The Lost Continent (1968)

A Hammer adventure yarn mixing plodding characterisation with rousing action in a half-successful combination. This is best seen as a precursor to the later Amicus movies like THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, and shares many common similarities with those movies, from the diverse group of people on a vessel discovering an unknown world to the giant fake-looking monsters that inevitably dominate said world. The main fault is with the slow pacing and the fact that most of the action is consigned to the last thirty minutes instead of being evenly distributed throughout the film. It takes the ship a full hour to reach the uncharted seas and there's too much talk and not enough excitement before then, but this is only a minor flaw.Based on a story by Dennis Wheatley called Uncharted Seas, this is an unashamed B-movie lifted only by an above-average cast. The monsters are terrible and of a cheap-looking DR WHO standard but for me, this can only be a highlight (I have a soft spot for poor special effects, no matter how bad they may be!). Bizarrely, the film bypasses the child audience by including some graphic violence of a man getting strangled and his neck broken, plus people bleeding profusely when being attacked by the various dangers on their voyage. The crooning music which pops up occasionally merely complements the utterly bizarre and unpredictable atmosphere that this movie possesses! Eric Porter is the initially unlikable Captain Lansen who comes through in the end; it's a wonder what this high-class actor was doing in a movie of this calibre at this time! Ageing Hildegard Knef lends some foreign glamour, while the ample charms of Dana Gillespie are on show for the last twenty minutes. Suzanne Leigh (LUST FOR A VAMPIRE) is the irritating screaming heroine who sleeps with any man she can find, and Nigel Stock (famous for his role as Watson to Cushing's Holmes in the BBC series) her father who gets eaten by a cardboard shark! Many familiar British character actors fill out supporting roles, many of them having appeared in previous British horror like Neil McCallum and Victor Maddern. Norman Eshley, Michael Ripper (sporting a hideous scar), Donald Sumptor, Tony Beckley, and Jimmy Hanley round out the main cast. The budget was actually one of the biggest that Hammer had for a film, and it shows in the ship set and the convincing-looking backgrounds; especially impressive is the "ship's graveyard", a mournful scene that the opening credits play over.The action, when it comes, is actually very good and exciting. There's a battle between modern sailors and armoured Spanish soldiers (whose swords are still no match for guns!), a violent tropical storm, a mutiny, an attack by the sentient seaweed (which makes the same noise as a dozen movie monsters of the 1950s) which leaves the victims bleeding and scarred, a hilarious attack by a giant octopus with a glowing green eye (my personal favourite), a battle between a green-eyed giant crab and a giant scorpion (here the movie turns into surreal GODZILLA-like monster action, except not even as convincing - the giant crab has to be one of the worst and most unintentionally funny creatures that I've ever seen!) plus the expected (but impressive) explosive finale.A member of the Spanish Inquisition (complete with Ku Klux Klan hat!) is included in the interests of completeness, along with an obnoxious boy king and a blubbery monster in a pit that was ripped off in RETURN OF THE JEDI. The sheer wealth of funny monsters and well-staged action keeps THE LOST CONTINENT from becoming boring; in the end it comes off as a hugely entertaining and tacky B-movie romp to be seen by those who do not judge their films too harshly and take merit in the simple pleasures of the movies.

I was so pleased to find this ratings list after I Google the Lost Continent. I had just been email my (Film Student) son to tell him I'd caught it on the Horror Channel and I thought it was a contender for the worst (British) movie ever made. This site has made me see there is a camp, crazy, delectable madness about it that I have bypassed at my peril.I shall watch it again with my son when he is home.I was also v pleased to find there are several cuts as I remember a scene with Dana Gillespie that wasn't in the version I saw on TV recently - in fact, I couldn't find her at all. Thanks for all your reviews.

Michael Carreras often attempted to broaden Hammer's repertoire during his terms there and most of the company's artistic triumphs, and interesting misfires, can be laid at his feet. THE TWO FACES OF DR JEKYLL was a serious attempt to move the Gothics beyond the traditional limits expected of Hammer that failed due to the gap between intention and execution. Having pioneered SHE and ONE MILLIONS YEARS BC and put Hammer into the Summer family crowd pleaser market - and anticipating the modern Hollywood blockbuster - Carreras took advantage of hammer's relationship with Dennis Wheatley not to churn out another Black magic Chiller but a curious mish-mash of soap-opera, disaster movie, nautical adventure and sci-fantasy.Eric Porter was hotter than a murder weapon at the time with his portrayal of the tormented, cuckolded Soames Forsyth on the BBC (and had become something of a sex symbol in the process - despite, or because of, his rough treatment of his capricious wife, Irene) so Hammer thought it worth taking a chance on him as leading man material - as they had Peter Cushing - instead of Christopher Lee or a fading American star. Porter was a top drawer classical actor - I had the good fortune to see his Malvolio in TWELFTH NIGHT at Stratford - and he has a convincingly craggy sea-faring face and a natural authority, and ain't half-bad as a man of action at the climax. His captain could give Cushing's Baron Frankenstein a few lessons in monomania - he fails to tell his crew (including, inevitably, Michael Ripper) about the dangerous cargo of Phophor B they carry. Having been beaten to the punch by Benito Carruther's sleazy character to sleep with Hildegard Knef, he cares very little when the man is carried off by an octopus. I doubt whether Porter lingered too long over the film on his CV but he's a first-rate lead and although he made an excellent Moriarity in the Granada series, might have been an intriguing Holmes. The women characters are unusually complex for Hammer. Hildegard Knef looked every inch a MILF and conveys the weary melancholy of a beaten-down woman who's had to compromise herself in the name of survival. Suzanne Leigh is one of Hammer's finest and most underrated bitches - look at the smirk she gives her hated father Nigel Stock when Porter berates him - and opens her thighs for anything with a pulse including the Sparks, Benito, and on-the-wagon Harry. Sadly, both fade from centre-stage at the climax - but there is compensation in the form of Dana Gillespie. We've suffered enough childish double-entendres with those gas balloons she wears for now, but she is a striking beauty and, as Hammer weren't overly concerned with the thespian ability of their ladies, it seems strange she never made another one for them - Christopher Lee could have sunk his fangs into her certainly. I suspect she's dubbed, but she certainly takes Harry's mind off the booze.The plot structure is oddly similar to FROM DUSK TIL DAWN with the plot starting off as one genre and taking an unexpected detour in fantasy-land. Nonetheless, it remains a curio in Hammer's output (and an indication of what ZEPPELINS VS PTEROCATYLS might have looked like had it been made) and remains the guiltiest of pleasures.

OK, I have actually heard this Hammer film described in the summary line I gave this comment. This was the first Hammer film I ever saw, although I was 6 or 7 at the time, so I had no clue who put out this little gem. My cousins and I watched it on late-night TV on Thanksgiving night and we sat there, mouths wide open and totally entranced in what was going on in the film. Sure, this isn't the best film ever released by Hammer Studios, but I'll go to my grave fighting that while it may not be a classic in the usual terms, it is most entertaining.How can you not enjoy man-eating seaweed, descendants of the Spanish Inquistion, the strangest sea-beasties you've ever laid eyes on and an opening tune that you can't get out of your head, days after viewing it! While this isn't a film I'd recommend to most classic fantasy film fans or even Hammer film fans to go out and purchase, blindly, I would recommend at least giving it a view, it certainly isn't a kind of film where you'll want to pluck your eyes out, after viewing and who knows, if you watch it in the right frame of mind, you may end up enjoying it.