Bits 3

More bits: B2

James Franciscus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes

We're back in a Satuday matinee reader, like my previous post (see Going to the movies) and it is probably summer, 1970.  I am seven years old.  Onscreen is James Franciscus.  I took due notice that lean, tanned, and absolutely spotless James spent most of his time in the film in a smelly loincloth.  There is a scene where, being forced to wear it by Zira and Cornelius in order to blend into the mute human population, he puts it to his nose and grimaces.  He may not have enjoyed having to wear it, but I certainly did.  There are even strategic brushings of 'dirt' on him (it is after all, A.D. 3955) but all the more to shade his perspired and finely-boned physique.

It has been claimed to have been the stinker of the series - odd, with a truly wild storyline - but I like it.  Heston as Taylor makes a quick appearance in the last 15 minutes.  He apparently didn't want any part of a sequel.  He puts a proper end to the planet, angry at losing Nova in a hale of bullets.  Alpha and Omega!

But Mr. Franciscus - hello there my agile friend!  He plays an astronaut named Brent - and eventually bare-footed - he looks to be at the top of his game physically.  He's an earnest player in a demanding physical role.

He looks amazing in fisticuffs with various apes, and even with Taylor at the end.  The mutants, who inhabit the underground of a melted New York that he has stumbled upon, engage our two heroes in a death match against their wills (using mind control, naturally!).  In each of these interactions my seven-year-old brain was imprinting how wonderfully taut Franciscus's body became when duking it out.  My young aesthete sensibility was making feverish notes.

It all ends badly of course, and Francuscus's character does flounder as the poor fellow quickly tries to process the whole wacky set up.  It's a topsy-turvy world where creepy mutants hold the cards (they did scare me at the age of seven) and Heston selfishly blows it all to smithereens - for the love of a woman - how droll!

But Franciscus is wiry, compact, and adept throughout the whole sordid spectacle.  Pitiably, he ends by emptying his carbine at a bunch of apes who regroup and mow him down against a wall.  Stumbling to reload, he gets a bullet square to the forehead (among other spots), and slides down a wall in a spore of blood.  Shortly thereafter Heston engages the Doozy and it's fade to black, as they say in the movie biz.  And so intones a narrator, in one of the creepiest epilogues I recall as a kid - 

"In one of the countless billions of galaxies of the universe lies a medium sized star.  And one of its satellites, a green and insignificent planet, is now dead .."