“Beneath the Planet of the Apes”

A cut-rate sequel left-turns into a mesmerizingly downbeat final act.

The sad truth is I want every movie to be like this. Yes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes starts off a bland remake, all-but-abandoned by the original’s top-billed leads. With Charlton Heston reduced and Roddy McDowall recycled, only bench players and pinch hitters remain. B-team, B-movie. A familiar plot derails into a magnificent underworld where mutants worship a doomsday bomb. Idiot soldiers assault atomic religion, and only oblivion wins. Beneath’s last moment transcends the first Planet’s twist for sheer gusto. In half a century, no other movie sequel has burned itself down so completely.

With one exception, even shaky Apes entries go for a wow finish. Beneath’s conclusion is the most awesome, and can only be discussed in-depth. Watch it now if you haven’t. I saw it young, so I’m cursed to be unimpressed by many bleak things. Shocked by Dune 2? Psh. Give me a bullethole in one hero’s head while his dying buddy commits terracide.

“Madness! Madness!” So proclaims a lone survivor in The Bridge on the River Kwai, another Pierre Boulle adaptation that ends on ensemble fatality, explosion, and meaninglessness. Hollywood improved Boulle’s talky novels, and Beneath combines their moods of wartime disgust and future shock. In Ape City, Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) backseats pompous General Ursus (James Gregory). The gorilla attacks the Forbidden Zone, where radiation-poisoned humans praise the Divine Bomb and the Holy Fallout. It’s zealot against zealot, “militaristic tripe” versus “traumatic hypnosis.” The main characters are bugs squashed by history, until one bug squashes history.