The Land Unknown

Rotor Blade Runner

The Land Unknown
USA 1957
Directed by Virgil W. Vogel
Universal/101 Films 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2 Dual Edition

Well, I’ve somehow never encountered this 1950s B-movie before now and, luckily, one of the semi-regular 101 Films online sales meant I could pick the thing up cheaply and finally see it. I’m not sure why I never caught The Land Unknown on television as a kid but, catching up to it now, it’s possible that it just wasn’t that well thought of enough even to schedule it on a Sunday afternoon on the BBC (or maybe I just managed to miss it). Either way, I’ve seen it now and I’m here to tell you that this movie is actually fairly awful, not all that entertaining but, I dunno, is something of a comforting watch (I’d watch this again, even though it didn’t do much for me, it has to be said).

Anyway, this film was apparently inspired by real life events when, in 1947, warm water was discovered in Antarctica. All this is used in a very long briefing by a Navy chief to his crew who, ten years later, are going out there with thier ships, seaplanes and helicopters, to explore various sections of the South Pole to try and figure out why there are warm waters in certain areas. This opening section is, in all honesty, interminably dull and it’s only livened up when Commander Alan Roberts (played by none other than Jock ‘Tarzan’ Mahoney) and his sidekick  Lt. Jack Carmen (played by William Reynolds) are introduced to the female reporter for the Oceanic Press, Margaret Hathaway (played by Shirley Patterson) and she utters the only memorable line in the movie, “I always love to meet men, Captain”.

At any rate, two months later, Alan, Jack, Margaret and Steve Miller (played by Phil Harvey... no, not that Steve Miller) find themselves at the Antarctic and in a helicopter flying over said warm water. Alas, a storm comes along and, as they’re trying to get back to their base ship, a Pterodactyl gives them a swipe with it’s wing, damaging an essential part of their ‘copter and forcing them to crash land in a volcanic valley. Here they encounter dangerous grab-you-while-you’re-not-looking vegetation, two giant lizards, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Plesiosaur and, no less a villain for most of the movie until he kinda redeems himself at the end, the hostile survivor of an exploration team from ten years prior... Hunter, played by none other than Henry Brandon. You may remember Brandon in some famous roles such as the titular doctor in the 1940 serial Drums Of Fu Manchu, as Scar in The Searchers and  even an appearance as a tough, old timer cop in John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13. 

Now there are two big problems with the film but, in its favour is that it mostly looks nice. It was originally supposed to be a full colour A-picture but, when Universal slashed the budget and went for a black and white B-picture instead, famed director Jack Arnold jumped ship and Virgil W. Vogel, director of The Mole People (reviewed here) took over. But lets get back to those two problems...

One problem is the tone of the special effects... in some ways they’re pretty good in that, asides from the old chestnut of having two real lizards fighting, standing in for dinosaurs, the various actual ‘man-in-suit’ dinosaur creations in the film are dropped in quite credibly against both the real live action and also the various miniatures, with rarely a matt line or juddery mismatch to be seen (an illusion which even survives the beautiful Blu Ray transfer of the film, put out here by 101 Films). Sadly, the majority of the actual dinosaurs spliced in like this are far from credible in and of themselves. I mean, the Plesiosaur is fairly easy on the eye but that T-Rex (the head apparently later re-used as the dino under the stairs in the original TV series The Munsters) looks quite ridiculous and, no matter how cleverly it’s interpolated into the surrounding footage, it really doesn’t save it.

The other big problem with the movie are the practicalities. We have a big, hulking Tyrannosaurus Rex who has to back off because his seemingly tough skin is sliced apart by the rotors of the grounded helicopter (the rotor blades completely unscathed by the encounter). I mean, really? Also, although our heroes... such as they are and they’re, refreshingly for the time, ‘shades of grey’, almost anti-heroes... spend almost 25 days in the prehistoric valley (such as it is), they stay clean shaven. How and why have they got, in their unlikely helicopter full of provisions, a bunch of razor blades from somewhere? Certainly, this issue isn’t addressed in the film at all and just ignored, as our less than facially rugged protagonists explore their new domain. 

And finally, how does long term survivor Henry Brandon know that blowing in a specific shell frightens away dinosaurs? I mean, how do you find this stuff out in the first place? In this hostile environment where you’re trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to become dino food, did he just decide to blow into one within the vicinity of a giant beast for fun one day? None of these questions are addressed, let alone explained, in the course of the adventures.

And there you have it. I really don’t have much good to say about The Land Unknown. I kinda half enjoyed it and I found it comforting to switch the brain off and do nothing... which is how I suspect people who watch football (for whatever reason or motivation those bizarre people behave like that) feel when they are watching their team pit their leg woggling skills against an enemy team, maybe. So, yeah, I can’t recommend this one, in all honesty and, I can’t even say it’s not a complete dud... but I did personally get some entertainment value out of it and, as I said, I would watch this one again. I guess you’ll probably need to go with your gut on this one. 

The Mole People

Mole Keeper

The Mole People
USA 1956
Directed by Virgil W. Vogel
Universal/101 Films
Dual Edition 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2

Warning: Yeah, this one has a bit of an ending spoiler.

Okay, so The Mole People is not exactly the best of the Universal atomic age monster movies, for sure but, for all its faults, I still find it a lot more watchable than Tarantula (reviewed here), it has to be said. It is quite a sluggish movie, however and, certainly does nothing to hook the audience from the start. After the familiar Universal logo comes up, we are presented with Dr. Frank C. Baxter appearing as... Dr. Frank C. Baxter, in a bizarre attempt to fool the audience that he’s a real expert on what he’s talking about. And he talks and talks and talks. Audiences are treated to around four and a half minutes of him telling us of various theories put forward over the centuries, using illustrations on a board, consisting of speculation about what lays beneath the Earth’s surface. Frankly, I would imagine he’s already lost half his audience fairly quickly and half of the drive-in customers would have possibly turned around and driven out again. 

For those that stayed, we are then treated to some opening titles which are quite well done, with the various bits of typography rising from the foreground rim of a steaming crater, presumably implying some volcanic activity. Then we join the three main male protagonists of the movie... Dr. Roger Bently (played by the sturdy block of wood that is John Agar), Dr. Jud Bellamin (played by Hugh Beaumont) and Professor Etienne Lafarge (played by the always watchable Nestor Paiva). The three of them, with various colleagues and diggers, are in Mesopotamia trying to find out what happened to the Chero dynasty. As luck would have it, they find a tablet which points to a snowy mountain. They climb it and find the ruins of a Sumerian temple but, one of their number is swallowed by the earth, opening a long shaft beneath the surface of the mountain. They follow their now dead colleague down and discover a race of Sumerian albinos who have been living beneath the Earth for years. How they’re albinos I don’t know... they have black hair and white painted faces which tend to make everyone look like Data from Star Trek The Next Generation. The sumerians also employ a bunch of mole monsters to do the digging for their mushroom food. 

Anyway, the doctors convince the antagonistic Sumerians, by way of their torch (the Sumerian’s are sensitive to strong light) that they are ambassadors to their God, explaining away Nestor Paiva’s death at the hands of a mole monster as him being summoned back to heaven. But the king and especially the high priest are unsure and it’s a race against time as to whether they can find their way back to the surface world before tensions become murderous for them. The high priest is played by none other than Alan Napier who, ten years later, would play the role he is probably best remembered for these days, as Alfred the Butler opposite Adam West’s Bruce Wayne in the Batman TV show. Meanwhile, the female love interest for John Agar appears in the form of Cynthia Patrick as Adad. She is given to Agar as she is different from all the others, not being born an albino. Things get a bit vague here I think.

And, it’s not a bad film but certainly not a pacey one for sure. We have to wait for almost half an hour of the 77 minute running time, for example, before we even catch sight of a mole monster. Now, it has to be said the many mole monster costumes and masks aren’t really anything to write home about in terms of convincing anyone that these are genuine living organisms, as opposed to just various men in monster suits but, it also has to be said, I do like the design of the monsters and they are a bit iconic (enough that they’ve been reproduced as various Universal monster themed action figures over the years). The make up design is credited, as a lot of these movies, to Bud Westmore but, yeah, whether it actually was Westmore who did these or one of his underlings well, I couldn’t tell you. I certainly don’t take it on trust (see Mallory O’Meara’s fantastic book, The Lady From The Black Lagoon, which I reviewed here for more information on the notorious Westmore). 

Actually, the monsters are pretty much everything here, as a lot of the first half an hour is various stock footage from previous films mixed in with close ups of actors dressed similarly, as the three original protagonists climb the mountain etc. Another bit of padding comes along when an ‘albino’ girl does a long and less than sexy slave dance to fill out the time. This film doesn’t really have an awful lot going for it when you put it down on paper but there are a few other things of interest asides from the monsters. 

One is a comment from one of the male heros when they are caught in a snowy avalanche and he remarks that sitting there in the middle of the avalanche is still safer than crossing Times Square. So, wow, Times Square must have had a bit of a reputation even in the 1950s, it would seem. 

Another interesting moment of genuine horror (for those days) is when three slave girls are sacrificed to the ‘Light Of Ishtar’... aka put in a room which lets in the bright sun from an opening above. Being as they are sensitive to light, when the dead bodies of the three girls are brought out of the room, they are burned black and flaky all over and it’s kinda interesting to see this strong an image as they are carted off in a 1950s Universal monster movie, to be honest. Earlier in the film, the director even tries a ‘fake out’ jump scare but, to be honest, it doesn’t really work. He does give it a good go though. 

One last thing of note is that, in the original cut presented to the studio, Bently and Bellamin escape with Bently’s new middle earth girlfriend Adad and, originally Bently and Adad were supposed to go off hand in hand, living happily every after. This doesn’t happen in the final release print however. In a bizarre twist, just as they get back to the ruined temple above ground, there is a small ground tremor and a big column falls on Adad, crushing her to death. Apparently, this reshoot took place at the insistence of the studio because, even though Adad is clearly not an albino and is just a normal looking person, the powers that be didn’t like the idea that this was still promoting an interracial relationship... so they nipped that in the bud by dropping a column on her. 

And there you go, that’s The Mole People. It’s not the film I remembered it being and it’s certainly a bit ploddy but, if you are a fan of these 1950s B-movie monster flicks then you should still have a good time with this one, especially when, in another moment which defies audience expectations, the mole monsters rise up to overthrow their oppressors and help the heroes escape. Yep, did not see that one coming for a while into the plot, it has to be said. So The Mole People does have a lot of interesting moments, for sure. Whether you think they add up to be something more than the sum of their parts though, is up to you.