Review of Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes

The Forgotten City of the Planet of the Apes is the second TV film made from editing episodes of the ill-fated 1974 TV series, The Planet of the Apes, together to make a feature length movie. This one was constructed using the second episode entitled 'The Gladiators' and the fifth entry, 'The Legacy'. The basic problem with these films – and this one's no exception – is that they really seem like what they are, i.e. two episodes joined together. Consequently, they don't work very well as a 90 minute movie and have a split focus. In this one, the first half was the stronger, where the protagonists are captured by the ape inhabitants of a village that organises gladiatorial battles between their human underlings; the second half involves, you guessed it, one of them being captured again but is additionally set in a ruined city where they discover old technologies from their destroyed civilisation. As I say, it begins well enough but gets progressively more tedious in the second half. If you really want to see this stuff, you'd be a lot better just watching the old unedited episodes from the TV series on DVD.