Director: Ted Post
Cast: James Franciscus, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, Linda Harrison
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.
Did I Like It: What’s more, I remember liking it quite a bit when I saw it nearly thirty years ago. There was just something about that ending which struck me as just bonkers enough to make the whole thing memorable. Now? It feels like the classic movie blunder of possessing not so much a conclusion as a halt to the proceedings. Taylor (Charlton Heston, returning but with a look plastered on his face that hopes beyond hope no one will notice him) pushes a giant red button in the furthest depths of the Forbidden Zone, and then we get Orson Welles’ non-Union equivalent in place of what would have satisfied simple, child-like tastes: a big explosion.
The problems with this one go a fair bit deeper (Ha. Get it?) than just the ending. The special effects are somehow even more dodgy than in <its predecessor>. Sure, some of that could be written off to the fact that some of the potentially more epic sights are actually tricks played on the apes by the denizens of the Forbidden Zone, but it’s pretty difficult to not get pulled out of the movie when battle scenes are actually two different shots—one of apes wandering the desert, the other of a fire—optically processed together.
One might be able to get over all that and try to embrace that vibe I must have seen it way-back-when, if it weren’t for the fact that the film feels the need to speed through all of the story beats of the last film, only with Brent (Francsiscus; speaking of bargain basement replacements for the iconic). This serves to keep me from really enjoying it, even on the terms of pure B-movie cheese. It gets a bit boring.