This started well, with the end of the previous excellent film. After that it's all downhill, and eventually, underground. But it has a jolly panache about it and through my rose-tinted spectacles any film that mixes up Star Trek, High Chaparral and Edgar Rice Burroughs is well worth watching.
US astronaut James Franciscus arrives on strange planet full of rocks and blue skies searching for Charlton Heston, previously lost in space. He immediately bumps into a very demure woman who turns out to be Heston's mate, goes on the hunt for him but then bumps into hundreds of warlike talking apes. For a while it seems to be going nowhere, which was causing me idly to fondly recall some old Monogram pictures, but it picks up and then dives headfirst into fantasy. Through many messy and improbable adventures they all end up in, well, in a messy and improbable Underground world populated by mutant humans. If this was a Star Trek TOS episode or a couple of chapters from a Martian book by Burroughs it'd be great, but this is almost laughably padded out to its doomsday ending. My TV didn't die on me!
However - I remember I loved it when a kid, so I refuse to completely dis it now. It's OK, 2D, a good time-passer, and from experience pretty much forgettable.
US astronaut James Franciscus arrives on strange planet full of rocks and blue skies searching for Charlton Heston, previously lost in space. He immediately bumps into a very demure woman who turns out to be Heston's mate, goes on the hunt for him but then bumps into hundreds of warlike talking apes. For a while it seems to be going nowhere, which was causing me idly to fondly recall some old Monogram pictures, but it picks up and then dives headfirst into fantasy. Through many messy and improbable adventures they all end up in, well, in a messy and improbable Underground world populated by mutant humans. If this was a Star Trek TOS episode or a couple of chapters from a Martian book by Burroughs it'd be great, but this is almost laughably padded out to its doomsday ending. My TV didn't die on me!
However - I remember I loved it when a kid, so I refuse to completely dis it now. It's OK, 2D, a good time-passer, and from experience pretty much forgettable.