Black Gate

Ten Reasons why BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES is the best movie of the classic series.

Once again the Time of the Ape draws near.

The latest incarnation of the legendary cinematic franchise PLANET OF THE APES draws near with the impending release of a new film–reportedly planned from the get-go the first in a new series. What does that mean? That RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES would have to fail utterly at the box office to kill this new version of the franchise. Tim Burton’s remake of the original 1968 original PotA met with mixed results, but ultimately failed to relaunch an entire franchise. Perhaps because Burton, who picks his own projects these days, had far too many other ideas to explore instead. Whatever the case, there is nothing like the original movie and its once-in-a-lifetime shocker ending.

But nothing was more shocking, more terrifying, or more unforgettable than the end of the second Apes movie, my personal favorite, BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES. Critics and fans may argue, but there is no real doubt that BENEATH is the best of the four sequels. As I stated before, there’s no comparing any of the sequels to the sacrosanct status of the first movie. The first PLANET OF THE APES movie came out in ’68, the year before I was born. I had no idea what was in store for me.

I was only four or five years old when BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES finally came to the local one-screen cinema in Olive Hill, Kentucky, where I lived with my grandparents while my mother finished college at Morehead State University. The year was most likely ’74 or ’75. I remember it all in bits and pieces, the way I remember scenes from the movie itself. It was my first conscious experience of seeing a movie…in a movie theatre. I was being imprinted. My uncle had taken a group of us kids–cousins all–to the movie theatre because our grandparents weren’t the moviegoing types. They’d rather wait and watch movies on TV. But it was the mid 70s and going to the movies was an adventure–even before the wrecking ball of cinema culture that is STAR WARS came along.

What I remember most, burning into the neural pathways of my brain and the sketchpad of my imagination, was the bloodcurdling scream my cousin Regina let out when the mutants in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES peeled off their fleshy masks and revealed their true monstrous faces. This was, as they say, a moment of sheer movie terror. Especially for a precocious little five-year-old who was already reading comics before entering first grade.

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