The Land That Time Forgot

The Lost Whirled

The Land That Time Forgot
Directed by Kevin Connor
UK/USA 1975
Amicus
Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Ending spoilers.

The Land That Time Forgot is the first of two movies based on a trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, the two sequel books being The People That Time Forgot (also made into a movie) and Out Of Time’s Abyss.

One of the co-writers of the screenplay is Michael Moorcock, perhaps best known for his various multiverse novels about different aspects of The Eternal Champion, such as Elric Of Melnibone, Dorian Hawkmoon and Jerry Cornelius. Which perhaps comes as no surprise because, if memory serves, he was once an active member of the British Edgar Rice Burroughs Society. Of this film he has apparently gone on record in saying that the last 20 minutes of the film deviates wildly from the novel, due to interference by the studio.

The film stars Doug McClure as Burroughs’ hero Bowen Tyler and is set contemporaneously to when the book was written during the First World War (I believe). This one starts off when a German Submarine…  commanded by officers played by the likes of John McEnery and the future reincarnation of The Master in Doctor Who himself, Anthony Ainley… sinks a ship carrying Tyler, his love interest played by Susan Penhaligon, the ship’s Captain played by Keith Barron and a few other of a handful of survivors, who temporarily manage to take command of the U-Boat themselves for a short while.

Various shenanigans and power plays ensue until the two crews pitch up on an island populated by various dinosaurs and cavemen, representing different areas of the island in a strange set of boundaries representing, even on the life at a microbial level, different time periods in Earth’s history. At which point the two surviving sets of crew members start to work together to find a way out of the vicinity of the island as soon as possible.

I remember missing this film at the cinema when I was a kid so, when I saw the sequel a couple of years later, I was a bit confused when Doug McClure’s character suddenly turns up halfway through the film. I must have seen this film at some point in the 1980s but didn’t remember much about it when I finally got around to watching Imprint’s lovely new edition in a box set with three other similar films featuring McClure from this period. A quick shout out to anybody else who bought this Tales Of Adventure Collection 9 set within the first six months or so… the original disc of this film issued in this set has a bad VHS master of a truncated TV print which looks absolutely terrible. You will need to talk to Imprint who have now repressed the disc with the correct print and transfer on it.

Now, I was expecting the effects in this film to look absolutely appalling now but, Amicus were spending their biggest ever budget at this point and they had Derek Meddings on board as their secret weapon. So obviously the miniatures look terrific and the puppet dinosaurs look, mostly, pretty good. Now I’m not saying, as my mum did when we watched this one together, that the effects are better than Jurassic Park but, they’re not bad either and certainly not as bad as later films in this cycle. Although the first shot of the pterodactyls, three of them flying in a circle, did look a little bit like an infant’s mobile hanging above the bed.

That being said, I was genuinely impressed by the illusion created by the camera work and the editing to and from the dinosaurs and was especially impressed by the social commentary in the movie, such as when a dying styracosaurus is filmed in close up and a tear is seen falling from its eye.

And then we get to the ending of the film, which would have driven me mad if I’d seen it in the cinema when it opened. Almost the entire crew leaves in the sub, which gets destroyed in a, possibly sentient, volcano... killing them all. Only Doug McClure and Susan Penhaligon are left surviving, stranded on the island in 1916, tossing the flask carrying the narration for the movie we’ve just seen inside of it.

So Amicus presumably had their eye on the sequel, at least. A sequel I remember as not being nearly as good as this movie. But, I have to say, I really enjoyed this one, The Land That Time Forgot, more than I have than at any other time I’ve watched it and I have to give credit to Australian label Imprint for being the only game in town to date where I can actually pick up a copy of this British/American co-production on blu ray. So well done to them.