Warlords Of Atlantis

Bell To Hell

Warlords Of Atlantis
Directed by Kevin Connor
UK 1978
EMI
Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Full on spoilers I’m afraid.

The fourth and final film in Imprint’s Tales Of Adventure Collection 9, a collection celebrating the British fantasy films of Doug McClure, is Warlords Of Atlantis. Now, I never liked this film as a kid, I’ll say that up front. And it’s easy to see why I was so disappointed. Two simple words... Star Wars. 

I’d seen the George Lucas opus as it was released in the UK, right in the last week of 1977 and, well... anything else which didn’t live up to that film (which changed cinema forever, for bad or worse, depending on what particular aspect of the art/business you are examining) wasn't going to hold my attention for very long. No droids, nobody spraying laser beams at each other, no spaceship dogfights. Unfair to poor old Warlords Of Atlantis, for sure but, yeah, in this case, to this 10 year old boy... timing was everything. 

Anyway, I don’t remember sitting through it again since (even on the telly when it used to get shown regularly during the holiday seasons in the 1980s), so I really wasn’t expecting much from it now. 

I was very surprised, therefore, that I found this one more than held it’s own with two of the previous movies in this set, not to mention walking all over The People That Time Forgot (reviewed here) in terms of being an interesting movie. 

Set in 1896, the film’s two main stars are Doug McClure and Peter Gilmore as the brawn and brains team searching a certain part of the ocean for, unknown to McClure, the lost city of Atlantis. They go down in a diving bell and actually find it, while the crew in the ship above are split into two factions and trying to kill each other because of a big, gold, Atlantean statue they’ve sent up. Then they are dragged into Atlantis, along with the majority of the crew on the ship above (who are attacked by a giant octopus), under a cave in the ocean and out into one of the five surviving cities of Atlantis. 

Populated by Atlanteans who, pretty much on all accounts, seem friendly but mean them some harm. Gilmore is segregated and the two Atlantean ‘chief warlords’ (just trying to make any sense of the title here folks), played by Raymond Massey and, in her last film, Cyd Charisse, put a future seeing helmet on him and intend to drain his brain, after showing him sights of the future such as Hitler’s Third Reich which they plan to instigate (which makes you wonder if anyone learns anything after the conclusion of this movie). 

Meanwhile, Doug McClure and the surviving sailors... including Shane Rimmer playing against type (and with a beard, no less) and a young, villanous John Ratzenberger (four years before he became the regular character Cliff on Cheers)... team up with the former crewmembers of the Marie Celeste and other ships. These include McClure’s sexy love interest played by Lea Brodie (and her astonishingly adorable cleavage, shots of her used from this film in the opening credits of much missed Saturday children's TV show Tiswas) with future replacement M, James Bond’s boss, Robert Brown, playing her father (before he gets quickly devoured by a giant monster). These people have been altered and given gills so they can never leave the place of their imprisonment but, they all help in an attempt to get the heroes and villains of the upper world to make their escape, while various monsters are attacking Atlantis. And of course, adventurous, not bad for the budget, shenanigans ensue.

Now then, I wasn’t expecting much from this but, the film is interesting in the decisions it takes because, yeah, it really is dark. For instance, the girl remains behind at the end because, as I said, they’ve all been surgically altered to have to stay in Atlantis (even though they’re all breathing air in their environments, so that makes absolutely no sense!) and some of the villains of the crew get away with no consequences for their scoundrel actions either. The story just seems to heap on misfortune after misfortune but, grim as it is, McClure gives the film some uplift when it’s needed. And there’s also some unintentional humour along the way too. For instance, most of the monsters look splendid but, towards the end of the movie, when McClure and co are trying to escape Atlantis, they are attacked by a constant barrage of flying coelacanths, which looks pretty silly and you can imagine the crew just throwing them into shot at the actors off camera.

Other things of note? 

Well, there’s an absolutely brilliant jump scare in the early sequences of the movie, when a big aquatic dinosaur pops it’s head up into the bottom of the diving bell (numerous times, in fact) and tries to eat McClure and Gilmore. I wasn’t expecting it from a film like this and, yeah, it really got me. I was delighted I actually jumped. 

What else? Okay... the colours and shot compositions in the film look absolutely amazing, especially in the scenes in the higher echelons of the city, where columns shaped like inverted pyramids purport to hold the structure up and the director and cinematographer make much, brilliant use of the many diagonals to frame the various characters. 

One last thing... the Atlanteans are depicted as an alien race who have come to Earth from a dying Mars. Now the writer of this film is none other than Brian Hayles, who you may or may not remember was, eleven years prior to this movie, the original creator and writer of the Doctor Who villains, The Ice Warriors... who also hailed from that same planet. So Hayles must have had an interest in Mars at the time, I reckon. 

But that’s me about done with Warlords Of Atlantis and, I’m delighted to say I had an absolutely splendid time with it, in general, this time around. My one regret is that the film Peter Cushing was shooting at the time over-ran and so he couldn’t join this one and renew his working relationship with McClure, as was originally intended. But, this is still a nice little example (perhaps one of the last hurrahs) of British adventure fantasy of this type to get a release in cinemas and, yeah, I think it works really well. The superbly transferred Imprint disc is a little lighter on extras than the others in the set and I can’t help but think that if UK label Indicator had got hold of these, they would probably have also included the Super 8 digest versions of the movies as well. Still, this particular Tales Of Adventure box is a superb treat for fans of these kinds of cinematic marvels and Imprint have done a wonderful job. So thank you Imprint... can we have some more old serials now please?