The Mole People (1956)

The Mole People is a 1956 Universal-International science fiction B-movie.

An archaeological expedition has made some surprising finds regarding a very obscure dynasty. I’m not sure where this is supposed to be taking place. They find a Sumerian inscription so one would guess Mesopotamia but it looks more like the Himalayas. After an earthquake they make another find - a very ancient oil lamp with another inscription which suggests that if they climb a rather forbidding mountain they will make some very exciting finds.

Three archaeologists - Dr Roger Bentley (B-movie stalwart John Agar), Dr Jud Bellamin (Hugh Beaumont) and Professor Etienne Lafarge (Nestor Paiva) - make the climb. They do find something pretty startling - an ancient city. And it’s inhabited. The people are still stuck in the Sumerian era and they’re superstitious and suspicious of strangers. In fact they don’t believe that strangers can exist. Their city is to them the entire world. Luckily, after first deciding to kill them, the king changes his mind and decides that these strangers must be messengers from the goddess Ishtar.

The city is located beneath the surface of the Earth, as a result of a catastrophic volcanic eruption five thousand years ago.

The city’s population is extremely small but there are also the Creatures of the Dark (they’re the mole people of the title although they’re never referred to as such). They were once human. Now they’re slaves.

The problem for the archaeologists is to keep the king thinking that they’re divine messengers. The high priest (played Alan Napier) doesn’t buy their story at all and favours killing them. Before killing them he wants their magic cylinder that contains Ishtar’s divine fire. It’s actually just an ordinary torch (or flashlight for American readers). It would be useful to keep the slaves in line. The inhabitants of this buried city cannot tolerate bright light. It terrifies them and can kill them.

Of course there’s a girl, Adad (Cynthia Patrick). She’s a slave. She’s not one of the mole people but she is one of the Marked Ones, who are presumably mutants of a sort. She certainly doesn’t look like a mutant. She’s blonde and cute and Dr Bentley is immediately smitten.

There are some dangers to be faced but there’s really very little action. This is a movie that doesn’t manage to create a great deal in the way of excitement or suspense.

The special effects are mostly very cheap although there are occasional effects shots that work. Matte paintings are used a great deal. It’s a technique I usually like but in this case the matte paintings are rather crude.

The disappearing into the ground trick however is pretty cool and works well on screen. The mole people are just guys in rubber suits but they look quite cool as well.

The acting is standard B-movie stuff, apart from Alan Napier who manages to be creepy and sinister and menacing. You get the feeling that this high priest enjoys putting people to death.

The basic idea is fine (in fact quite good) and while the script doesn’t do anything dazzling with it it’s serviceable enough. There is a surprising touch at the end.

Virgil W. Vogel directed. He spent most of his directing career working in television. A year after this film he directed the very entertaining lost world movie The Land Unknown (1957).

If you accept the fact that everything looks very artificial then this movie is a lot more enjoyable. In the scenes in the mine the artificiality becomes a definite asset, creating a nightmare underworld atmosphere.

Despite its faults and a certain talkiness this is an oddly likeable movie. It’s no masterpiece but it is reasonably good fun if you love 50s monsters movies and lost civilisation tales. Recommended.

This film is included in Universal’s five-movie Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection DVD boxed set. The Mole People gets an acceptable transfer. It’s presented in 1.37:1. The movie was shot in black-and-white. It has I believe subsequently had a Blu-Ray release.

The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

The Valley of Gwangi is one of those lost worlds where dinosaurs still roam movies. While these movies tend to follow a fairly standard formula, this one is a little unusual in being a cowboys and dinosaurs movie. It also has stop-motion animation effects by Ray Harryhausen, which is sufficient reason in itself to make it worth seeing.

The movie, made in 1969, is set somewhere around 1900. Tuck Kirby is a somewhat shady cowboy/conman/impresario who turns up in the town where his old girlfriend, the beautiful T. J. Breckenridge, is the star attraction in a Wild West show. Her act is to jump from a high platform into a pool of water surrounded by fire while on  horseback. Not the easiest way to make a living one would have thought. The show is run by her father, and it isn’t doing too well, but T. J. has come up with a new attraction which should turn the show into a veritable goldmine. One of the cowboys has found a living eohippus, the so-called dawn horse, the ancestor of the modern horse. It’s about the size of a large rabbit. She’s going to stage an act in which the miniature horse rides on the back of a full-size horse. 

There’s also a paleontologist working in the area, and when he finds out about the living eohippus the stage is set for a struggle between the scientist wanting to exploit the discovery in the interests of human knowledge and on the other hand T. J. and Tuck wanting to exploit it to make lots of money. Since T. J. doesn’t trust Tuck one little bit there are really three parties all competing for ownership of the little horse. It doesn’t take long for them to figure out that where there one eohippus there must be more, so they set out for the forbidden Valley of Gwangi, despite the dire warnings of catastrophe by the local gypsy wise woman. The valley contains more than just miniature horses - it also boasts living dinosaurs including a Tyrannosaurus rex, which of course would make an even better attraction in the arena than a bunny-sized horse. They set out to trap themselves a dinosaur (in one of the most stunning stop-motion sequences Harryhausen ever staged). 

Of course anyone who’d watched a few science fiction movies could have told them that trying to use a full-sized Tyrannosaurus rex in a circus show was an idea bound to lead to all sorts of destructive mayhem but they didn’t have science fiction movies in 1900 to warn them of such dangers. And naturally the expected mayhem does in fact occur.

The acting is reasonably proficient, with James Franciscus charming and thoroughly untrustworthy but terribly brave as Tick and Gila Golan doing a competent job as T. J. Laurence Naismith contributes a fairly standard but still entertaining performance as the dotty paleontologist. There’s a romantic sub-plot between T. J.  and Tuck, there are problems caused by the superstitious fears of the locals, and overall the far-fetched plot provides a good deal of fun and excitement.

Harryhausen’s creature effects are the real stars, and as always he delivers the goods.

The movie is available on DVD just about everywhere. The region 4 DVD includes a very short and completely worthless documentary which consists of very little besides modern special effects “wizards” gushing about what a genius Harryhausen was. He certainly was a genius, but this brief doco contributes remarkably little in the way of actual information about the man and his methods. 

The movie itself though is a very enjoyable romp which never makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously. And by sticking to a running time of just over 90 minutes it also (unlike so many modern movies of this type) avoids the danger of wearing out its welcome. Highly recommended.

The Incredible Petrified World (1957)

The Incredible Petrified World, made in 1957 but not released until a couple of years later, is widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. Movies that have been tagged in that manner often turn out to be very entertaining. The Incredible Petrified World, sadly, is not one of them.

The basic premise is fine. Professor Millard Wyman (John Carradine) has invented a new and highly advanced diving bell. Unfortunately on its first test something goes terribly wrong and the bell is lost. It had descended to such a great depth that there is no hope for the survival of any of the crew. 

In fact they do survive. The diving bell had been swept into an underwater cavern and within the cavern is fresh air. More surprisingly there is apparently fresh water as well although why this should be is never explained. Our four aquanauts, two men and two women, are safe for the time being but the bad news is that they’re trapped in a maze of caverns far below the earth’s surface. They cannot swim back out into the sea because they’re much too deep and they have no way of knowing if there is any way out.

Of course the audience knows they will have all sorts of adventures in this hidden world, except that nothing of the kind really happens. They wander about lost, they stop to rest, then wander about lost some more. At one point they do encounter a fearsome giant lizard. It ignores them and they ignore it.

Eventually it does look like some actual adventure might ensue when they discover a skeleton and a strange old man who claims to have been living in the cavern for fourteen years. Surely now we will get some kind of payoff? Alas, although the old guy is a bit sinister very little really happens.

Meanwhile Professor Wyman tries to get together another expedition using another diving bell. He is determined to find out what went wrong with his original design. The scene in which he delivers a torrent of delightfully loopy technobabble explaining his theory of what went wrong is the highlight of the movie.

There are also the obligatory romantic entanglements and jealousies between the four trapped aquanauts. That would have been fine if such scenes had been used to engage our interest in between exciting action sequences but in the absence of any exciting action sequences they tend to be merely annoying.

Producer-director Jerry Warren was known for low-budget efforts such as this, none of them very distinguished. His stodgy directing style is a major part of the problem with this movie. He has no sense of pacing or of suspense and seemingly no ability to craft action scenes. He relies heavily on stock footage, which was common enough in low-budget features at this time, but the scary thing about this film is that you end up wishing there was more stock footage and less of the actual movie.

The acting is a huge problem also. John Carradine is fine. In fact he’s very good considering how little the script gives him to work with. The other actors are uniformly awful. Bad acting will not necessarily sink a low-budget sci-fi flick but dull acting certainly will and these actors are devastatingly dull.

Strangely enough one of the things this film doesn’t suffer from is an excessively cheap look. The diving bell looks OK. The cavern sequences (which make up most of the movie’s original footage) actually look pretty good and pretty convincing. Some of this footage was actually shot in real caves in Arizona.

This film is public domain and the copy I saw was terrible although I told that Something Weird’s DVD release is excellent.

The Incredible Petrified World is by no means the worst movie of all time but it’s fairly bad and lacks the energy and sense of fun to compensate for its artistic deficiencies. Not really worth the effort.

The Land Unknown (1957)

The Land Unknown is a lost world movie and it involves dinosaurs. That’s exactly the kind of thing I like, so it’s no surprise at all that I found The Land Unknown to be great fun.

This movie was made by Universal in 1957 and although it was shot in Cinemascope it’s clearly a fairly low-budget effort.

The US Navy is mounting an ambitious scientific expedition to the Antarctic. Among other things they want to investigate something rather curious found by Admiral Byrd’s 1947 expedition - a large body of open water where there shouldn’t be open water.

Commander Hal Roberts (Jock Mahoney) is to lead the helicopter team tasked with the investigation of that body of apparently warm water. The team also includes (inevitably) a glamorous female - reporter Maggie Hathaway (Shirley Patterson).

They discover more than warm water. They discover a lush hidden valley. More disturbingly their helicopter is damaged by a collision with a flying creature that looks as bit like a pterodactyl. Repairing the helicopter presents some difficulties - it seems they may be stuck in this valley for quite a while. They have plenty of food and water but they do have have other problems - the valley is filled with dinosaurs. Living dinosaurs!

The dinosaurs include a tyrannosaurus rex and they only manage to discourage the gigantic hungry reptilian predator by using the helicopter’s rotor blades as a weapon. There are also carnivorous plants - very large carnivorous plants.

Of course the dinosaurs are remnants of a population that has survived for tens of millions of years. They’re not likely to encounter cavemen. But how do they explain the theft of part of their food supplies - cans of food that have been neatly opened in a manner that suggests that no animal could be responsible. When Maggie gets kidnapped the explorers really start to wonder what is going on.

These days no-one would consider making a movie like this without a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars. The 1950s was however the heroic age of low-budget film-making, when film-makers didn‘t worry about having pitifully inadequate budgets - they just went ahead and made the movies anyway and they often attempted ludicrously ambitious projects on absurdly small budgets. The word impossible was not part of their vocabulary. Sometimes they fell flat on their faces but they made the pictures anyway and sometimes they worked. The Land Unknown uses a good deal of stock footage and some dubious special effects but in spite of this it is one of the examples that mostly works.

The dinosaur battles are staged, as in so many lost world movies, using monitor lizards. The tyrannosaurus rex is pretty unconvincing. On the other hand the scenes involving the aquatic plesiosaurus are quite effective and even scary.

This movie is obviously shot on a sound stage and the lost world is rendered largely through background paintings. The results should be shoddy and phony but somehow they manage to be surprisingly evocative and effective. This movie takes places in a science fiction world and the artificiality of that world actually adds to the movie’s success. On a very limited budget any attempt at realism would have fallen flat anyway. By  not trying for realism the film-makers end up with something much more appealing and atmospheric.

The acting is basic B-movie standard but the actors at least show some enthusiasm. Director Virgil W. Vogel became a prolific television director after making a handful of features. Considering the resources available to him his handling of this assignment can’t really be faulted.

This movie is one of five that comprise Universal’s pleasingly inexpensive Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection: Volume 2. The transfer is anamorphic and is quite splendid.

The Land Unknown is a highly entertaining science fiction adventure B-movie that succeeds rather well in achieving its admittedly modest aims. It has a lost world and it has dinosaurs and it has great scenes involving a Sikorsky S-51 helicopter, one of the coolest early helicopter designs. Highly recommended.

Warlords of Atlantis (1978)

The team of producer John Dark, director Kevin Connor and actor Doug McClure was responsible for Amicus’s very successful 1970s trio of Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations, The Land that Time Forgot, The People that Time Forgot and At the Earth’s Core. This team combined yet again in 1978 to bring us Warlords of Atlantis, although this time it was not an Amicus production nor was it an Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation. It does have a rather similar feel to the three earlier movies, although with a few key differences, and in its own way it’s just as much fun

The early sequences of the movie have a very decided feel that would today be described as steampunk. It is 1896 and an ambitious expedition is setting out (on a marvellous steam yacht), their destination - the bottom of the sea!

Professor Aitken (Donald Bisset) is the driving force behind the expedition and he is the one putting up the money. American inventor Greg Collinson (Doug McClure) has designed a rather nifty diving bell. He and the professor’s son Charles (Peter Gilmore) will be the ones making the descent. What Collinson has not been told is the real purpose of the expedition. It is not merely to explore the sea floor. Professor Collinson hopes to find the underwater city of Atlantis. The fact that the professor is an archaeologist probably should have given Collinson the clue that the intention is to find more than just interesting species of fish.

They soon have a remarkable stroke of what seems like good luck but turns out to be very bad luck. They discover an impressive golden statue. This is unfortunate because the crew of the yacht Texas Rose are thoroughly unreliable and are soon infected with gold fever. This is about to cause very serious problems when an even bigger problem comes along - a very large and very unfriendly octopus. When I say very large I mean the octopus is rather bigger than the Texas Rose, and when I say very unfriendly I mean the octopus intends to have both the steam yacht and its crew for lunch. In fact their fate turns out to be less immediately fatal but every bit as disturbing and they find themselves in Atlantis.

At this point the movie takes a rather unexpected turn in a very science fictional direction. The Atlanteans are not an ancient Earth civilisation. They are aliens from outer space. They were stranded on Earth aeons ago and their intention is to leave this planet and find their destiny once more among the stars. Unfortunately in order to achieve this destiny they will have to shape the destiny of Earth, and shape it in a very destructive way.

These alien Atlanteans have various paranormal powers and claim to be incredibly advanced although strangely enough the only weapons they have with which to defend themselves from the incessant attack of an unpleasant array of monsters are muzzle-loading cannons and rifles captured from the inhabitants of the upper world (in other words captured from us).

The Atlanteans have plans for the unlucky crew of the Texas Rose and they have very special plans for Charles Aitken. There’s more at stake than just survival - the future of Earth hangs in the balance. Fortunately the aliens have no idea that they’re up against Doug McClure.

These were the days when special effects meant stop-motion animation, miniatures and matte paintings rather than CGI. These were also the days when movie-makers were not dismayed by limited budgets. They were quite willing to tackle very ambitious projects such as this with seriously limited budgets and more often than you’d expect the final results were quite satisfactory. This movie being a definite case in point. Underwater action, vast underwater cities, battle scenes and monsters (lots of monsters) are among the treats in store for the viewer and by and large they look pretty good.

Peter Gilmore makes a fine secondary hero. Doug McClure is, well he’s Doug McClure. You know what to expect and you won’t be disappointed. Look out for Cyd Charisse as an alien.

By this stage Kevin Connor definitely knew what he was doing with a picture like this. The aim is entertainment and Connor keeps it coming. He wasn’t going to let the low budget bother him and there’s no reason why the audience should either. This movie takes its story just seriously enough. In fact the movie strikes the perfect balance in every department. It throws in a few interesting ideas but never lets them bog the story down.

Studiocanal’s Region 2 DVD offers a reasonable if not outstanding anamorphic transfer without any extras.

The steampunk background is a delight and overall Warlords of Atlantis is splendid entertainment that can be recommended without any reservations.

Mistress of Atlantis (1932)

G. W. Pabst's 1932 Mistress of Atlantis (L’Atlantide) is one of several movies based on Pierre Benoit’s superb 1919 novel L’Atlantide (translated into English under the title Queen of Atlantis).

The central idea is that the lost city of Atlantis is not to be found beneath the sea but somewhere in the wastes of the Sahara Desert. The city is found by two officers of the French Foreign Legion, Lieutenant St-Avit and Captain Morange.

The city is ruled by the beautiful Antinea (Brigitte Helm). Is she an immortal goddess? Or a kind of love vampire? Or perhaps both?

There are a number of modern Europeans in the city, all travellers who had been lost in the desert, or lured to Atlantis by some strange occult power of Antinea. Antinea is interested only in men. She has chosen a succession of men to be her lovers. Being Antinea’s lover is a death sentence, but it is a fate enthusiastically embraced by any man who falls under her spell.

But will she choose St-Avit or Morange?

Pabst was a great film-maker, best-known for Pandora’s Box in 1929. I know it might be heresy but I actually prefer the later 1949 Hollywood B-movie version Siren of Atlantis. The Hollywood version makes use of some of the more interesting elements of the story that Pabst’s film unaccountably neglects.

Pabst’s version also suffers from rather lifeless performances by Heinz Klingenberg as Saint-Avit and Gustav Diessl as Morange. On the other hand Brigitte Helm is a splendid and suitably goddess-like Antinea.

I found Gibb McLaughlin to be rather irritating as Count Velovsky, a kind of self-appointed major-domo/master of ceremonies of Atlantis.

There are some good visual touches and the gigantic stone face of Antinea is impressive.

On the whole I felt that the movie failed to capture the atmosphere of Atlantis and the full force of Antinea’s powers over men. So far it seems that no movie version has done justice to the excellence of the novel although the aforementioned 1949 Siren of Atlantis is great fun. The conflict between Saint-Avit and Morange is too muted as well.

The Alpha Video DVD is truly atrocious but this is a difficult movie to find and it’s an interesting enough movie that it’s worth putting up with the terrible transfer.

At the Earth's Core (1976)

In the mid-60s Hammer Films tried their hand at a series of vaguely science fictional adventure movies, with some success. In the mid-70s their great rivals, Amicus Productions, took the same path (fairly successfully also) with a series of Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations, which included At the Earth's Core in 1976.

This was based on the first of Burroughs’ Pellucidar novels.

Eccentric scientist Dr Abner Perry (Peter Cushing) has designed a gigantic manned digging machine, the Iron Mole. This will open up a whole new field of exploration, deep within the Earth. The machine was paid for by one of Dr Perry’s former students, the rather flamboyant David Innes (Doug McClure). He was not one of Dr Perry’ more brilliant students but he did have the advantage of being extremely wealthy, wealthy enough to fund this ambitious project.

A test run has been organised which will see the machine burrow through a hill in Wales. Dr Perry and David Innes will make up the machine’s two-man crew. Things go very wring, the machine gets out of control, and they end up deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Very deep indeed. There they discover the lost world of Pellucidar.

It’s not a very happy world for its human inhabitants. It is ruled by the Mahars, giant bird-like winged creatures with telepathic powers. Their control over Pellucidar is enforced by another species, the human-like but vicious Sagoths.

The humans of Pellucidar are regularly captured and enslaved by the Mahars and our two intrepid explorers get caught in the net as well. David doesn’t take kindly to this and he determines to do what he can to overthrow the reign of the Mahars. He’s a courageous and honourable man but he has an ulterior motive as well - to free the beautiful princess Dia (Caroline Munro).

It’s all played very tongue-in-cheek, with Cushing overdoing it a little as the kindly dotty elderly professor. Given the movie’s target audience he can be forgiven for this. McClure is perfect for the role of David - bluff and blustering but brave and good-natured. As usual Caroline Munro isn’t given enough to do, but as always she gives a certain class to what she does do.

The budget wasn’t really equal to the film’s ambitions but since it’s played strictly as a fun rollicking adventure yarn it gets away with it and even when the special effects aren’t quite up to par they’re still fun. Actually the cheapness of the special effects and the sets adds to the cheese factor which adds to the movie’s charm.

Pure entertainment, and highly recommended.

MGM’s DVD release in their Midnite Movies range is barebones but looks stunning.

Siren of Atlantis (1949)

Siren of Atlantis was based on Pierre Benoît's 1919 novel L'Atlantide, which was translated into English as The Queen of Atlantis. It’s one of countless film versions of this classic adventure tale.

With Maria Montez as the star you might expect this one to put the emphasis on camp, and you’d be partly correct.

A French archaeologist has come up with a theory about the lost city of Atlantis. He believes it’s to be found in the middle of the Sahara Desert. His idea is that the Sahara was once the bed of a deep ocean.

His expedition sets off from a Foreign Legion fort and is not heard from again. Captain Jean Morhange (Dennis O'Keefe) and Lieutenant André St. Avit (Jean-Pierre Aumont) are despatched with a rescue party to find the missing scientist.

They find Atlantis. They were expecting ruins, but Atlantis is a living city. It’s a kind of hybrid civilisation, ruled over by the Atlantean queen Antinea but peopled mostly by Tuaregs. An even bigger surprise is that there are quite a few modern Europeans in the city, all survivors of various ill-fated expeditions.

Those who happen to be male and good-looking have the chance of being chosen by the queen as her current toyboy. That sounds like a good deal, given that the queen is very beautiful and apparently very passionate. She is however also capricious. She tires quickly of her paramours. Their fate thereafter is not a happy one. It’s not that she has them killed, it’s just that after enjoying the queen’s favours for a while and then finding themselves discarded they are left as mere wrecks and invariably end up as self-pitying alcoholics.

Lieutenant André St. Avit is therefore not sure how pleased he should be when he becomes the queen’s latest plaything. Any doubts are soon cast aside however - André becomes hopelessly obsessed by the beautiful but easily bored queen.

The queen’s librarian Blades (Henry Daniell) is one modern European in Antinea’s court who was never chosen to share the queen’s bed. He is as a result somewhat bitter and is of a naturally troublesome disposition, He amuses himself by setting St. Avit and Morhange against each other, as he has set many other men against each other in the past. He convinces St. Avit that Morhange has usurped his position in the queen’s favours. This will have disastrous consequences. Equally disastrous will be Morhange’s attempts to escape. This is strictly forbidden, in order to keep the existence of Altantis a secret.

There are some clever plot twists to come which I cannot speak about without giving away spoilers. It’s an interesting and multi-layered story and the film does a fairly good job with it.

The acting is actually reasonably good. Dennis O’Keefe is noble and manly as Morhange, while Jean-Pierre Aumont is suitably vulnerable to Antinea’s womanly charms. Henry Daniell makes a splendidly oily villain. Maria Montez might not hve been the worlds greatest actress but this role is well within her acting range and she acquits herself quite creditably, plus she has the exotic glamour and the dangerous sexuality that is required.

It was not a big-budget picture but it looks reasonably impressive.

There’s certainly enough here to please lovers of camp but there are also unexpected dark overtones to this movie. It seems to have been an attempt to do a fairly serious adaptation of the story and it succeeds to a greater extent than you might expect. It’s a psychological drama and a tragedy rather than a mere campfest. This is a movie that deserves more respect than it generally receives - all in all a pleasant surprise.

Odeon’s all-region PAL DVD release is light on extras but it looks extremely good and it’s pleasingly inexpensive. I recommend this one.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1959)

The 50s was the decade that saw Hollywood go crazy for Jules Verne. It’s not that difficult to understand why. If you’re committed to the idea that the best way to combat the threat of television is by making lavish big-budget colour Cinemascope epics then Verne is ideal source material. The really surprising thing is that most of these movies turned out rather well, and 20th Century-Fox’s 1959 Journey to the Centre of the Earth is no exception.

Sir Oliver Lindenborok (James Mason) is a crusty, eccentric but basically good-natured geology professor at Edinburgh University. In 1880 he is presented by a student with what at first seem to be merely a rather interesting volcanic rock. Then he notices that it’s unusually heavy. Could there be something inside? There certainly could. It’s a metal plumb bob, but more intriguing still is that there’s a message on it. In Icelandic. The message, written by a famous Icelandic explorer named Arne Saknussem who vanished a century earlier, is that if you descend into a certain extinct volcano in Iceland you can reach the centre of the Earth.

Being a professor of geology our hero is understandably quite excited by this. He writes to an eminent geologist in Stockholm, a man renowned as an authority on volcanoes. Rather than the reply he was hoping for he receives a message from the university in Stockholm. Professor Göteborg has suddenly disappeared. Lindenbrook realises at once that the treacherous Göteborg has set off for Iceland, hoping to be the first man to reach the centre of the earth and return to tell the tale. Lindenbrook has no intention of allowing himself to be beaten to this prize, and the race is on.

Lindenbrook sets off on his own expedition. He is to be accompanied by his favourite student (soon to be his son-in-law) and by a friendly and immensely strong Icelandic farmer. There a few more surprises in store for him. There is yet another rival in the field, a descendent of the original Saknussem. And Professor Lindenbrook finds himself with a fourth member of his expedition. Carla Göteborg (Arlene Dahl) proves to be a rather distracting presence for the professor although she’s a distraction he comes to be rather fond of. And of course she provides the necessary romantic sub-plot.

There will be many perils to be faced, both human and natural.

Disney had set a very high standard for Verne adaptations with their 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and while Disney’s movie remains the best of them all Journey to the Centre of the Earth is not far behind.

The special effects look 1950s but they also look wonderful, and help to give this film much of its charm. The world below the surface of the Earth is brought to life with some gorgeous colour effects.

It’s a great story but of course it’s scientifically ludicrous in the light of present-day knowledge. This potential problem was avoided by keeping the late 19th century setting, so the idea seems perfectly plausible to the characters.

Bernard Herrmann’s score should also be mentioned. As he did so often Herrmann captures the spirit of the story perfectly with his music.

Pat Boone is perfectly adequate as the professor’s student and prospective son-in-law. Arlene Dahl makes a great love interest who also turns out to be a bold and courageous member of the expedition. After his sensational performance in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea James Mason was the obvious choice to pay Professor Lindenbrook. It’s a less challenging role than Captain Nemo but it gives Mason the opportunity to have an enormous amount of fun. It’s a delightful performance.

Fox did a superb job of restoring this movie for their DVD release. It looks magnificent.

A great combination of spectacle, adventure, romance and sheer fun. Highly recommended.

The People That Time Forgot (1977)

In 1975 Amicus had a sizeable hit with The Land That Time Forgot, based on the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Two years later a sequel appeared, The People That Time Forgot. In theory it’s based on the second book of Burroughs’ Caspak trilogy but in fact it eliminates most of the really interesting stuff from the book, the stuff that made this trilogy one of the weirdest of all lost world stories. The movie turns the story into a straight adventure tale, but fortunately it’s a very entertaining adventure tale indeed.

This one boasts not one but two square-jawed action heroes - Doug McClure and Patrick Wayne (son of some guy named John Wayne). Patrick Wayne is American war hero Major Ben McBride who sets to find his old buddy Bowen Tyler who disappeared mysteriously in 1915. Tyler left a message in a bottle, a message that was found and that told a bizarre story of a lost continent peopled with vanished creatures from every prehistoric epoch, from dinosaurs to cavemen.

McBride has managed to get backing from the British Navy and financing from a major newspaper to launch his expedition to find this strange world. He has recruited an old air force buddy and an eminent archaeologist for the venture, and (much to his disgust) he has been forced to take along a feisty girl reporter /photographer. She’s Lady Charlotte Cunningham, known to her friends as Charly.

They have an ice-breaker and they have a very cool aircraft - a five-seat amphibian. They need this to get over the mountain barrier that surrounds the lost world. Unfortunately their sturdy seaplane is no match for a flock of pterodactyls, even though it’s armed with a Lewis machine-gun. Shooting the pterodactyls just makes them angry! They crash-land and then set off on foot. They soon encounter a beautiful cave-girl who captivates them with her plucky courage (not to mention an extraordinarily impressive quantity of cleavage).

Their problem is they have just three weeks to find Tyler before the pack ice closes in and their ship must make its departure. And to find him they will have to battle assorted dinosaurs, hostile cave-men and the dreaded volcano god.

I’ve read dismissive comments about this movie, comments that claimed that the budget was just too small for the scale of the ideas. I don’t agree. On the contrary I think that considering the limited budget the movie looks pretty impressive. The model shots are mostly effective, the dinosaurs look reasonably good, the early 20th century atmosphere is very well done. The battle scenes are well staged. Director Kevin O’Connor keeps the action moving along at a good clip.

Patrick Wayne wasn’t in the same league as an actor as his old man but he’s perfect for this sort of role - he’s dashing and he’s likable. Doug McClure is reduced to a supporting role in this second movie but still gets to do some heroic stuff. Sarah Douglas is terrific as Charly and the banter between her and Wayne never becomes tiresome or vicious. They clash at first but they’re both basically sympathetic characters. Cult movie favourite Thorley Walters (familiar from countless Hammer films) makes a splendid jovial archaeologist. All the supporting performances in fact are quite solid.

It’s a colourful exciting adventure movie that doesn’t pretend to be anything else and it doesn’t need to be anything else. It’s thoroughly enjoyable.

MGM’s DVD release under the Midnite Movies banner range is typical of this range of DVDs - completely bereft of extras apart from a trailer but it’s a beautiful transfer and they’ve issued it in a two-movie pack along with The Land That Time Forgot which makes it sensational value and if you shop around you can pick it up for as little as five bucks.

The Land That Time Forgot (1975)

Hammer Studios had enjoyed some success with their mid-60s series of exotic adventure films, so it was not altogether surprising that their chief rivals, Amicus, should also try to get in on the act. The only surprising thing is that they waited until 1975. With an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot they must have thought they were on a sure thing. And they were right, although the success of these movies couldn’t save the studio.

In 1916 a steamship is torpedoed by a German U-boat. The handful of survivors are drifting helplessly in a lifeboat when they spot a vessel. In fact it’s the very U-boat that sank their ship. As it happens one of the survivors, a nan named Tyler (Doug McClure) is an American expert on submarines, and using his specialised knowledge the survivors are able to capture the U-boat. Their attempts to take the captured submarine to a neutral American port are thwarted however by the efforts of the U-boat’s captain and they fimd themselves a long way out of the main shipping lanes.

They make a landfall, but this coastline is strange and unfamiliar. The U-boat commander, Captain Von Schoenvorts, is an amateur scientist and a bit of an intellectual and he has a theory that this is the lost continent discovered by a forgotten European explorer back in 1720. Finding a place to land proves difficult until Tyler manages to navigate the U-boat through an underground river into the interior of the continent. The exterior coastline is shrouded in ice but the interior of the continent is tropical. But there are bigger surprises than that in store.

The continent is inhabited by dinosaurs. And they’re none too friendly. That strange enough but our motley band of explorers will find that life woks very differently indeed in this bizarre lost world.

The dinosaurs aren’t the most convincing movie dinosaurs you’ll ever see but there’s plenty of action and plenty of fun. And lots of explosions. The model work was done by Derek Meddings, who had worked on Gerry Anderson’s classic 1960s puppet adventure series such as Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. As you’d expect, the model scenes work extremely well, especially the passage of the U-boat through the underground river.

Doug McClure is, as always, a fine square-jawed hero. Susan Penhaligon as a glamorous lady biologist is the token female member of the cast. She’s good but she doesn’t get much to do. John McEnery steals the picture as the U-boat commander. He’s the most complex character in the movie, capable of cunning subterfuges but with a definite sense of honour, and with genuine human warmth and even a touch of humour.

This is a very silly movie but that’s part of its charm. It’s a ripping adventure yarn that revels in its own absurdity and if you’re prepared to just sit back and enjoy the ride you’ll find it a thoroughly entertaining hour-and-a-half of B-movie hokum.

MGM have released this one, in a very handsome transfer, as a double-feature along with the sequel, The People That Time Forgot. Seriously, how can you go wrong with submarines and dinosaurs in the same movie?