That was the one word review I read in a TV Guide recently for this film, and I couldn't resist repeating it here.
"Beneath" was the very first film in the Apes series that I saw, at the tender age of 5, and some of the violence in the film stuck with me to this day, particularly the shooting of Brent and Taylor in the finale (what were my parents thinking?). Viewing the film recently as an adult,I found it to be a fairly weak installment in the series.
The film initially moves along at a decent and suspenseful pace, and serves to reacquaint the audience with the original's films characters and plot line. And then it gets incredibly absurd and takes a complete left turn when Brent confronts the underground mutants and their religious fanaticism for a doomsday bomb. Wha?
That's not to say the film is without it's merits. James Gregory's performance is menacing and easily one of the best characters to ever appear in the Apes series, while the return of most of the main cast from the first film is also welcoming (David Watson does a near dead on imitation of Roddy McDowell that I wasn't even aware that Roddy wasn't in this film). The makeup, sets, and music are, once again, first rate, and the mutant's sermon music is particularly disturbing, atonal, and "netherwordly".
So there are many things to like about this film, but unfortunately the plot is not one of them, and this drags the film down to being the 2nd worst in the series, IMO. The film to follow it, "Escape from the PLanet of the Apes", showed that a superb plot could overshadow the ever dimishing production values on the series.
"Beneath" was the very first film in the Apes series that I saw, at the tender age of 5, and some of the violence in the film stuck with me to this day, particularly the shooting of Brent and Taylor in the finale (what were my parents thinking?). Viewing the film recently as an adult,I found it to be a fairly weak installment in the series.
The film initially moves along at a decent and suspenseful pace, and serves to reacquaint the audience with the original's films characters and plot line. And then it gets incredibly absurd and takes a complete left turn when Brent confronts the underground mutants and their religious fanaticism for a doomsday bomb. Wha?
That's not to say the film is without it's merits. James Gregory's performance is menacing and easily one of the best characters to ever appear in the Apes series, while the return of most of the main cast from the first film is also welcoming (David Watson does a near dead on imitation of Roddy McDowell that I wasn't even aware that Roddy wasn't in this film). The makeup, sets, and music are, once again, first rate, and the mutant's sermon music is particularly disturbing, atonal, and "netherwordly".
So there are many things to like about this film, but unfortunately the plot is not one of them, and this drags the film down to being the 2nd worst in the series, IMO. The film to follow it, "Escape from the PLanet of the Apes", showed that a superb plot could overshadow the ever dimishing production values on the series.