"Planet of the Apes": 6 decades of monkey mayhem
Allegories are all over the place, with pointed reminders to contemporary issues of racism and class divisions. But it's that wow finale, courtesy of Rod Serling, that has had folks talking for decades. Only then do we learn what happened to Earth during the intervening 2006 years since Taylor and his fellow crew members got launched into space.
Beneath the Planet of the Aples
Heston's back along with Linda Harrison, Maurice Evans and Kim Hunter. The script features newcomer James Franciscus as astronaut, John Christopher Brent, sent out on a rescue mission after Taylor's ship was found to have gone off course. But this one gets weird fairly fast as one side of the Forbidden Zone is populated by mutants and you get to them by walking through the ruins of the New York subway system.
As a longtime strap hanger, I can attest to witnessing more than a few mutants riding the rails with me, so this depiction was not too much of a stretch. But there were no happy endings in this picture. Taylor and his mate Nova both die when the gorilla troops invade the underground lair of the mutants. But they don't get to enjoy their conquest as an atomic bomb gets detonated and everything gets blown to pieces.
Escape from the Planet of the Apes
The plot puts the apes before a presidential commission before they wind up getting shot at the end of a convoluted sequence. The film ends showing their orphaned baby speaking the words, "Mama? Mama?" (At the time, I was thinking the same, dreading the prospect of yet another sequel.)