Battle Beneath the Earth

This movie is actually fairly entertaining, but mostly because spotting the continuity errors and absence of logic is so much fun. The concept is interesting, but the script is stunningly dumb. I think it is worth one viewing by fans of C-grade sci-fi, but unless you can turn the film into a drinking game - and you could - that is enough.

A classic. Utterly dismal. This film must have been made with the change left over from the first Blair Witch project. The rock wall tunnels practically wobble, truck headlights pretending to be rock boring lasers. Englishmen pretending to be Chinese with silly slant eyes - you know the style seen in every lame 60 or 70's movies - how hard is it to hire real Chinese as actors? If the effects stink they are fragrant compared to the plot. At one point to detect the Chinese tunnels the military orders the US to go silent for Gods sake; like it was a submarine on silent running! The whole things is so bad as to be camply hilarious.

The picture concerns upon Chinese communists (leader is Martin Benson as general goes berserk and who places atomic bombs) trying to destroy United States via some continued series of underground tunnels , made all the way from China under the Pacific Ocean , but some US Navy soldiers , scientists , military (Kerwin Mathews , Al Mulok , Ed Bishop) and a gorgeous geologist (Vivienne Ventura) discover the scheme and go underground to repel the invaders .

It's a pulp movie of science-fiction genre in which there are noisy action , suspense , intrigue , tension and results to be quite bemusing . The history deals with nasty Chinese people and American patriots who fight strongly to vanquish them . In spite of lack luster and budget is quite agreeable and fun . The plot is almost ridiculous and senseless but it's developed in fast moving and numerous surprises and that's why it is amusing . The movie has precedent in those films of the 30s with Fumanchu (by Sax Rohmer) and Boris Karloff as heinous starring and nearest the series of the 60s (produced by Harry Alan Towers with Christopher Lee as the Chinese baddie) in which the ¨yellow danger¨ was a fearful enemy . The motion picture takes part of a genre which in the 80s attained splendor , thus : ¨Red Dawn¨ (by John Milius with Patrick Swayze) , ¨Invasion USA ¨ (by Joseph Zito with Chuck Norris) and ¨Amerika¨ (by Donald Wyre with Kris Kristofferson) where the communists -Russkies generally- execute invasion on America . Rating : Average but entertaining .

This a British film attempting to pretend to everyone and fooling no one that it`s a big budget Hollywood movie . It starts with a couple of Las Vegas cops with laughably bad American accents getting a report of a disturbance . Cut to some stock footage of Vegas with the cop car stopping beside a sidewalk that was obviously filmed inside a studio . Every expense has been spared with BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH . Despite being set in the 1960s all the American troops have firearms and wear kit from the second world war while those nasty Chinese commies have death rays that are obviously flash lights , and in order to save on importing Chinese actors we have caucasians playing oriental villains . Why couldn`t they have employed Burt Kwouk ( Kato from THE PINK PANTHER movies ) I ask myself ?

There is some enjoyment to be had from BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH since it`s one of those " So bad it`s good " type films complete with absolutely ridiculous scenes that defy logic such as GIs` being able to defuse atomic bombs and people managing to outrun the blast from a nuclear explosion

In Las Vegas, a crowd has gathered to watch Arnold Kramer listening to the ground. He hears something like ants crawling beneath them. The cops arrest him as he tells them to talk to Cmdr. Jonathan Shaw. Shaw led a underwater sea research project which collapsed and killed 27 men due to unknown cause. He goes to the asylum to see his Korean war buddy Kramer who has a crazy idea. The Chinese are tunneling under the country to attack us.

It has a fun opening which reminds me of the Radiohead music video. It's a great scene but it's a long slow downhill slide from that point on. The movie really wants to be too big. Getting the military involved is a bad sci-fi move. It's a 50's sci-fi Yellow Peril B-movie and not a good one. It's a silly action film worthy of Flash Gordon. It's a cartoon. Once they got into a tunnel, one could expect that they follow the tunnel back to where-ever in the network. They should be calling for backup and flood the mine with men. It's all non-sense from a sci-fi comic book.