 |
 |
|
 |
||
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
 |
Wednesday, July 16, 2008Mighty Gorga Release Year: 1969Country: United States Starring: Anthony Eisley, Megan Timothy, Scott Brady, Kent Taylor, Gary Kent, Greydon Clark, Lee Parrish, Bruce Kimball. Writer: David Hewitt Director: David Hewitt Cinematographer: Gary Graver Music: Charles Walden Producer: John Hewitt Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us Here's a quick way to make yourself appreciate The People That Time Forgot much more than you might otherwise appreciate it. Go watch The Mighty Gorga. In fact, watching The Mighty Gorga will pretty much improve the standing of any film, no matter how reviled, by comparison. Well, except perhaps White Pongo. But short of White Pongo and maybe White Gorilla and Ultraviolet, pretty much any movie looks good when compared to The Mighty Gorga. But don't get the wrong idea. There are plenty of movies that look better when compared to The Mighty Gorga, but a lot of those movies aren't going to be nearly as enjoyable torturous as this unique tale of a down on his luck showman looking to salvage his business by capturing and showcasing a legendary giant gorilla. Stop me if you've heard that one before. The Mighty Gorga comes from a time in cinema history that will probably never come again. The most tempting comparison is to the world of shot on video DIY horror films, but that comparison doesn't bear close scrutiny. On the surface there are similarities. The Mighty Gorga is a product of an era in low budget filmmaking that ran from the sixties until sometime in the 1970s and traces its roots back to the fast-buck junk films of the 30s and 40s -- like the aforementioned White Pongo and White Gorilla -- and the low-rent sci-fi films of the 1950s. The big difference is that those films, even when awful, were often made by professionals and sometimes under the aegis of an actual production studio. The 1960s saw the rise of a sort of alternate Hollywood, based largely out of Florida but certainly not limited to the Sunshine State. Unlike today's crop of DIY video movies, which are primarily the product of a guy and his friends operating out of their living room, this was an actual industry, and their films played across various distribution circuits back when things like regional distribution areas existed.
Most of these films were cranked out to fill screens at drive-ins throughout the South, and the men who made them were as much carnival hucksters and showmen as they were filmmakers. In fact, in some cases, they were literally carnival hucksters. This era in film produced a number of names that most fans of obscure film don't consider to be obscure: H.G. Lewis, Harry Novaks, Doris Wishman, and perhaps the king of them all, David Friedman. By hook and by crook, these people forged a movie industry totally outside the boundaries of Hollywood, and many would maintain, also totally outside the boundaries of any actual talent. But the fact remains that this was a real industry, producing films for theatrical runs and often employing a core circle of actors who were never very good but always seemed available. The Mighty Gorga is one of the few films of that particular type that wasn't shot in Florida, even though for most of the running time I assumed they were doing location work in the Everglades. But it comes to us courtesy of one of one of the "great" names of the era, David L. Hewitt. Hewitt, like many of the men and women working in this arena, was a jack of all trades, master of none: writer, producer, director, effects supervisor. His early work includes now infamous cult "classics" such as The Wizard of Mars, Monsters Crash the Pajama Party, and Journey to the Center of Time -- one of my all-time favorite movie titles because, frankly, what the hell does it mean? What is the center of time? Noon? Amazingly, his later work purely in the realm of special effects includes some movies even casual movie fans ended up seeing, and some work that was actually good: Willow, Leprechaun (hey, compared to The Mighty Gorga, it's a mainstream film), Shocker, and even Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Of course, there was also Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, which was made like ten years after the first film and yet had special effects that were ten times worse. His work on these films is amazing because his work on all his other films is just so awful. The Mighty Gorga is probably the magnum opus of his self-written, self-directed, self-produced special effects extravaganzas, and watching it, all you will wonder is how the hell the guy ever scored a gig on a film being done by ILM or Disney.
And so we open with shots of a horrifying sacrifice, as a listlessly writhing maiden is chained to an altar while post-production sighs of either terror, protest, or boredom are looped in. In prompt fashion, she is plucked up and eaten by the film's title monster, Gorga, a gigantic ape that is realized by taking a guy, putting him the cheapest novelty store gorilla costume possible (complete with googly eyes), then filming him from a low angle as he peers out from behind some bushes. It's going to be tough to top such a thrilling opening, but Hewitt does his best by cutting to a circus performance that is slightly less listless than the sacrifice. But times are bad at the circus, as some big time corporate circus is going around and buying up all the top acts so they can shut down the independents. This leaves manly-named circus owner Mark Remington (Anthony Eisley) on the verge of bankruptcy, as is explained to us in an extremely long-winded monologue by a clown who is in the process of wiping off his grease paint as he talks to a concession vendor, yet never actually removes any grease paint from his face. The clown, though a relatively unimportant addition to the cast, is played by Bruce Kimball, who does double duty as said clown and as the leader of the mysterious tribe that sacrifices women to mighty Gorga and curses the intrusion of the white man, even though the tribe itself is played entirely by white people or, at the very darkest, a couple Latinos. Mark has a last ditch plan to save the circus from going out of business, at least for a little while. And it turns out that his plan seems to involve spending a whole lot more money than it would cost to just pay off the debts. On the third-hand story of a guy who was talking to a guy who works for a Africa-based big game trapper named either Tonga Jack or Congo Jack, Mark plans to fly to Africa, hook up with Jack, and help him capture a legendary giant ape, so tat Mark can then purchase him to put in the circus as the new headlining act. Mark doesn't seem to understand just how many jugglers and carnival strippers he could hire for that amount of money. So off we go to Africa, which looks a lot like a clean, space age airport that you might find in California, complete with air conditioning and pay phones. I've clocked some hours in third world airports, and I can't imagine how I've always managed to miss the ones that are this nice, instead always ending up in some dingy, hot hellhole with malfunctioning equipment, a guy asleep on the tarmac, and two-week flight delays. I assumed that any airport you fly into in order to meet a guy named Congo Jack would be of similar quality, but I guess that's just my First World snobbery. I also assumed that most Congolese airports would probably be full of black people, or at least contain a few black people. But I was wrong there, as well. It's almost as if this movie isn't filming in Africa at all, but that can't be right, because after some stock footage of planes taking off and landing, Mark walks out the door of the airport and says, "Well, here I am in Africa!"
Once in "Africa," Mark attempts to meet up with Congo Jack, or maybe it's Tonga Jack, but not before he tours a local zoo, which is surprisingly nice. I would guess that, for Africans, going to a zoo full of monkeys and antelope would be sort of like me going to a zoo full of house cats and sewer rats. But they needed to pad out the running time, and this way we get a nice look at all the animals that inhabit Africa. Eventually, Mark heads off to meet Tonga or Congo Jack, but first there's an hilarious bit where he meets one of the three black men in all of Africa and attempts to speak to him in some pidgin form of whatever language they speak in whatever country this is supposed to be. I assume it's The Congo, but only because one of the characters is named Congo Jack. But since "Congo" was often used in crummy movies to mean "pretty much all of Africa, except the parts which are the Sahara," we could really be anywhere. And if the guy's name is actually Tonga Jack, then we're way off the map, because even though my geography doesn't enable me to label every country on an unmarked globe, I'm pretty sure Tonga is not in Africa. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's about as far away from Africa as is physically possible. Anyway, after a couple stuttering sentences in the local tongue, Mark is interrupted by the black guy who says, "I don't understand what you are saying. Do you speak any English?" in a perfect Sydney Poitier accent. That's pretty much the film's one stab at intentional humor, and predictably enough, it's not as funny as any of the unintentional humor. It turns out that the local, George (Lee Parrish), works for Tonga Jack (at this point, I revised my early waffling; they're definitely saying Tonga Jack), but that Tonga Jack is missing, possibly having returned to Tonga. Instead, the business is being run by Jack's daughter, Tonga April (Megan Timothy). April explains that her father disappeared while searching for the legendary Gorga. Also, there is an unscrupulous competitor who keeps trying to force her to sell the business, even going so far as to set her prize water buffalo on fire then show up seconds later going, "I heard your prized water buffalo was set on fire." Empathizing with Rachel, Mark whips out a thousand bucks in cash and a cashier's check for another five thousand, and pays off the woman's debt. Once again, perhaps someone should remind Mark that he's spent probably over ten grand at this point on a scheme to save his circus from bankruptcy. One gets the feeling that Mark could pretty much drive anything into bankruptcy no matter how many giant gorillas and trapeze artists he had working for him.
Mark, April, and George decide to head off into the jungle to capture Gorga and, with any luck, find and rescue Tonga Jack. How exactly three people plan to transport a twenty foot tall gorilla with googly eyes through the jungle, and then later across the ocean to America, is probably not worth wondering about. April's rival, Morgan, has decided that the put-upon trio is seeking some lost treasure, so he decides to shadow them on their quest. Unfortunately, we too must shadow them on their quest, and at this point, the film settles down into a really long series of shots featuring April and Mark (George, being the most competent, stays behind to guard the camp) in their Woolworth safari outfits walking through whatever park they filmed this movie in. And this goes on for a long while. Worst of all, it's not even intercut with any gratuitous stock footage of interesting animals. Every now and then, they'll stop and say, "My God! Those are giant prehistoric mushrooms!" but they never show us any giant prehistoric mushrooms, even though chicken wire and paper mache must have been within the budget of this film, assuming as I do that the budget was roughly equal to the budget we had for building a homecoming parade float my senior year in high school -- and I managed to make a paper mache football player kicking a paper mache eagle on that budget! About the only effort The Mighty Gorga makes to convince us we are in a prehistoric lost world is scattering some tissue paper flowers around the bushes. Things get even worse when Mark and April begin the tortuous mountain climb. This effect is achieved by having them pretend to struggle mightily up what is obviously a very mild incline, only the camera is tilted so as to make it appear much steeper. This goes on forever, with the mind-bending tedium only broken from time to time by the movie cutting to scenes of the high priest jabbering away to Gorga, who shows up in the village from time to time with no real purpose other than to allow the film to use the same shots of "natives" running away a couple times. Actor Bruce Kimball enunciates his lines in a way I can't quite describe. I guess...imagine that you are a first year student in a community theater drama class, and your mentor is a horrible actor who insists that you enunciate with passion and clarity every single syllable. Or, if you haven't the background to know what that ends up sounding like, recall Futurama's Dr. Zoidberg's acting in The Magnificent Three when he says, "GOOD MOR-ning MEE-stir VICE PRES-ee-dent!" It truly is a tour de force.
After what feels like an eternity, April and Mark reach the top of the plateau, and all our hard work watching them make fakey grimace faces while climbing over very small rocks pays off when the two are attacked by a tyrannosaurus rex! Now there are good special effects, and there are bad special effects, and there are awful special effects. But this one...this one transcends all that has come before it and may very well be the nirvana of awful special effects. Mark and April cower helplessly on a projection screen while the screen is menaced by what looks like one of those plastic toy dinosaurs mounted on the end of a stick. You know the ones -- they sell them at museums all the time. It's a crude dinosaur upper body attached to a stick, usually with a trigger so your kid can make the mouth open and close. No exaggeration, this special effect is no more advanced than those toys. That it's incredible size is realized by making it manage a projected screen image of Mark and April shot from a long distance only sweetens the deal. As hard a slog as this film has been up until this point -- and believe me, even i almost bailed out -- this one scene more than makes up for all the horrible scenes of Mark walking around a zoo and Mort the Clown rubbing at his clown make-up. But wait, there's more! Because Gorga shows up to fight the T-Rex! Yes, it really is as beautiful as you'd think. Where as the rest of the film nearly reduced me to tears of bitter defeat and surrender, this scene brought tears of joy to my eyes and made me believe that yes, despite all that is wrong in the world, there is still much that is good and worth fighting for.
From here on out, the movie trucks along at a pretty brisk pace. Well, brisk compared to everything that came before this point. Mark and April are captured by the tribe. They find Tonga Jack. There is talk of sacrifice. It all goes wrong and Gorga smashes things. There's a desperate race through some tunnels where they discover there really was a treasure, and that it's made up mostly of Mardi Gras beads and guarded by one of those skeletons you put in your fish tank. Then a volcano erupts for no good reason other than volcanoes always erupt at the end of lost world adventure films, and there's footage of a cool stop motion dragon from one of the old Italian Hercules films. How they got through this whole sequence without using that footage of the two lizards with fins taped to their backs fighting with each other that appeared in dozens of other cheap films is a great mystery of cinema. Then after all that, the movie remembers to deal with evil Morgan and that there is a competent black character who needs to be killed off. And I guess Mark uses the plastic treasure to pay off his debt or something, because Gorga just sort of wanders back off into the jungle.
What we have here, folks, is a bona fide classic. This is the sort of film that separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls. Anyone can laugh their way through Plan 9 from Outer Space, and most who would read this site can get through far worse. But The Mighty Gorga is a true challenge. Pretty much everyone agrees that it's the worst King Kong rip off ever made, even worse than the 1976 King Kong where the monkey die and everybody a-cry, or that one where Linda Hamilton brings King Kong back to life so he can save the future from the terminators. Pretty sure it was something like that. But forget it. The Mighty Gorga is so much worse than any of those that it's hardly worth mounting a comparison. The is bad filmmaking at its most potent. Bad movie moonshine, if you will. It tests the viewer on every level, really makes you earn that scene where the witch doctor beseeches Gorga and Gorga fights a plastic dinosaur toy. But the reward, should one endure, is not unlike the plastic treasure the cast discovers at the end of the film. In fact, one could argue that The Mighty Gorga itself is an allegory for the trials of watching The Mighty Gorga, making it one of the very first "meta" films that are so common today. Or it could be a movie about a guy in a ratty monkey suit. Let's start first with the acting. To put it bluntly, no one is very good, although Bruce Kimball is at least memorable. But seriously, I've seen better acting from tough actin' Tanactin. Anchoring the film is heroic Mark, as played by Anthony "One Episode" Eisley. Much of his career is comprised of one-time appearances in various television shows. In 1959, however, he appeared in Roger Corman's classic B-movie from 1959, The Wasp Woman. After that, he started spacing out his one-off appearances as minor characters in TV shows with appearances as minor characters in movies, mostly of relatively low profle, though he did manage to show up in some recognizable titles, including the Elvis film Frankie and Johnny as well as The Navy Versus the Night Monster, where he got to act alongside Mamie Van Doren's bombshell figure. So really, not a bad career.
He also started appearing in David L. Hewitt films, including Journey to the Center of Time and the lost world epic The Mighty Gorga. He continued this pattern up until the early 1990s, when he finally retired. Now it's easy to make fun of Eisley, especially based on his performance in The Mighty Gorga. But forget tat. Eisley is the kind of actor I'd really love to do an incredibly long interview with. Between appearing in one episode of practically every TV show ever made and appearing in films from Corman, Hewitt, and Ted V. Mickels, the man has got to be full of stories about the pitfalls of being a working actor. It would be far more interesting than the usual A-list interview where they just gush about whatever awful film they have coming out that month. The directors who make movies like this can sometimes be overly sensitive and pompous about their work (I have no idea if that applies to Hewitt, mind you), but the actors almost always have a good sense of humor about it. And when they pass on, all those stories go with them, never recorded. Eisner's female co-star might not be as interesting, as she apepared in hardly any other films besides The Mighty Gorga. Megan Timothy seems to have no idea what to do, as one minute her character is suspicious of Mark, and the next minute she is wearing a bosomy summer dress and making nice with him, and then the next scene, with no reason at all detailed, she's back to being mean. Huh. Dames. Either way, she gives a pretty horrible performance. Luckily, Bruce Kimball is there to enunciate "Oh Mighty Gorga!" as if he's reciting a foreign language phonetically. Kent Taylor, who plays her father, delivers the closest thing this film has to a good performance, but he's only in the film at the very end, so what's the point? He's another one who would be great to talk with, though. I wish there were fewer biographies of big stars and more biographies of guys who did things like appear in The Mighty Gorga or go make films with Al Adamson in the Philippines.
In fact, The Mighty Gorga, as boring and as incompetent as it is, is the type of film that really interests me -- if not as a viewing experience, then certainly as a subject for discussion. I'm fascinated by the ways in which these films got made. Listening to a guy like David Friedman talk about the old Florida film industry is something I can do all day, and even though it was made in California, I can't imagine that a film like The Mighty Gorga has any shortage of similar anecdotes surrounding it. It does make reviewing these kinds of films hard, though, because my enthusiasm for what happened behind the scenes generally colors my enjoyment of what is actually shown on-screen, infusing the film with more value than one gets simply by enduring scenes of two people stepping over rocks for ten minutes. I mean, Hewitt went on to do visual effects work for some huge movies -- some more successful than others. Was the Gorga versus a T-Rex scene in his portfolio? What was Bruce Kimball thinking? When they wrote all the "white man is evil" dialog, did they know all their African natives were going to be played by white people in Aztec wigs? Where the hell did they find that atrocious gorilla costume? Even I wouldn't claim that The Mighty Gorga is an enjoyable viewing experience, but I found it fascinating never the less, for the same reasons I'm fascinated with films like Death Curse of Tartu or Santa Claus Meets the Ice Cream Bunny or whatever weird stuff Doris Wishman was cranking out at the time. These truly are the heirs of Ed Wood, Jr., filmmakers who forge ahead no matter how ludicrous their solutions to working around their lack of budget and/or talent may be. The results are not always pretty, but they are usually fascinating if you are a scholar of truly obscure cinema. My only regret is that there is no commentary track for The Mighty Gorga. I would love to hear from someone involved in the production regarding what sort of an experience it was and how the film ever managed to see the light of day. So no, The Mighty Gorga isn't a good movie. Except for Bruce Kimball's performance and the monkey versus dinosaur scene, it's not even entertainingly bad. But it's the sort of movie you should have a look at never the less, because it's awful in such an interesting way. Heck, The Mighty Gorga at its worst is still better than most shot on video microbudget horror films at their best. None of them have a guy in a googly eyed gorilla suit fighting a plastic novelty dinosaur. And anyway, as bad as The Mighty Gorga might be, how bad would a film have to be to steal The Mighty Gorga's special effects shots...  Labels: Science Fiction, Series: Lost Worlds and Sunken Continents, Year: 1969 posted by Keith at 4:39 PM | 11 Comments Monday, July 07, 2008The People That Time Forgot Release Year: 1977Country: England, United States Starring: Patrick Wayne, Doug McClure, Sarah Douglas, Dana Gillespie, Thorley Walters, Shane Rimmer, Tony Britton, John Hallam, David Prowse, Milton Reid, Kiran Shah. Writer: Patrick Tilley Director: Kevin Connor Cinematographer: Alan Hume Music: John Scott Producer: John Dark Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us When The Land That Time Forgot ended, it left hero Doug McClure and heroine Susan Penhaligon stranded in the tropic prehistoric lost world of Caprona in Antarctica, fated to wander the strange world of dinosaurs and cavemen while wearing big-ass furs and mukluks. Would rescue ever come? Would their hopeless message in a bottle, thrown into the tumultuous seas at the end of the earth, ever be found, and if so, would it be believed? Well, we know from the first film that the account of the strange adventure to Caprona was found (though how the account, written by one man, could include detailed descriptions of things that happened while he was not around, is a question best left not asked in a movie about a u-boat crew fighting dinosaurs), and two years later, the answer to whether or not anyone would believe it. Unfortunately, the answer came in the form of The People That Time Forgot, a phenomenally boring follow-up that reduces Doug McClure's role to little more than a cameo, kills off Susan Penhaligon in between the two movies, and seems to think that what people really wanted from a sequel to The Land That Time Forgot was fewer dinosaur fights and caveman rumbles, and more scenes of people walking across gravel-strewn landscapes. The inaction begins with Ben McBride (Patrick Wayne, son of John), airplane pilot and friend of Bowen Tyler (McClure, remember -- his character did have a name), preparing to mount a rescue mission after having received word of the message in a bottle account of the events from the last film. McBride encounters relatively little skepticism either from the scientific community, the Navy, or the press. It seems accounts of Caprona have popped up from time to time in the past, and this is their best chance, using the navigation information Bowen recorded from their journey on the German submarine, to pinpoint the exact location of the mysterious land and, if possible, rescue Lisa and Bowen. But unlike the ill-fated experiences of the Germans and Brits who wound up there by accident, McBride is determined to mount a properly provisioned rescue mission, employing the latest cold weather ships, radio equipment, and an airplane. Accompanying him, besides assorted stoic British sailors, are his trusty sidekick mechanic, a biologist, and Charly Cunningham (Sarah Douglas), a reporter for the London Times whose inclusion in the expedition was one of the provisions of the newspaper financing the mission.
Things start off well, both for the film and the expedition. The ship gets McBride close enough to use the plane, and after successfully navigating through the high mountains, the pilot and his crew soon find themselves on the unmistakable outskirts of Caprona. The weather turns warmer, there are a few more trees (though nothing like the lush primordial forests in the last movie), and they are attacked by a stiff, fake looking pterodactyl. Truly we are home. The battle forces the plane to make an emergency landing, and while the mechanic repairs the damaged rudder and makes "comical" comments, McBride and Charly set out on foot in a basically random direction in hopes of finding Bowen and Sarah. They encounter a dinosaur here and there, but for the most part, their trek is exceedingly dull. I can't really put my finger on why, even when there are dinosaurs on screen, it seems like there aren't dinosaurs on screen. I think it's because there's no real sense of interaction with the creatures. The last film had all sorts of crummy looking composite shots so we could see Doug McClure sneaking around dinosaurs. This time, it feels like we're watching stock footage. In fact, yeah. That's exactly it. With the exception of one scene where Sarah Douglas takes a photo of a stegosaurus, the whole film feels like one of those old impoverished jungle adventures, like White Pongo or White Gorilla -- films comprised almost entirely of shots of the cast walking through a set, intercut with stock footage of elephants and giraffes. This isn't stock footage (though I suspect one or two shots of being unused footage from The Land that Time Forgot), but it feels like it. Until the very end, the dinosaurs are little more than parts of the set that cause the cast to make terrified faces, except for Patrick Wayne, who makes the same face he has for the entire film. At the end, they finally fight a dinosaur, but it's really too little too late. This movie needed to be packed with scenes of our heroes fighting dinosaurs, and it's not. Eventually, they begin to reach the more temperate regions of Caprona, here realized by location shooting in an actual forest (the Canary Islands, to be exact). Where as the last movie relied largely on a mix of location work with sets to create a believable if somewhat fantastic jungle, this movie looks like it was filmed in a pretty average clump of trees. Funny how that happens sometimes. The actual tropical island isn't a very convincing tropical island, where as the last film -- which I think was filmed on a set and probably in a London park -- was more interesting looking. Sort of like how The Greatest Story Ever Told was shot in Arizona and Utah, because the filming they did on location in the actual Holy Land didn't look Holy Land enough. However, the location shooting also lends the film a more wide-open feel, though given how little impact that has, it would have been nice if they'd skimped on location shooting and used that money to buy more crummy dinosaur props or a tiny fur bikini for Sarah Douglas.
It's also notable that, from this point on (which means, for most of the movie), the dinosaurs are gone until the very end. Instead, our intrepid trio (one forgets that the biologist is even along for the ride, from time to time) encounters sexy, big-breasted cavegirl Ajor (former David Bowie backup singer Dana Gillespie, who played a similar role in Hammer Studio's 1968 lost world adventure film, The Lost Continent). Ajor is far more advanced and bosomy than the cavemen we saw in the last movie, and what's more, she speaks English! At least that's an improvement over the last film. When faced with choosing between a big-boobed cavegirl who speaks in pidgin English or a thick browed caveman who shrieks a lot, I think the choice is clear. Also, she understands feathering and advanced hair teasing techniques. All of these skills were taught to her, McBride discovers, by Bowen Tyler, who Ajor reveals has been captured by an even more advanced race, the Nagas. It turns out that the Nagas are so advanced that they, completely isolated from all cultural influence in the rest of the world, have evolved to dress and fight exactly like medieval Japanese samurai, right down to the katanas, flag bearers, and big kabuto helmets with gruesome face masks. Despite all those advances, however, they still live in caves and are ruled over by a fat, hooting, grunting dude in a fur loincloth (big Milton Reid, once again). It's as if the nation of Japan decided one day that they wanted to be ruled over ruthlessly by George the Animal Steele. But instead of ripping open a turnbuckle cover with his teeth, Sabbala pencils in Charly and Ajor for sacrifice to the...wait for it...yep, the angry volcano god. Then he throws McBride and the biologist, Norfolk (Thorley Walters), into his skull wall prison. In the prison, McBride is finally reunited with Tyler. And now, with a couple of two-fisted, good ol' American boys on the job, these merciless rulers of Caprona's crappy non-dinosaur infested southern region are primed for a beat-down.
By 1977, England's Amicus Productions was dead. The People That Time Forgot was really not so much a production as it was one of those nervous twitches a corpse sometimes makes. The only thing that even got the movie finished was money from American International Pictures, who had already been propping up Amicus for their last two Kevin Connor directed adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs' adventures. The People That Time Forgot feels much more like an AIP film than it does an Amicus film, and the budget must have dwindled to the point where even Kevin Connor couldn't scrape together enough crappy special effects to fill the movie as he had The Land That Time Forgot or 1976's At the Earth's Core. So almost all the action involves people. Sometimes they are cavemen, sometimes, for some inexplicable reason, they are samurai. There are only a couple of really crummy dinosaurs. It turns out that if your movie has dozens of crappy looking dinosaurs, it's probably going to be pretty cool. But if your movie only has one or two crappy looking dinosaurs, then all you can think about is how crappy it is that you are getting so few crappy dinosaurs. And even if you make your peace with the fact that you're not going to get any dinosaur action, you still have to deal with the fact that there's really not much caveman action either. McBride has a run-in with a tribe that has been chasing Ajor, but it's short-lived and fairly thrill-free. So even if you reconcile yourself to the fact that there is no dinosaur action and precious little caveman action, then you find yourself depending on John Wayne's son versus lost world samurai ruled over by a mostly naked fat guy painted green.
And even then, you're going to be disappointed, because most of the samurai action is restricted to scenes of guys walking back and forth. That they are wearing samurai armor for no good reason doesn't make it any more interesting. Also, I don' think samurai wore their armor 24/7. Like, if you are on guard duty in the cramped caverns of your poorly lit cave dungeon, you really don't need battle armor and a giant helmet with a faceplate. I guess they took the time to evolve the ability to think of Japanese armor, so they decided they were going to get their money's worth. While I imagine samurai armor would help you in a battle against cavemen, it's probably less effective against a T-Rex or any of the other monsters we know inhabit Caprona. Or at least, that inhabited it in the last movie. So maybe this is really the only time they get to break it out and show it off, since even though it's effective against cavemen, they are probably too primitive to admire your craftsmanship. The lack of dinosaurs without anything to fill the void is the film's major misstep. The next major misstep is reducing Doug McClure to a cameo. The structure of The People That Time Forgot is very similar to another colossal letdown, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. OK, so maybe Planet of the Apes was a more prestigious sci-fi film than The Land that Time Forgot, but the overall result for someone like me is the same. Beneath the Planet of the Apes is about a guy who wasn't in the last film, who travels to the mysterious lost world-esque planet of the apes, has some dull adventures, then ends up underground in a jail where he meets Charlton Heston reprising his role in a cameo. And then they break out, there's some fist fights, Charlton Heston dies, and everything explodes.
The People that Time Forgot plays out almost identically. Patrick shows up in Caprona, has some dull adventures, finds Doug McClure in a cave. There's some fist fights, Doug dies, and then stuff explodes. Aping Beneath the Planet of the Apes is not a good move, and reducing your single remaining interesting character to a ten minute cameo at the very end of the film is even worse. Actually, scratch all that. This film's major misstep is that it casts Sarah Douglas in a role, has her character set up to be sacrificed to a primitive volcano god, and never puts her in a skimpy slave girl outfit! Having almost no Doug McClure action is justifiable if you say, "Sorry, but we spent the little money we had on convincing Sarah Douglas to wear this tiny loin cloth. We couldn't afford any more Doug McClure after that." That'd be fine. But no. She stays fully clothed the entire time. A travesty! Sarah Douglas, in case you weren't around at the time, is probably best known either as the evil chick in Superman II or as the evil chick in Conan the Destroyer -- two films in which she was more skimpily clad than she was in this movie, where she was in a land of scantily clad cave people. Still, despite my dissatisfaction with her sacrificial attire, Douglas is the closes thing this movie has to a good performance. She has an easy charm about her -- surprising since I've been taught from all her other roles to be terrified of her.
In her place, the scantily clad chore goes to Dana Gillespie. Gillespie was a former future pop icon. The one-time girlfriend of Bob Dylan, she was supposed to be some sort of folk rock star. That didn't pan out. Some years later, she became David Bowie's pet project after she sang back-up vocals for him during the Ziggy Stardust days. She completed an album, but I don't think it flew off the shelves. She had slightly better luck on stage, appearing as Mary Magdalene in the original run of Jesus Christ Superstar. In 1968, she appeared in one of Hammer's several "lost world" mini-epics, The Lost Continent. It was nearly ten years later when she appeared in The People that Time Forgot, allowing her breasts to do most of the acting for her. Still, it should be noted that her feathered hair is almost as big as her boobs, so it's not like I'm reducing her to a single, degrading aspect of her physical appearance instead of judging her performance more rationally. But then, it's also hard to judge a performance when your only lines are, "Tyler!" and "You are...friend of Tyler?" Given my druthers, I would have had Gillespie and Douglas switch costumes. Oh yeah, somewhere in that mix is Patrick Wayne. Coincidentally, much of his filmography seems comprised of small parts in the films of John Wayne. what are the chances, huh? Well, Patrick Wayne is about as good an actor as his old man, only he doesn't have any of the charisma or macho allure than compensated for the elder Wayne's limited range. In 1977, Patrick had arguably his biggest role, that of Arabian sailor Sinbad (he's even less Arabian than Lou Ferrigno!) in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. In greater scheme of Sinbad movies with special effects by Ray Harryhausen, Eye of the Tiger is a lesser affair, though still plenty of fun. Plus, it features a pretty solid supporting cast that includes Jane Seymour at the height of her hotness (not that her hotness has ever diminished) and scruffy Patrick Troughton (Scars of Dracula, the second Doctor Who, and who, as far as I know, has always been awesome but never had any height of hotness).
That along with a bunch of stop motion monster effects was more than enough to make most people fail to notice how stiff an actor Patrick Wayne was. Thing is, a movie like that needs a stiff in the lead. It needs a piece of petrified wood off which it can bounce all its fantastic stuff. After all, those are Ray Harryhausen movies. Few people remember who directed them, or starred in them. Heck, I was out of college before I even realized different guys had played Sinbad in the various movies. Because everyone remembers the special effects, and everyone went to the films for the special effects. To have some talented lead actor getting in the way would have distracted from the films' appeal. The People that Time Forgot should operate under the same premise. Unfortunately, there's very little fantastic stuff to distract from Wayne's stiffness. With no dinosaurs and minimal caveman action, all we're left to focus on is Wayne's performance. Well, Wayne's performance and Dana Gillespie's boobs. I failed to be sufficiently interested by either (as a scantily clad cavewoman, Gillespie is passable, but she's no Caroline Munro or Raquel Welch). And there's no talented supporting cast to pick up the slack. Sarah Douglas gives it her all, but there's only so much you can do with a script that gives you nothing but "your character walks across a field, then across a gravel pit." Patrick Wayne is a wooden hero with no charisma and no awesome monsters to make you forget he's there. People who knock Doug McClure's one-note performances should take a look at Patrick Wayne to see what stiff really is. McClure exudes an easy sort of charisma and believability. Patrick Wayne exudes nothing. Plus, he looks a lot like Charlton Heston, way more than he looks like his own dad. I have some conspiracy theories about that one, and I consider them at least as likely to be true as theories about super-powered WWII Nazis operating UFO bases at the North Pole.
Some people consider this movie better than its predecessor. I cannot count myself among those people. While I love The Land that Time Forgot, I hate this movie. Well, maybe I don't hate it, but I sure don't like it. I was bored silly through most of the film, and it falls into that rare category of film I say you could give a miss. In fact, it reminds me in many ways of War Gods of the Deep, another surprisingly disappointing film I want to like more than I do and that sounds much cooler in summary than it actually is to watch. I mean, John Wayne's son and the evil chick from Superman II versus samurai cavemen is a good pitch, but Amicus was too broke to deliver even the cheap-ass fun they delivered with The Land that Time Forgot, and AIP seemed to be interested in little more than getting something on the screen and ending their relationship with the doomed British studio. It would have been nice to see Amicus, who had given the world so many entertaining (and entertainingly bad) films go out on a higher note, but then, the same could be said of Hammer, who bit the dust around the same time and with a similarly wretched film to serve as their swan song. If Amicus was the scrappy Hammer wannabe, then The People that Time Forgot is their ode to Hammer going out on To the Devil...A Daughter. In retrospect The Land that Time Forgot would have been a poetic place for Amicus to end -- with volcano erupting, boat sinking, and its stars facing a seemingly hopeless situation. Instead, they decided to show us the aftermath of the collapse, and give us Milton Reid in a skimpier outfit than Sarah Douglas (or Dana Gillespie, for that matter).  Labels: Director: Kevin Conner, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Studio: Amicus, Year: 1977 posted by Keith at 6:14 PM | 11 Comments Saturday, June 21, 2008Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis Release Year: 1969Country: Mexico Starring: Santo, Blue Demon, Jorge Rado, Rafael Banquells, Agustin Martinez Solares, Silvia Pasquel, Magda Giner, Rosa Maria Pineiro, Griselda Mejia, Marcelo Villamil, Carlos Suarez, Juan Garza, Hector Guzman, Olga Guillot Director: Julian Soler Writers: Rafael Garcia Travesi, Jesus Sotomayor Martinez Cinematographer: Heberto Martinez Music: Gustavo Cesar Carrion Producers: Raul Martinez Solares, Jesus Sotomayor Martinez Original Title: Santo contra Blue Demon en la Atlantida Ten years into his film career, Santo had already faced off against zombies, witches, mummies, mad scientists, vampires of both the male and female variety, hatchet-wielding ghosts, homicidal table lamps, and Martians. So it was only a matter of time before the denizens of Atlantis got to the front of the queue. When that time came, Santo would also find himself mixing it up onscreen for the first time with one of his greatest adversaries from -- and I use the term advisedly -- the "real world" of lucha libre. And just who would that adversary be? Well, I could try to be coy about it, but the journalistic specificity of Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis' title would render the effort redundant. By the time of making Atlantis in 1969, Blue Demon had already starred in a series of successful films for producer Luis Enrique Vergara. And Santo, working for a variety of studios and producers -- including, for a time, Vergara -- had chalked up an impressive slate of twenty-plus features (though those, thanks to Santo's apparently indiscriminate practice of just following the paycheck, were wildly varying in quality). So when Sotomayor productions got the notion to team the two together in a film, it must have seemed like a formula for pure box office gold. The only stumbling block, however, was the small matter of a bitter rivalry between the two wrestlers that stretched back some 16 years. The fact that Santo had lost his title to Blue in an ego-bruising defeat back in 1953 was reportedly something that still rankled the Enmascarado de Plata all these years later, and, while he would go on to work with Blue in a series of films, the two would never be what you could call friends. Blue, for his part, may have found equal cause for resentment in the fact that, while he was arguably the superior athlete of the two, he was perpetually relegated to the number two spot thanks to the iconic status that Santo enjoyed in Mexico - a status that was as much due to Santo's roles as a movie star and popular comic book hero as it was to his skill in the ring.     The dilemma for Sotomayor was that, because of this legendary rivalry, fans who paid to see Santo and Blue Demon in a movie together would come with the expectation of seeing them fight one another. The simple solution to this would seem to be to cast one wrestler as the hero and the other as the villain, but the fact that both were presented as heroes both in the ring and in their own movies (though both had earlier in their wrestling careers been rudos, or bad guys) made this problematic. After all, the conceit of lucha movies was that the actual wrestlers who appeared in them were not playing roles, but simply appearing as themselves, and the way that they were presented on screen was meant to carry over into how they were perceived off of it, and vice versa. As I described in my review of Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters, the solution that producer/writer Jesus Sotomayor Martinez, his co-writer Rafael Garcia Traversi, and director Julian Soler came up with would set the tone for many of Santo and Blue Demon's screen pairings to come. And that solution was to have Blue Demon start out the film as a good guy, and then, through circumstances beyond his control, become the slave of some otherworldly force that would cause him to turn against his pal Santo, in turn forcing Santo to repeatedly beat the living tar out of his good chum Blue Demon before, through heroic efforts, effecting his return to normalcy. Once that was achieved, both luchadores could clock out the film's remaining minutes with a united display of good guy derring-do -- until the next film, at which point the process would start all over again. Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis (or, more accurately, Santo contra Blue Demon en la Atlantida) is, in fact, the most honest in its presentation of this arrangement of all the films, as it is the only one to use "vs" in the title rather than the more collegial "and".     In addition to marking the beginning of a successful screen partnership, Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis also serves as evidence of a couple of distinct trends that were developing in Santo's movies as the sixties came to a close. American audiences who are familiar with Santo only through those few films that were dubbed into English by K. Gordon Murray (in which Santo was referred to as "Samson") might understandably consider his customary milieu to be one of B grade gothic horror. And while films like Santo vs. the Vampire Women or Santo in the Wax Museum definitely represent a dominant strain in Santo's filmography, the sheer volume of his output practically necessitated that his cinematic offerings fall within a wide range of genres, including westerns, crime thrillers, science fiction, and even -- ostensibly at least -- comedy (which is to say, the less said about Santo vs. Capulina, the better). In 1966, a new genre was added to this list when, in an effort to cash in on the Bond craze, the studio America-Cima Films teamed Santo with a young pretty boy actor named Jorge Rivero for a pair of spy films titled Operation 67 and The Treasure of Montezuma (or, if you actually want to find them, Operacion 67 and El Tesoro de Moctezuma). Though these films were never exported to the U.S. and remain virtually unknown here today, they are actually among the most well-appointed of Santo's films, blessed with obviously higher budgets than was the norm, and boasting a slick, colorful look that easily put them in the league of the better funded Bond knock-offs coming out of Europe at the time. In addition to introducing Santo to the thrilling world of espionage -- and, presumably, fans of such films to Santo -- the Rivero spy films also effected a marked transformation in the masked one's on-screen persona. Up to that point, the Santo seen on screen had for the most part lived up to his name, as a saintly figure who existed only to help those in need. In fact, 1961's Santo contra el Rey de Crimen, one of the only films to refer to Santo as having any kind of conventional, superhero-type "origin", makes the ascetic aspect of his character fairly explicit. As represented in that film, Santo's mask was not meant to conceal his identity so much as obliterate it, thus removing the incentive for worldly rewards such as fame and personal adoration, and insuring that Santo's good deeds were performed out of only the purest motives. Following along these lines, almost all of Santo's early films positioned him as an adjunct to a traditional romantic lead - one who, when not putting scissor holds on zombies, would spend all of his time tooling around alone in his lab waiting for the call for help to arrive. He never got the girl, or even tried to, nor did he have much interaction in the social lives of the other characters.     Of course, when it came time to retool Santo for inclusion in a swinging sixties spy caper, that monkish demeanor would have to be done away with completely. And so, in Operation 67's opening minutes we were immediately thrust into a world in which a swimming trunks clad Santo necked on the beach with an adoring bikini babe, only to callously dispatch her with a snap of his fingers when duty called. From this point on, the saintly Santo of old was conclusively banished to the past, and no future Santo film would be complete without the masked one being provided with a love interest or a sexy girlfriend -- and would frequently include scenes such as the one in Vengeance of the Vampire Women where Santo can be observed lounging by the pool while being served by his voluptuous and revealingly attired maid. In addition, Operation 67 and its sequel insured that, between battling with the usual vampires and werewolves, every third or so Santo feature from that point on would feature him as an agent of Interpol or some other secret organization, doing battle against the forces of international espionage. This path lead to its logical conclusion in 1973, when Santo starred in an actual Eurospy film, the Spanish-produced Santo vs Dr. Death, which had him rubbing elbows with such genre regulars as Helga Line and Mirta Miller.     Of course, these later spy efforts weren't mounted on anywhere near as handsome a scale as the Rivero films, which brings me to that second trend that was taking hold in Santo's movies as the Seventies dawned. As time went on, it seemed that Santo's film career was increasingly falling into the hands of producers whose primary goal was to create features without providing more than the absolute minimum of original content, a practice that resulted in films heavy with recycled and borrowed footage, as well as endless taxing minutes of soul-deadeningly aimless filler. This practice would become even more pronounced as the decade progressed, and dwindling audience interest in the lucha genre made it the provenance of independent producers and small time production companies who could only turn a profit on the films by churning them out as quickly and cheaply as possible. This resulted in the genre pioneering new lows in film padding, forcing audiences to watch their wrestling heroes performing the type of mundane tasks that are boring enough when one has to do them oneself, and no less so when observed being performed by Santo, Mil Mascaras or Superzan. (Though, granted, the practice did on occasion provide for some wonderful moments of unintentional surrealism.) Not that Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis comes anywhere near that level of slackness in its execution, of course. But the tendency is still well in evidence. And to helpfully illustrate that fact, the film kicks off with a dizzying seven minute montage of repurposed film stock -- including newsreel footage, scenes from an old black & white science fiction movie, that A-bomb test footage you always see in movies from the Fifties, and, most strikingly, a number of Eiji Tsuburaya's special effects shots from Godzilla vs. Monster Zero. Over this a narrator tells us... well, I'm not sure, exactly. To be honest, the currently available DVD of Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis lacks English subtitles, and I don't speak a lick of Spanish. But the gist of things is that some character calling himself Achilles has holed himself up in Atlantis and is firing missiles launched from the Moon, I think, at the Earth, threatening not to stop unless he is made king of everything forever. As one might expect in a film of this type, these events lead to a group of severe looking middle-aged men in crisp suits convening around a large conference table with some flags scattered about. More stock footage is viewed on a projector, and the theory is put forward that Achilles, despite his apparent relative youth, is actually an escaped Nazi scientist who's still hung up on that whole "race of supermen" idea. One of the agents of the international organization that owns the conference table and projector, a scientist named Professor Gerard (Rafael Banquells), is apparently the only person with the know-how to put a stop to Achilles' plan, and it is decided to partner him up with the organization's key operative, Santo, aka Agent X-21.     Scenes from Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis...and also Godzilla vs. Monster Zero A lengthy wrestling sequence follows featuring a match between Santo and Blue. This is a rarity in the Santo and Blue Demon films, because in subsequent films featuring the two, if the two were shown in the ring together at all, it would typically be in team matches in which they fought side-by-side. That said, this match is a particularly brutal one, comprised a lot more of bare-knuckled punches to the face than it is of the wrestling holds or flips you'd expect to see. In fact, though the whole Santo vs. Blue Demon feud may have been played up for drama, I do have to say that the fights between the two stars throughout Atlantis are pretty darn realistic, with both participants appearing, shall we say, particularly motivated. It's hard to imagine that both didn't bring home quite a collection of scrapes and bruises at the end of the shooting day. Another noteworthy aspect of this ring sequence is that it takes place in an actual arena with a live audience, whereas later Santo films would simply feature fights shot on a small soundstage with overdubbed crowd noise and an announcer commenting on the enormity of the crowd, the luxuriousness of the venue, the viciousness of the blows, Santo's fine fighting trim, and anything else that the evidence of the eye might contradict. Anyway, somewhere during the course of the fight, some of Achilles' minions sneak into the arena and switch both Santo and Blue Demon's water bottles with drugged ones. Santo doesn't drink, but Blue does, and goes down like a well-oiled side of beef as a result. Disguised as ambulance attendants, Achilles' men then spirit Blue away to Atlantis, which appears to be in a shallow underwater cave just a few yards from the beach. A couple of shots from Atragon are inserted in an attempt to spruce things up a bit, but we soon see that Achilles' lair is basically just a rocky cavern decorated with some colored curtains and a couple of Roman-style busts on pedestals. Achilles (serial Santo supporting actor Jorge Rado), who looks like a hippy college professor, shows us some more stock footage -- this time of Olympic gymnasts and sprinters -- in an attempt to sell Blue on the whole master race idea. Then he has Blue fight a burly bearded minion in trunks in a scene that makes Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis the closest thing to a peplum in either Blue or Santo's filmography. Still unable to sell Blue on how awesome life in Atlantis is, Achilles settles on simply strapping Blue to a table and hypnotizing him with a disco ball.     Now under Achilles' control, Blue calls Santo and arranges a meeting, saying he has information about Achilles. Santo jumps into his sports car and zooms off to the roadside rendezvous. However, soon after Santo has hopped into Blue's snazzy red Thunderbird convertible, he realizes that all is not right with his burly BFF -- and when Blue refuses to pull over, begins to punch him repeatedly in the head, which is probably not the most advisable course of action given that they are speeding along a narrow and winding road overlooking a steep cliff. Blue finally pulls over and the two pile out of the car for a savage smack-fest that is eventually joined in by a gang of Achilles' henchmen. Just as it looks like Santo is about to have his ass permanently tied up in a nice little bow and handed to him, help arrives in the form of female Agent X-25 (Magda Giner) and her gun. Like most henchmen in Santo movies, Achilles' men came to the party only expecting a little wrestling and hand-to-hand, so when someone introduces bullets into the mix, they are quick to make their getaway with Blue in tow. And then it's time for romance back at X-25's apartment. But first, X-25 must retire to her boudoir to slip into something more comfortable, which provides occasion for an astonishing two minute sequence during which Santo sits on X-25's plastic-sealed couch and stares blankly at her TV while a black & white musical number from an older movie plays out on it. This sequence is actually even more hypnotizingly dull than the very similar "nightclub" scene from Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters, because that later film's recycled musical footage was at least in color, and was of an actual production number, while this is just some rather large woman singing a song -- albeit quite dramatically -- on a sparsely decorated soundstage. Anyway, X-25 finally comes back and the two begin to do a little necking on the couch. After a fade-out, we return to find that Santo has apparently fallen asleep with his face imbedded in X-25's armpit.     That's entertainment!: Santo watches TV Santo, following the path highlighted by Achilles' foot soldiers, dives into the ocean and swims his way to Atlantis in a nice underwater sequence that would be re-used in Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters. (And which is the first bearer of Atlantis' clear message that scuba gear is for pussies, since, throughout the film, everyone who makes the swim to Atlantis has to wear scuba gear to do so, except for Blue and Santo, who can do it in their civvies and wrestling masks.) Soon, with the help of Agent X-25, who is actually a double agent for Achilles (oh, spoiler, sorry), Santo is captured and strapped to Achilles' disco ball hypno-table, by all appearances soon to become yet another pawn of the madman. And, sure enough, we next cut to Professor Gerard's lab, where an evil Santo barges in and starts wrecking the joint. But, wait -- then the actual Santo shows up and -- in just one example of lucha cinema's countless dramatizations of the conflict between man's dual natures -- has it out with his double, finally skewering him on that old standby, the random pointy thing that's sticking out of the wall for no reason. It seems that Santo was rescued at the last minute by one of Achilles' female operatives named Juno, a wise-beyond-her-years pregnant teenager who has fallen for Santo's irresistible charms. (Okay, part of that description is inaccurate, based on me confusing this with another movie, but I don't think that it's the part about Santo's charms being irresistible.)     Finally, X-25 and Blue Demon show up to finish the work that the evil Santo double started, but Juno bitch slaps X-25 in the back with a bullet and Santo easily overpowers Blue. (Juno, by the way, is played by Silvia Pasquel, the daughter of Rafael Banquells, the actor playing Professor Gerard. I so call nepotism!) Professor Gerard then de-hypnotizes Blue by shoving a light in his face while Blue displays a facial expression reminiscent of that worn by a dog being given a bath. Then Juno and her dad -- I mean, Professor Gerard (in scuba gear, natch), along with Blue and Santo (not) hop into the drink and dog paddle their way to the lost continent. At this point it is revealed that the product of the highly specialized scientific knowledge brought to the mission by Professor Gerard is a pretty basic-looking movie time bomb, which the quartet set to explode upon their arrival in the cave/Atlantis/Mu from Atragon. Many of Achilles' henchmen are dispatched by Blue and Santo before Santo engages in a climactic battle with the man himself. Just as Achilles is about to canonize Santo with one of those Roman busts, Blue picks up a nearby javelin (no doubt left behind by one of those Olympic athletes) and impales Achilles with it. As Achilles expires, he undergoes a rapid aging effect that seems to have been achieved by wrapping Saran Wrap around his face. Then Atlantis blows up as Blue and Santo, watching from a helicopter above, smile with the deep satisfaction that can only come from seeing your enemies reduced to flaming pieces of particulate matter.     I've got to say that, while re-watching Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis for the purposed of this review, I enjoyed it quite a lot more than I did the first time I saw it. That said, it still isn't one of my favorites of the Santo and Blue Demon team-up movies -- among which, in my opinion, are some of the very best films in the lucha genre. What is lacking in it for me can be expressed in one simple word: monsters. I think that the makers of Atlantis were aware of that shortcoming, and that, as a result, the surfeit of poorly realized creatures in its immediate follow-up, Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters, can be seen as a a sort of over-reaching compensatory gesture. Still, if you're looking to see Santo and Blue Demon doing what they do best, you couldn't do much better than this one, because the fights are indeed plentiful and intense. (What, you thought I meant acting?) For me, though, I prefer to see Santo and Blue on the same team, despite -- or perhaps even because of -- the much documented ill will between them. It might just be that the fact that they would rather have been tearing one another's heads off provides that element of friction so necessary to the chemistry of all great screen couples. There's that constant feeling of "will they or won't they?" -- though in most other cases that question refers to whether or not the characters are going to kiss, and here it refers to whether they are going to start punching one another in the skull, preferably while in a moving car speeding along a narrow, winding road bracing a steep incline. Whatever. You knew what I meant.     So would I recommend Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis? Predictably, I would. But not without recommending that you first see more accomplished and monster-rich examples from its stars' oeuvre such as Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolfman, Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dr. Frankenstein, and, of course, Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters. Even without any fantastic creatures, the novelty of seeing Santo and Blue going through their paces on-screen never loses its novelty for me and is enough to get me through any one of their adventures, no matter how lackluster its trappings may be. I think that's the gift that lucha cinema gives to the world. It's simply too deeply weird to ever seem commonplace, and as a result seems to deliver fresh surprises with every return visit. Labels: Action: Luchadores, Country: Mexico, Espionage, Science Fiction, Series: Oceans Against Us, Stars: Blue Demon, Stars: Santo, Year: 1969 posted by Todd at 12:53 PM | 3 Comments Monday, June 09, 2008At the Earth's Core Release Year: 1976Country: United States and England Starring: Doug McClure, Peter Cushing, Caroline Munro, Cy Grant, Godfrey James, Sean Lynch, Keith Barron, Helen Gill, Anthony Verner, Robert Gillespie, Michael Crane, Bobby Parr, Andee Cromarty. Writer: Milton Subotsky Director: Kevin Connor Cinematographer: Alan Hume Music: Mike Vickers Producer: John Dark Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us So there have been a couple reviews now, possibly more, where I've claimed that the crummy movie in question would have been much improved had the two leading stars been replaced by actor Doug McClure and actress Caroline Munro. I figured, then, it's high time I reviewed a crummy movie that did cast McClure and Munro in the lead roles, and when one's talking crummy films featuring either of those stars, it's hard to find one that's much crummier than At the Earth's Core, a low-budget attempt by England's Amicus Studio to bring to life Edgar Rice Burrough's Pellucidar series of novels. Pretty much every pulp fiction writer, from Burroughs to Verne, wrote a hollow earth, adventures beneath the surface of the planet adventure. Burroughs, in fact, wrote several, and these attempts to do Journey tot he Center of the Earth one better comprise the Pellucidar books. Burroughs wrote seven books in total, one of which is actually a cross-over adventure with Burrough's most famous creation, Tarzan. And in 1976, a guy named Eric Holmes, with the blessings of the Burroughs estate, wrote a brand new Pellucidar adventure. He did it again in 1980, though that time, he seems to have forgotten to get permission, and the publishing of the book was blocked by the Burroughs estate until 1993. I've always thought Burroughs' writing seemed to be fairly well geared toward adaptation into film. But for some reason, almost every adaptation of his work ends up being either so different that it hardly even relates to the source material (the Tarzan movies) or is just ends up being a colossal failure. At the Earth's Core, an attempt to adapt the first of the Pellucidar novels, falls into the latter category. Well, it falls into the latter category for the greater portion of humanity. I, however, and probably not surprisingly, happen to enjoy the film. I don't love it, but I am certainly charmed by its offbeat tone, its astoundingly inept special effects, its plot that manages to be both incredibly streamlined and meandering at the same time, and most of all, its game performances from a trio of genre stalwarts who give it their all despite the fact that they must know this movie is, to steal a description from Douglas Adams, a load of dingo's kidneys.
Peter Cushing stars as bumbling doctor Abner Perry, a turn of the century (that'd be the turn of the 20th century, whippersnappers) inventor who has built himself a gigantic drill he intends to use...well, it seems like he mostly intends to goof off with it by boring through a mountain on a bet. But one assumes that there are more visionary applications for the world's most amazing drilling car. Accompanying Perry on the trip through the mountain is American financier and all-around lovable man of action, Doug McClure. Well, technically, his name is David Innes, but when has Doug McClure ever been anyone but Doug McClure? Sound of mind, able of body, good looking in that "lovable lug" sort of way, and just as capable of piloting a magnificent drill-o-kabob as he is punching a caveman in the face. In short, if you are doing anything -- from drilling to the center of the earth to exploring a lost world populated by rubber dinosaurs -- McClure was the man you wanted along for the ride. And it's a good thing Perry brings Innes along, because it doesn't take long for the drill to prove too effective, sending the unlucky duo tearing through the earth's crust and into Pellucidar, a fantastical kingdom that exists within the hollow earth. Hollow Earth theories have been around for...heck, how long? Probably for as long as there have been theories about the Earth. Considering the incredible depths of some of the world's caves, and the often bizarre creatures one sometimes sees issuing forth from their mouths, it's not hard to understand how pre-historic -- end even more recent -- man would have conceived of some source for these creatures, some hitherto unseen world deep below the surface of the known world. In a time before caving technology, lights, and Iron Moles, even the largest of caves was an impenetrable, black abyss, and the surface of the earth itself could be no more than scratched by man. But at times, it would open up in earthquakes, spewing forth smoke and lava (and, presumably, monsters) and swallowing people whole. As such, the center of the earth becomes the location of countless mythological underworlds, from the Greek Hades to the Christian Hell.
As a movement, however, the hollow earth theories really gained steam in the early 1800s, when a cat named John Symmes Jr. put forth the notion that the Earth consisted of a crust 800 miles thick, with massive openings at either pole. Beyond the crust exists a habitable inner surface, with the core of the earth actually acting as a sun. Symmes intended to mount an expedition to one of the poles to prove his theory, but nothing ever came of it. Another expedition was planned by a newspaper editor and explorer named J.N. Reynolds, who actually managed to visit Antarctica, though not the pole itself. When, later in the 1800s, people started actually making it to the poles, the theory that there were openings into the hollow earth, hundreds and hundreds of miles wide, didn't quite pan out. But history is full of beliefs that continue to find adherents long after pretty much every piece of evidence collected has disproven them, with the mantra of "cover up" always being a convenient defense against, "We went to the North Pole and there was no giant hole leading to a world that exists inside the earth." Dismissed by actual science, hollow earth theories found new purchase among the pulp writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. As each subsequent writer took a crack at this world-within-a-world concept, the claims regarding what was actually inside a hollow Earth became more fantastic. Famed science fiction pioneer Jules Verne probably did more to sensationalize and spread the hollow earth gospel than any crackpot scientist or explorer when he published A Journey to the Center of the Earth in 1864. Several years prior, in 1838, Edgar Allan Poe used hollow earth theories as the basis for his story , The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. And even before that, in 1825, Faddei Bulgarin wrote Improbable Tall-Tale, or Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which he wove a description of three concentric layered societies existing within our planet. And in 1914, with the publishing of At the Earth's Core, Burroughs seized on the hollow earth idea and used it as the basis for his series of involved and detailed adventure novels.
Despite setbacks in the scientific realm, however, hollow earth theories did not become the sole pervue of the science fiction authors. They enjoyed and, in fact, continue to enjoy sudden flare-ups in popularity from time to time, fueled by the fact that even the deepest hole in the world isn't very deep. The Russians initiated the Kola Superdeep Borehole in 1962, an attempt to reach the point in the earth's composition where the crust meets the mantle -- the "Moho" as it's known. After twenty-five years of drilling, the project was terminated after reaching a depth of 7.5 miles -- about 1.7 miles short of the goal. But even so, it'd take a lean and hungry man to drop down the hole and see what was to be seen, as it's only nine inches wide. Picking up where the Russians left off, and spearheaded by Japan, the international Integrated Ocean Drilling Program seeks a similar goal but made the task easier by starting on the ocean floor, building upon work done by the Deep Sea Drilling Project and the Ocean Drilling Program. A similar scientific expedition was attempted, I think, in the early 1980s, when me and my buddy Robby decided we were going to dig the deepest hole ever. We hiked way out into the woods down by this caves and began our glorious attempt. I think we got about a foot down before we hit bedrock. Shortly thereafter we all saw Red Dawn, and convinced that nuclear annihilation was unavoidable but that we would somehow survive, along with the girls on whom we had crushes, he revived the hole project with the intent of turning it into a bomb and nuclear fallout shelter. It never got any deeper, but we made it wider, covered it with a warped piece of plywood, and stocked it with important supplies, like a pocket knife, a canteen full of water (that had been in the canteen for probably two years), and some Star Crunches. The war with the Russians didn't come, of course. Well, not yet. When it does, I'm sure the shelter will still be there, ready to protect us so that we might emerge from the rubble and build society anew, preferably a society involving sexy cavegirls. The IODP, incidentally, employs the services of one of the largest research ships ever built -- nicknamed Godzilla Maru. There are, obviously, untold secrets yet waiting to be discovered. Psychic pterodactyls ruthlessly oppressing a race of stone age humans may not be among these secrets, but they make for better movies and adventure novels than if we'd had a movie in which Doug McClure extracted core samples from the Kola Borehole and discovered interesting things about the rate at which the temperature increases as one drills through the crust. Yes, fascinating from a scientific standpoint, but more fascinating than Caroline Munro in a tiny loin cloth?
Psychic pterodactyls actually aren't that far off from what some modern-day proponents of hollow earth theory claim exists within the crust of our planet. Some claim that it is the realm of ascended spiritual masters; others say it's where UFOs come from. Atlaneans live there. Some even claim that at the end of WWII, Hitler and the remaining members of the Reich escaped to the hollow earth. Last I heard, the entrance to the hollow earth realm -- which someone decided to name Agartha, since it needs a suitably cornball new age name -- was at Mount Shasta in California. But this could have been updated to Nepal, Tibet, or some other suitably mystical location. I believe according so leading scientific researches, the only way to get there is to astrally project. And although hollow earth theories have persisted for centuries, it is perhaps no big shock to learn that the most ridiculous and new agey "facts" sprung up fully formed in the late 1960s. Back in Pellucidar, however, Innes and Perry have their own troubles to contend with. It turns out that this realm within the earth is populated by all manner of poorly realized prehistoric creatures. As soon as Perry and Innes venture forth from the Iron Mole, they are attacked by dinosaur-like monsters that make the dinosaurs from The Land that Time Forgot seem amazingly lifelike. These creatures are realized by having a man in a monster suit stomp around a jungle set in slow motion, while McClure and Cushing sort of hunch over and dart back and forth for what seems like an eternity. Soon, the two begin to unravel the mysteries of the society that exists in this strange land. The Mahars are a race of psychic pterodactyl looking things, and they rule over a race of stone age humans, including one scantily clad Caroline Munro as Princess Dia. When they handed out princessing duty, Dia got the short end of the stick, being appointed princess of a race of slaves. Keeping the cavemen in line is a third race of pig-faced thugs.
Needless to say, when a couple Victorian-era bad-asses from the surface come to Pellucidar, armed with an umbrella and cigars, there's gonna be a whole lot of whoop-ass and Doug McClure getting the puffy sleeves ripped off his Dr. Frankenstein shirt. Innes and Perry are captured and forced to join the slave march, during which Innes commits a social gaffe that causes him to get on the wrong side of Dia. But you know things are going to work out for them, and until they do, Innes is going to spend his days escaping and punching stuff, and Perry is going to try to unravel the mysteries of the Mahar's power over Pellucidar. And then there's going to be a big revolution. Well, as big as Amicus can ever afford to mount. And probably, a volcano or something will erupt. At the Earth's Core was released in 1976. The next year, Star Wars was released. If ever there was a crystal clear illustration of the quantum leap forward in special effects technology that film represented, this was it. At the Earth's Core is dirt cheap, albeit in a fun and imaginative way. The monsters are man-in-a-suit effects that wouldn't have passed muster in even the cheapest Japanese Ultraman series. Hell, even 1970s Doctor Who probably felt a little bit embarrassed to see what At the Earth's Core had to offer. And yet, it's precisely because they fail so spectacularly that the effects succeed. Coupled with a really weird score by Michael Vickers (who also wrote the ultra-funky theme song for Dracula A.D. 1972), the sets and monster suits lend the movie a completely phantasmagoric atmosphere. At the core (ha ha), it's really a very simple movie, and one we've seen countless times (b-movie stars run around in cave sets until something blows up), but it takes on a completely bizarre, hallucinogenic mood that lends the film far more power to engross than it might otherwise have had. In other words, a movie this bad needs to be this bad. If it had been competent, it would have been dull beyond the point of enduring. But because it fails in such a charming, weird way, it becomes much more than it would otherwise have been. Burroughs' original nov | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
