The Lost Continent

Balloon Buddies

The Lost Continent
UK 1968 Directed by Michael Carreras
Shout Factory/Hammer
Blu Ray Zone A

The Lost Continent, not to be confused with the 1950s monster movie of the same name (which I rather suspect Hammer had the rights to use and remake at that time, if they wanted) is actually based on a novel by Dennis Wheatley called Uncharted Seas (I would imagine loosely, it’s not one of his I’ve read). These days and, certainly in my youth in the 1970s, Wheatley was perhaps best well known for a short string of supernatural based horror tales such as The Haunting Of Toby Jugg, The Devil Rides Out and To The Devil A Daughter (to name what are probably his three best known works) but he also wrote a load of adventure novels and mysteries over the years, which he is perhaps a little less remembered for these days (indeed, I seem to remember discovering from rummaging around second hand book stalls a couple of decades ago, that The Devil Rides Out was only the second of a string of Duke de Richleau novels, only a few of which were concerned with occult themes).

Anyway, Hammer did three adaptations of Wheatley’s works to varying success but, of the three they did, this one is probably the most interesting in terms of it being a very strange mix of elements blended together. Flashing back from a burial at sea sequence from the end of the film, the first hour of the movie, following a trippy opening credits accompanied by a completely out of place (and better for it) title song by The Peddlers, sees a group of passengers on a steam ship journey to foreign shores. As we meet the totally twisted characters who comprise crew and passengers, played by such actors as Eric Porter, Hildegard Knef, Suzanna Leigh, Nigel Stock, Jimmy Hanley, Victor Maddern and, seeing as it’s a Hammer movie, Michael Ripper... we learn various things as thier personal dramas play out, including a captain who is trying to save his career by smuggling an illegal cargo of volatile explosives (which, to paraphrase the title of an Esther Williams movie, get dangerous when wet) and ignoring a hurricane warning.

And if this wasn’t already a powder keg of a disasterous plot device, when things go awry and they all end up in that mythological area of the Sargasso Sea where old ships and seaweed float forever in uncharted waters (it’s been used as a plot device on a number of occasions, I first came across it in the Doc Savage novel The Sargasso Ogre), they are then tormented by a deadly grippy seaweed waiting to pull people to their doom, a giant octopuss, a giant crab, a giant scorpion (who, indeed, comes along to fight the giant crab) and, ultimately, two factions of people who have lived in this uncharted region for centuries as kind of ‘lost’ generations.... including a bunch of Spanish conquistadors ruled by a boy king/self proclaimed God, who feeds his enemies to the big chompy sea monster he keeps in his pit.

And yeah, it a mad mix, but somehow, when the crew team up with the tribal girl from one of the factions, played by Dana Gillespie, they manage to get free of the majority of the dangers and are ready to try and find their way back to civilisation by the end of the picture. Dana Gillespie is of special note here as she has one of the most amazing, eye catching costumes in Hammer film history, thrusting her not inconsiderable cleavage into the public eye in a way which distracts totally from the two helium balloons strapped onto her and a pair of pizza plate shoes... these being the costume accessories which allow her and the others to be able to walk on top of the seaweed without dropping below into the sea.

And it’s such a volatile mix of elements that, honestly, this is a hard film not to love. It starts off almost like a World War II drama on board the ship, where the various character back stories are trotted out... and ends in some kind of hallucinogenic trip where, in the Sargasso sections of the movie, all the shots are kind of lit or filtered so that they are almost completely made up out of dull orange and pink hues. The story, as way out as it gets, doesn’t deviate from its through line, however and, it all kind of makes sense... although some of those story elements obviously lack in realism. And all the way through we have Gerard Schurmann’s (and an uncredited Carlo Martelli’s) score trying to glue it all together in a kind of hodge podge of suitably tonally dissonant elements, as traditional orchestra pieces are mixed in with disquieting Hammond Organ, in sequences which stick out like a sore thumb but, because of the weird mix of story elements, seems almost like it’s totally appropriate to the on-screen craziness.

And, yeah, I don’t have much more to add on The Lost Continent. I think this would be up there somewhere in my top ten Hammer movies and it’s a film I tend to come back to every five or ten years. The version issued by Shout Factory on their 2020 Blu Ray release is, apparently, an extended edition which is ten minutes longer than the theatrical edition, although I believe that’s more or less the same version that’s been on home video for a while in the UK. Having said that, it does also include the shorter, theatrical cut of the film finally, if anyone wants to see what the cut down version looks like. So, yeah, I still love The Lost Continent and, at time of writing, the Shout Factory release is probably the best way to see this one.