L'Atlantide

L'ATLANTIDE (aka JOURNEY BENEATH THE DESERT, 1961) certainly held promise -Hollywood director Frank Borzage may have started it but European émigré Edgar G. Ulmer finished up and it's his influence that's most apparent. Green, yellow, and blue lighting gave Atlantis an eerie look despite obvious budget restraints and the movie as a whole was well done of its kind but, unfortunately, it bore very little relation to Pierre Benoit's SHE-like source novel, "Queen Of Atlantis". The adult subject matter (filmed at least three times before) became kiddie matinée fodder with an extremely simplistic storyline: a couple of mining engineers get lost in a Saharan sandstorm and discover the lost city of Atlantis where they have to convince its queen that an A-bomb testing site is directly above and her underground empire will be vaporized in 24 hours. The queen falls in love with one of them and that's all she cares about. That's it.

Even though she isn't especially attractive, there's something about Israeli beauty queen Haya Harareet but I can't say the same for her Antinea who's neither immortal nor evil in this re-telling. Her only crime was falling in love in a NY minute and as if that wasn't silly enough, the yards and yards of chiffon she had on made her look like a burlesque queen. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Gian-Maria Volonte didn't have much to do in this Saturday morning time-waster.