Taylor and Nova go deep into the Forbidden Zone and Taylor disappears out of the blue. Meanwhile another space craft crash lands on Earth after be sent to search for Taylor and his crew. Brent is the only crew member who has survived the crash. Brent comes across Nova and she is all alone. Brent notices Nova is wearing Taylor’s dog tags. Brent wants to know where Taylor is, but Nova can’t tell him because she can’t talk. So instead she takes Brent to Ape City. Brent is shocked to see intelligent apes. Nova takes Brent to Zira and Cornelius and they can not believe they are meeting another talking human. Brent informs them that he is looking for Taylor. Zira and Cornelius give Brent a map and inform him to be quiet if he gets captured by the gorillas because only apes can talk. Zira and Cornelius wish Brent luck in finding Taylor. The gorillas are planning to go into the Forbidden Zone and conquer it with the company of Dr. Zaius. Brent and Nova are in the Forbidden Zone. They find this underground cave which Brent recognizes as a New York Subway station. Brent thought he was on another planet this whole time, but now he knows he has been on Earth this whole time. Brent and Nova go through the tunnels and find mutants living underground. The mutants worship a missile that could destroy the entire planet.
Blaine: In 1968, 20th Century Fox was having financial problems because their movie “Star!” wasn't so successful and didn’t make much money at the box office after spending millions of dollars to make it. “Planet of the Apes” was the only successful movie FOX had made at the time. The question was should there be a sequel? Sequels weren’t very popular back then because they weren’t as good as the first movie and FOX was more into new and original projects. But they were desperate and so they decided to go with a sequel. The producers asked Pierre Boulle, the author of “Planet of the Apes”, if he had any ideas for how the story should continue. He developed a script called “Planet of the Men”, which was about Taylor and Nova finding humans in the jungle, starting a colony, Taylor helping them become intelligent and Taylor and Nova having a son. Meanwhile, a gorilla commanding officer wants to wipe out the humans and builds up an army to kill them all. FOX felt that “Planet of the Men” didn’t have anything shocking in it and it had some similarities to “Planet of the Apes”. FOX wanted the sequel to go in a new direction. A screenwriter named Paul Dehn (Goldfinger) was hired to write a new script with another screenwriter, Mort Abrahams. The title was called “Planet of the Apes Revisited” which involved a kid that was half ape and half human, but FOX didn’t want that.
Charlton Heston didn’t want to come back as Taylor because he wasn’t a big fan of sequels and he was happy enough to have done one “Planet of the Apes” film. Not having their lead actor play the main character again became a problem. Producer Richard Zanuck felt that Charlton Heston should be apart of the project because if he wasn’t in it then fans would ask where Taylor is and what happened to him. Richard called Heston and begged him to be in the movie because they really needed him. Charlton Heston was nice enough to make a cameo in the film on condition that Taylor be killed off at the beginning of the film. That was the plan at first, until the screenwriters thought about him disappearing at the beginning and coming back towards the end. Charlton didn’t like that idea and didn’t want to do it, but he realized that Richard Zanuck had bet a lot on this film and had faith in it.
A new leading man was required sense Charlton Heston was only going to have a small part. James Franciscus did a lot of television shows and had wanted to be in movies. James really wanted to be in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” because it was something completely different from what he had done on television. One of the reason James was hired was because he looked like Charlton Heston. James Franciscus felt that his character, Brent, needed to do more than just running around. He wanted him to be a fighter, so Paul Dehn did some rewrites with the script. James had a lot of ideas for bringing Brent to life and he wanted to bring a lot into his performance. Stepping into the world of “Planet of the Apes” and being the lead in his first movie was something new for James.
Ted Post was best known for directing a lot of television shows and having a lot of skill which is why FOX hired him to direct “Beneath the Planet of the Apes”. Ted was scared at first when he was offered to direct “Beneath” because he felt it would be nowhere as good as “Planet of the Apes”. So the producers decided to get together with Ted and figure out what they could do to change his mind. For one Ted didn’t like that planet Earth was going to be destroyed at the end. He felt that would be the loss of all hope. The ending couldn’t be changed, but they found a way to convince Ted to do the movie.
The budget for “Beneath” had to be cut because of all the money FOX spent on “Star!”, but as long as they had enough to make “Beneath” that’s all that mattered. Principal photography began on February 1969. Charlton Heston was a professional actor and made his performance as good as he could even though he wasn’t a big fan of how the story for “Beneath” was going to go. Charlton was only around for eight days.
Linda Harrison, who played Nova, got to be more of a main character in “Beneath” compared to her small supporting role in “Planet of the Apes”. Nova is learning to be intelligent in “Beneath". Linda felt like an actress because she was in the film more. She did however feel embarrassed when she had to say her only line in the film and that is Taylor’s name. She had to say it odd and like a child just learning to speak. Kim Hunter returned as Zira, one of Taylor’s ape friends. A British actor named David Watson was hired to play Cornelius because Roddy McDowell, who played the character in the first movie, was too busy directing a film in England. The makeup department made sure that David looked like Cornelius. The gorilla military leader was offered to Orson Wells, but Orson turned it down because he felt an actor shouldn’t cover up his face when acting.
Most of the Ape city set was still at FOX studio ranch and hadn’t been torn down. It helped the studio save some money. One of the rules in making a movie is when you’re done using a set to shoot scenes for your movie and you don’t need it anymore then it gets torn down. They also used a set they saved from another movie called “Hello Dolly” for the underground sequences. That also saved the studio some money. They just made it look like it was made out of concrete.
“Beneath the Planet of the Apes” needed something as shocking as the Statue of Liberty at the end of “Planet of the Apes”. The surprise was the mutants revealing their real faces. Their skin has been burnt off and you see their veins. That was director Ted Post’s idea after he remembered seeing these photos in this class he had during his high school years. The actors would get hot wearing those costumes and they weren’t allowed to sweat because it would loosen the glue that holds the prosthetics to the skin. Studio executives from FOX would come to the set a lot to see how everything was turning out. Producer Richard Zanuck was fired because he had a lot of arguments with the head executive of FOX, who was also his father. FOX was having money issues and the head executive felt that all Richard cared about was this “Planet of the Apes” sequel and he didn’t know if it was going to be successful. So he fired Richard. Richard was so pissed that he took up his anger on the film. He said “blow the planet up.” The studio executives didn’t like the ending because they thought it was a hopeless ending just like director Ted Post thought. But they couldn't afford to reshoot the ending. No one knew what the fate was going to be for “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” when it hit theaters. But not only did it became a box office hit, but also it became the first sequel to be a hit. It surprised a lot of people.
My rating on “Beneath the Planet of Apes” is five out of five stars
