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Don't Play With The Apes!! You'll Only Get Hurt.
by Barry Meyer



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The studio's idea, with the first couple Ape films, was to comment on social issues like race relations, class, and war. Where the first film dealt with all three, Beneath makes an allegorical play of the Vietnam War, with the marooned astronaut, Brent, representing the American troops sent to battle the Viet Cong. Brent must abandon his normal course to land on am unfamiliar planet to rescue the survivors of a crashed space craft. With no indication of where or how, Brent sets out alone on his search. What he finds is an upside down world run by hostile beings. Comparatively, thousands of young American men were taken from their peaceful homes and packed off to a strange land in the midst of a volatile conflict. The reason why they are there is lost on them, they have little clue as to what their purpose is, other than to kill the enemy. They are not fighting for their homeland, or for their own country, they are simply fighting for their own lives. Fighting to get out alive.

That's about as deep as if gets. There's also the psychic mutants that worship the bomb and barricade themselves from others, that represent some kind of statement about the dehumanizing cold war. And the militant gorillas obviously represent the aggressive side of war, as opposed to the peace-loving chimps who protest them. Pretty simple stuff here. Beneath the Planet of the Apes has done little more than rehash the ideas and sentiment of the first film.

However, the real downfall of this film is the cinematography. Milton R. Krasner does very little to punch up the action, or help convey any of the fear and desperation, or desolation that the first film so successfully illustrated. The look of this film is tantamount to that of an ABC Movie of the Week. It's surprising, seeing that Krasner has lensed nearly 150 films in his long life.

An interesting bit of trivia - Charlton Heston had opted not to reprise his role in this sequel to Planet of the Apes, believing that everything that had to be said was already said well enough in the first film. He changed his mind however, when the Twentieth Century Fox heads convinced him to do a small cameo (maybe they used their mutant mind-bending brain powers on him). The small cameo somehow turned into a large cameo. After disappearing early in the first part of the film, Heston returns and figures fairly prominently in the last half of the film. So prominently that he is given the honors of pressing the button that blows the Ape planet to bits. That Chuck! Just can't keep his stinking paws off them damn dirty weapons.

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