The Land Unknown (1957)

The "lost world" sci-fi/adventure movie "The Land Unknown" is available today on DVD as part of Universal Studios' Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection, just one of 10 films in this impressive box set. Perhaps not coincidentally, it shares a disc with another film, "The Deadly Mantis," with which it has much in common. For starters, both Universal films were released in 1957 (May for "TDM" and August for "TLU"), both were shot in B&W, and both, strangely enough, clock in at precisely 78 compact minutes. In addition, the two films both feature prehistoric monsters, a polar setting (the North Pole for the earlier film, Antarctica for "TLU"), the use of well-integrated stock footage, some dry, scientific narration at the film's opening, and a female character who happens to be a magazine reporter. And both, happily, are as fun as can be; intelligent, well-realized films that hold up very well today.In "TLU," a Navy scientific team heads to Antarctica to perform a mapping and exploratory mission; specifically, to explore the warm inland sea that Admiral Byrd's crew had discovered a decade before. But trouble arises when a chopper containing Commander/geophysicist Hal Roberts (future Tarzan star Jock Mahoney), pilot Jack Carmen (William Reynolds), machinist Steve Miller (hmmm, why does that name seem so familiar?, and played by Phil Harvey) and pretty "Oceanic Press" reporter Maggie Hathaway (Shawn Smith, who would go on to appear with Jock in "Tarzan the Magnificent" BEFORE Jock assumed the Tarzan role, and who here looks more than a little like the young Janet Leigh) is forced down by a sudden storm...and a collision with a pterodactyl! The helicopter lands in the titular "land unknown": at the bottom of a crater, 3,000 feet below sea level, with a temperature above 90 degrees and a sultry, humid, steaming jungle environment. Unable to fly out due to a busted rotor, the unfortunate quartet must contend not only with the terrain's prehistoric inhabitants--carnivorous plants, a T. rex, enormous lizards, and a water-dwelling, flippered "elasmosaurus"--but also with Dr. Carl Hunter (Henry Brandon), a survivor from the Byrd expedition who has been marooned in this inhospitable landscape for a decade, has reverted to savagery, and who now kidnaps Maggie so as to possess a cavegirl of his own....Shot in CinemaScope and boasting very passable special FX, "The Land Unknown" certainly does look better than one might reasonably expect. Utilizing beautiful matte paintings in the backgrounds and lush vegetation and swirling steam to the fore, the filmmakers have succeeded in creating a fully convincing Mesozoic landscape ("...a pretty effective lost world," says Michael Weldon in my "Psychotronic Encyclopedia" bible). The dinosaurs--although only NON-stop-motion models or, in the case of that T. rex, a man in a suit--are just passable enough to avoid the dreaded "cheese factor," and the battling reptiles (actually monitor lizards in close-up, and a seemingly unavoidable convention in this type of film) are well integrated onto their backdrops. In a word, the FX in the film are adequate, and often endearing, and always artistically done. Director Virgil Vogel (who had helmed the Universal "classic" "The Mole People" just the year before) gives his film a memorable look and even manages to generate some real suspense near the conclusion, as our team of heroes races to repair that chopper as T. rex slowly advances on them. "A paradise of hidden terrors," proclaimed the original poster for the film, and Vogel does a fine job of keeping those terrors and jolts coming. In all, a hugely entertaining affair, and of course, a perfect film to watch with your favorite 10-year-old...another similarity the picture shares with "The Deadly Mantis." And as a bonus, "The Land Unknown" provides all us men with what might be the most memorable pickup line in screen history, courtesy of he-man scientist/nerd Commander Roberts: "Although I know basically women consist mostly of water, with a few pinches of salt and metals thrown in, you have a very unsaltlike and nonmetallic effect on me"!

I guess this is one of the classics because scenes from this movie often appears at other places especially the really cheezy looking T Rex.The plot is somewhat based on the alleged story admiral Byrd told of after his Operation High Jump, that he saw vegetation growing, and seen a wooly mammoth beyond the pole. Few men and a woman decides to travel the same route, and finds a land that time's forgotten.I'm sorry to say, but that's about all that's going for this movie. Far from the quality of Willis O'Brien's King Kong, this movie has no quality to it at all. The actors are crappy, chic is ugly, and story is dismal.Don't waste your time on this fail of the century. You can find better things to do.

The Land Unknown is a low-budget black and white sci-fi film from the mid-1950s about an exploratory crew who stumble upon a "tropical" (and unknown) part of Antarctica. Supposedly, geothermal activity in this tiny area of Antarctica has melted through the ice cap and created this artificially warm, "tropics-like" area where giant carnivorous plants grow and dinosaurs amble about. The dinosaurs are giant lizards, a tyrannosaurus-looking creature, a plesiosaur-looking creature, some gigantic gila monsters (filmed in forced perspective), and some flying reptile things. Hmmm - no herbivorous dinosaurs? Anyway, our exploratory crew has helicopter trouble and is forced to descend into a cloudy maelstrom of clouds down 3,000 feet into this tiny "tropical" area. While they deal with their dying radio battery and hungry dinosaurs, they must find some way to contact the outside world to come rescue them. All the while, the heat and humidity cause their clothes to disintegrate, which was a delight to see on actress Shirley Patterson (a former Miss California) as her clothes gradually become more and more revealing.Overall, if you can forgive the cheesy dinosaurs, it's a decent sci-fi / dinosaur flick, well worth watching if you like B-movies.

Today, a little over a week from the day I saw "The Land Unknown" for the first time, I am still wrapped in the binding chains of utter disappointment. I had read and heard a lot about this film and even seen the trailers for it and I knew right from the start that it was a B-dinosaur picture. Well, I personally LOVE B-dinosaur pictures. Especially when the special effects are cheesy at best. There's a certain level of charm and humor to films like this that I, for some reason, find appealing. But still, even to the kingdom of the fans, there are entries of schlock that come across as disappointing.The plot is pure formula—just what I expected. We have news of a discovery in the Antarctic Circle and a government expedition to be sent in to explore the area. We have verbose scientists, macho tough guys, and pessimistic mechanics along with a lone female companion (what a surprise) to explore the area. They come in by helicopter and are forced to land in a warm, tropical jungle in the middle of the ice that is populated by…gee, guess what…dinosaurs! Yeah, it's all formula, but under the right kind of treatment, "The Land Unknown" might have turned out to be a passable entry for the right fans. Maybe I'm just not the ideal fan and maybe I've become too sophisticated over the years, but this was a mediocre endeavor at best.It was not the dinosaurs I didn't like. I loved the dinosaurs. They were just what I was expecting—and frankly hoping—for them to be: cheesy. The tyrannosaurus rex in this B-movie is one of the most notoriously bad man-in-a-rubber-suit cases ever put on film. The costume for the dinosaur is so stiff and so erect and the head so massively out of proportion and with that silly looking grin on its face and so strange when in comparison to those itty bitty little legs, that you can't resist laughing at it. There were at most, ten seconds of passable appearance from the T-rex. The pterodactyl that attacks the helicopter early in the film is an even worse effect: it looks like cardboard and is completely immobile. Along with a corny-looking elasmosaurus, there are the slurpasaurs: the graphically enlarged lizards. All fun, but not even they cannot save the film.But what I didn't like was the plot-movers: the humans in the foreground. Instead of focusing on these laugh-raising dinosaurs, the camera stays too long on the badly-acted characters running about in the jungle set. No, I was not expecting them to be Oscar-caliber characters with Oscar-caliber performances. Of course that's not what I was expecting. But even for a B-grade dinosaur picture, the characters are flat out dull and boring. The dialogue they are given is simply put abhorrent and there's not an interesting moment at all from them. We have the typical love subplot and it fails as well. Again, if we cut away from them just a little more often, this might have been forgivable. But we don't and it's not. And what shocked me most was how calm these characters were given their situation. In most B-movies, the B-grade actors attempt a corny look of shock or awe when they see the fake monsters. It brings a grin to the viewer's face. But here there's none and we don't grin. In fact, we lower our jaws when the characters look at the approaching tyrannosaurus rex or open-mouthed giant lizards with the utmost serenity. No emotion. No attempted emotion. They look far too serious. We imagine we probably look a lot like them as we watch this simply put dully-crafted "gem." And thus, it's boring.So ultimately, "The Land Unknown" just results, at least for me, as being a less-than-average B-monster flick with very few moments of guilty pleasure entertainment, which is what any person would venture into the film for in the first place.What was the problem for me? Was it too cheesy? Or not cheesy enough? I'm still not sure.