monkey masks the mutant makeups come off excellently, strongly suggestive of man-sized talking penises. Besides the makeup effects there are some baffling inconsistencies in the rest of the visual effects. Most strikingly is the quality difference between a shot in which a rift tears through the ground (a gorgeous matte and miniature shot), vs. one in which ridiculously animated lightning crackles over the barren landscape. While this sequel is definitely less monumental than it's forebear it does offer some solid sci-fi scripting and an adequate execution