Really Surprised!

Best movie of this year hands down!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

How could they mess up a sequel so badly? This was not nearly as entertaining as the first film. What are the chances of another craft crash landing on the same planet the same year? The religious and racist elements are annoying. The film gets utterly ridiculous as it progresses and finally becomes almost unwatchable. The telepathic humans said at one point it is primitive to speak, but later in the film talks to each other anyway. Why? The visual effects are quite laughable at times. Give this film a skip.

You know how you lose track of time and then become astonished to learn how long ago something actually occurred. I reviewed "Planet of the Apes" on this board a full ten years ago! and haven't seen any of it's sequels since, until this one the other day. With a fairly clear memory of how the original ended, this one pretty much picks up from that point when search team astronaut Brent (James Franciscus) discovers the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, and journeys his way through the land of the Apes Forbidden Zone attempting to find Charlton Heston's character from the earlier movie.Perhaps it was evident in the original "Planet of the Apes" and I didn't notice it, but the various ape tribes are organized by their vocation on the planet. The orangutans are scientists, the gorillas rule militarily and the chimpanzees portray ordinary citizens for the most part. Some cross over occurs, as with the characters of Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (David Watson), but for the most part the simians don't cross boundaries. I thought that was kind of interesting, as humans on the planet are considered inferior by all - "The only good human is a dead human".What I really got a kick out of was the way Brent discovered his old neighborhood by way of the Queensboro Plaza Station and advertising for the New York Summer Festival. Shortly after, a casual stroll with Nova (Linda Harrison) brings them to the remains of the New York Public Library, the New York Stock Exchange and Radio City Music Hall. Not being a city resident, I wouldn't know otherwise, but I wouldn't bet that all those places were within walking distance of each other, but then again, it's a sci-fi story.Things get interesting in the second half of the picture when the humans make their appearance in the underground caverns, with their perverted views of religious fealty to an atomic bomb strategically placed in the remains of St. Patrick's Cathedral. With their ability to project telepathic illusions however, I couldn't quite figure out why they would have needed the rubber masks to hide their real features. Just a thought wave could have taken care of all that, wouldn't it? The way this one ends seems to indicate a doomsday scenario after Taylor (Heston) shows up once more, and it would seem there would be no justification for another three sequels, but I'm not up enough on my 'Planet' lore just yet to know how it all transpires. Still, I thought this was a fairly entertaining entry in the series of films, so I'll be on the lookout for the others as time goes by.

Outstanding sequel to Planet Of The Apes, in this film another human crash lands his ship on the apes world.Chuck Heston gets too little screen time, but everything else about this movie is outstanding.One of the mutants down below is played by Paul Richards who did wonderful work on TV's The Fugitive and I Spy.Leonard Rosenman had done the score to Fox's Fantastic Voyage (1966) and I think the studio was attempting to get the Fantastic Voyage- feeling going again. His score here is perfectly matched to the film.Apes is a Fox production as were the Irwin Allen sci-fi TV shows of this period. In the early part of the film, where you see the crashed wreck of the spaceship, look hard and you can see the landing legs of spaceship Jupiter 2 (from Lost In Space) in the wreckage of the ship.Later in the film, part of the underground city is in fact "The Secret City Of Limbo" seen in Land Of The Giants.Beneath The Planet Of The Apes is great film with enough retro sci- fi connections to make it super-fun as well

Right away, I knew this was not going to be as good as the original, (which is mostly because I love the original so much). That being said, I was curious on how they'd follow up. All I can say is, w.t.f! Every moment of plot progression from the other ship to the underground telepathic community with the nuclear bomb straight up knocked me off my ass. Some stuff was interesting, others were kind of stupid.After realizing the extinction of man, Taylor, (Charlton Heston) disappears, and his mute love interest, Nova, finds another survivor of a rescue expedition who has also landed on the planet, determined with the help of Nova to find Taylor.I gotta give this movie credit...it kept my interest. Regardless of how goofy it got at times, it made me want to figure out what was going on the whole time. It felt way more intense with the war between apes and man. It actually felt more brutal and intense than the original, though that wasn't the original's intention understandably. A few things in the writing make it sound like it was written by a hippie, talking A LOT about peace and love. I think they might have hammered in the "nuclear warfare is evil, we're all going to blow ourselves up" talk that was popular around the early 70's.The film doesn't get necessarily boring, but it takes a few too many risks, some work, some don't. Overall, it wasn't that bad. I felt genuinely worried about the main character's and their mission and all the conflicts going on. It does kind of dismiss the goings on in Ape City a little abruptly, but that's what more sequels are for I guess. Recommended if you watched and enjoyed the original.