(note - this blog was begun last night, August 7 2019) :
I had originally intended to watch another horror film tonight : Wes Craven's "The People Under The Stairs", but after last night's debacle at "Sleepaway Camp", I decided against it. Though it boasts one of the spookiest titles in all of horror, I saw "TPUTS" when it was released in 1991, and I recall being underwhelmed. It wasn't a bad movie, just not very scary and with a different tone than what I was expecting (which was pure gruesomeness). I had reserved "People" from The Libe in the same batch of movies that included "Sleepaway Camp", and though I had initially been looking forward to watching it, my experience with"Sleepaway" was so awful that I didn't wanna chance two crummy movies in a row. So, I decided to go with something that was guaranteed to be good : "The Land Unknown" (1957), chosen from my Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection Volume Two.
So far, from Volume Two, we've seen "Dr. Cyclops" and "Cult Of The Cobra", both of which proved to be not only entertaining but made with first class production values and transferred to dvd from nice clear prints. Nothing like a classic 1950s sci-fi to clear the decks and set the record straight, and so I was even more enthused when I saw that "Land" was being presented in widescreen Cinemascope and shot in black and white, the only way to photograph sci-fi, I think.
Jock Mahoney stars as a Navy Commander, a geologist by trade, who is about to embark on an expedition to the South Pole, to map out Antarctica and explore a region of warm water discovered by Admiral Byrd during an earlier trip. The movie begins in a military briefing room, which gets high marks from me, because anytime you have the military involved, you know you are gonna have some hardware and also some stock footage, both of which are indicative of great science fiction. Sci-Fi is supposed to be weird, which is why I love it, haha, so when you have a title like "The Land Unknown", and it starts out with a Navy expedition to Antarctica, you know there will be weirdness involved.
All kinds of stuff is said to be buried under the ice down there, from Gigantic Alien Spaceships to Secret Nazi Bases to Lost Civilizations. :)
As the expedition nears the South Pole, the ships must wait at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. There, Jock Mahoney and his three person team (a pilot, an assistant and a civilian female reporter), board a helicopter to fly the rest of the way to the site. As you would expect, they encounter trouble when a storm nears. Having to fly around it, they find themselves enveloped in thick fog. Visibility is soon near zero, and the pilot says they have to land immediately.
But where are they? They can't see a thing. All the pilot has to rely on is his altimeter as he lowers the chopper to what he hopes will be a smooth enough surface. The altimeter is nearing zero; the pilot tells the team members to hold on!, brace for landing! But then it passes zero and keeps going.
"We're below sea level"!, he exclaims. "200 feet.......300 feet...................500 feet".......
Holy Smokes! Would you believe they wind up at 2500 feet below sea level? Yep, and they still can't see where they've landed because of all the steam rising everywhere around them, and boy, is it ever hot and humid. On top of that, the copter was buzzed by something just before landing, and whatever it was that flew by knocked their radio antenna off and broke one of the rotor struts.
Lucky for them they have enough food to last 'em six weeks - they're gonna need it, because as they will soon find out, they are stuck in The Land Of The Dinosaurs.
Yow! (although we the viewers knew this before they did. We saw the Thing that flew by).
The Navy team isn't stuck in a time warp, ala The Twilight Zone, but rather a place so isolated that it was entirely resistant to the factors that contribute to evolutionary change. You'll have to have Jock Mahoney explain it to you because it's complicated, and anyway I don't believe in evolution. :)
No, for real. I don't believe in it, as you know if you've been following the blog for a long time. I'm not a nitwit like most folks who don't believe in evolution. I have very specific reasons, backed up by certain well-researched books and my own common sense. But anyway, for the movie's sake, Jock Mahoney's explanation will suffice.
I am writing from home, off work for several days, and this is yet another blog in the Disturbing Trend of Blogs That Were Begun The Previous Night and Not Finished Until The Next Afternoon. I need to go to Trader Joe's to stock up on supplies for my own refrigerator (which is usually empty because I'm rarely home) so I need to finish up this movie review.
I guess all you really need to know other than what I've told you is that the crew is in for quite an ordeal, once old Mr. T Rex comes stomping out of the jungle and spots their helicopter. They have enough gas to keep the rotor blades spinning, which irritates the heck out of Rex, but keeps him at arms length from the ship.
Unfortunately, there are worse critters hanging around, including a guy I referred to as "Old Ugly". And there just may be another presence besides the grimacing Dinos.
"The Land Unknown" features some excellent prehistoric jungle sets (even though we aren't in prehistoric times, remember). There's a big creepy plant that'll try to grab ya if you aren't careful. There are deep caves and bubbling volcanic cauldrons.
And somebody's been eating their food. Hey! Does T. Rex have a can opener? What's going on here?
Though it is once again more of an adventure film rather than pure sci fi (which has to have aliens or mad scientists), I nonetheless give "The Land Unknown" Two Substantial Thumbs Up, for an involving plot, decent acting and the aforementioned excellent sets. A fair chunk of change was spent on the production, I imagine.
You can't go wrong with 1950s Sci-Fi, even if it's cheesy, which this film bordered on but wasn't. In fact, it's one of the best Prehistoric Movies With "Land" In The Title that I've ever seen.
Well, I've gotta go to Trader Joe's now. I'll probably stop at The Libe, too, to look for more movies. I still have "The People Under The Stairs" checked out, but I am thinking I might skip it all together. Many other reviewers are saying what I was remembering, that in retrospect it wasn't all that good.
So, I'll find something for us to watch and I'll be back again later tonight to tell us about it.
See you then at the usual time. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoo :):)
P.S. Do ya need anything at the store?
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