The Land Unknown Rediscovered

I'm a sucker for the lost world type of film, where unlikely bands of adventurers stumble across even unlikelier hidden valleys and plateaus full of dinosaurs and the like. Most are dreadful. Which, obviously, is part of their charm. This weekend I was able to catch up with one that I only vaguely remember seeing on TV as a child and which I've been unable to catch up with subsequently, with no UK DVD release no TV screenings in decades. However, last week I found that someone had uploaded the whole film (presumably from the US DVD release - the picture quality is excellent) onto YouTube. Quite clearly, such uploads of copyrighted material are illegal and I don't condone it. That said, it's the uploader at fault and as I'm only watching it online and not downloading it, I'm not actually breaking the law, so I had no problems watching the film. (To be honest, I'm amazed that it has been up on YouTube since last October. As the film is still copyright to Universal, I'm very surprised that they haven't got YouTube to take it down. I've only included the non-copyrighted trailer here, so as not to be seen to be encouraging illegal uploads to YouTube).

Shot in gleaming black and white, The Land Unknown is typical of Universal's 1950s output - not quite an A feature but somewhat better budgeted and staged than most B movies, I'm guessing it went out as the lower part of a double bill back in 1957. Also, like many science fiction and horror flicks of the time, it takes a recent scientific development as a jumping off point in order to give the impression of topicality and credibility. In this case it is the 1947 Byrd expedition to the South Pole, which had discovered, amongst other things, a warm water lake. The film posits an entire tropical valley , unchanged since prehistoric times, hidden in the ice. Obviously, the main attraction of all films of this genre is the promise of dinosaurs and other prehistoric monsters. Back in 1957 there were three main ways you could depict dinosaurs: stop motion animation, photographically enlarged lizards with fins and horns stuck on them, and men in suits. Not surprisingly, The Land Unknown eschews the first option (whilst the most effective special effect available at the time, stop motion animation is expensive and time-consuming), opting instead for a combination of the other two types of effect.

I have to say that the Tyrannosaurus is positively the worst man-in-a-suit dinosaurs I've ever seen, completely unconvincing on every level. The photographically enlarged lizards are also disappointing, featuring none of the glued on horns, spikes and frills you usually see in this kind of film. Their use is also pretty disturbing, as the fight between two of them looks unpleasantly real, with the loser appearing to be in genuine pain. That said, I can't deny that the matte work used to combine all of these dinosaurs with the actors is actually of quite a high standard. But the film still has something up its sleeve - a life size mechanical creature! Nearly twenty years before Dino di Laurentis was to claim the use of a life size mechanical gorilla for his King Kong remake, (actually, save for one brief scene, Kong is actually a man in a gorilla suit in the finished movie), The Land Unknown features a mechanical elasmosaurus (a type of plesiosaur) which actually works! After a fashion, that is. You only see the head, neck and front two flippers, but they all move, and the creature regularly submerges and resurfaces in the lake, as well as chasing a boat. Make no mistake, it is no way realistic, but it is quite a feat of mechanical engineering!

But the question is, of course, whether the film was entertaining on any level? Well, if you forget the wooden acting by a cast of second string contract performers, the dreadful script and the large amounts of stock footage used to represent the Antarctic expedition, then The Land Unknown is actually quite good fun. At only 78 minutes it doesn't outstay its welcome and it does feature a truly barmy plot development part way through with the discovery of an insane survivor of a previous expedition who wants to kidnap the only female member of the current expedition. He even tries to swap her for some spare parts for the heroes' helicopter. Interestingly, it doesn't all end with a volcanic eruption which destroys the lost world, implying that the studio might have had hopes for a sequel. At the end of the day, it's a damn sight more entertaining that the far more expensive (and colour) remake of Conan Doyle's The Lost World, made by Irwin Allen three years later.

Actually, I realise now that as a child I confused these two films, convincing myself that I'd seen a black and white version of the Irwin Allen production. Re watching Land Unknown the reasons for that confusion are clear: both films feature the heroes reaching the lost world by helicopter, both have lizards pretending to be dinosaurs, a token female character, a half mad survivor of a previous expedition and a climax featuring an aquatic monster. Both also include carnivorous plants that seem to like groping women with their tendrils. However, despite the starrier cast, the more numerous fake dinosaurs (complete with horns, etc.) and colour photography, The Lost World is an overlong bore - and doesn't have that magnificent mechanical elasmosaurus!