Battle Beneath the Earth (1967)

The late sixties were a marvelous era for low budget British film-making: not only were the likes of Hammer, Amicus and Tigon knocking out small scale movies across a range of genres, but it was a time when it was still possible for independent producers to get films picked up by US distributors.  It helped, of course, if they could be passed off as US productions, even if they were shot entirely in the UK.  Such was the case with Battle Beneath the Earth (1967) which, despite having an American lead, in the form of Kerwin Matthews, several recognisable American character actors in support and a US setting, was actually shot at Elstree studios rather than Hollywood.  A hook up with MGM meant that independent producers Charles Reynolds and Charles F Vetter got the use of MGM UK's Borehamwood studios, which helped give the film a slicker look than might usually be expected from a B-movie.  Nonetheless, its UK origin is given away by the presence of Ed Bishop (Britain's favourite stock American actor) and a number of other recognisable British character actors in supporting roles, most notably Peter Arne as a US scientist, Earl Cameron as a US soldier and Martin Benson and Peter Elliot as a Chinese general and a Chines scientist, respectively.  (It was still very much the norm in 1967 for white actors to play ethnic roles - both Benson and Elliot were frequently cast as Chinese, Japanese or Indian).  

The low budget is betrayed by the fact the cave walls in the underground sequences look decidedly insubstantial, not to mention plastic, while the exterior of the top secret US Navy research facility looks suspiciously like a typical British office building, (probably the production offices at Elstree), their 'US' location established by the fact that the hero parks his Ford Mustang outside. Stock footage and back projection is used to create the 'Las Vegas' setting of the pre-title sequence, although it isn't too badly done, establishing the film's North American setting from the outset.  Many of the military props look as if they were left over from a war movie, with US servicemen wielding all sorts of obsolescent ordinance like 'Grease Guns' and Garand rifles and driving World War two era Jeeps.  The Chinese also drive around their tunnels in Second World War German Kubelwagens, for some reason, while the 'lasers' on their boring machine look suspiciously like heavy duty torches.  Despite the low budget, the film moves commendably swiftly, wasting little time before we get down to our first titular conflict - an underground skirmish between US and Chinese forces that establishes most of the scenario's key points: the plot to detonate nuclear weapons under US cities and other strategic locations in tunnels cut by the Chinese using their laser borer vehicle.  During the late sixties Red China replaced, for a period, the Soviet Union as filmmakers' favoured contemporary enemy of freedom, but it is notable that the makers of Battle Beneath the Earth, for some reason, seemed keen not to upset China too much, presenting its villain as a rogue Chinese general, acting without official sanction.

Battle Beneath the Earth was a great favourite of mine when it used to turn up on TV in the seventies.  Something about it piqued my young imagination.  Perhaps it was because it was pretty much unique amongst the science fiction B-movies of its era in its choice of setting.  While other films of the genre set their action in space or underwater, or tried to create 'exotic' earth bound locations in the studio as backdrops for their action, Battle Beneath the Earth went underground.  A cynic might say that this was simply a ruse to allow a location that could be created on a low budget in a studio, but I prefer to think that it represented a striving for originality on the part of the makers.  Certainly, this setting gives the film a claustrophobic feel and makes the action sequences seem more intimate, forcing the protagonists into close-up, face-to-face confrontations.  (It also neatly confines the action sequences to manageable proportions, thereby keeping the budget down).    To my younger self it seemed an exciting experience, full of intriguing ideas, like the tracked laser boring vehicles fielded by both sides, the 'travel tubes' used by the Chinese, not to mention the very concept of an enemy building a secret network of tunnels undetected beneath our feet.  

Seen again as an adult, its faults seem all too obvious.  Quite apart from the phony US setting and low budget, the film is undermined by a weak script.  Not only is the dialogue clunky and the characters never rise above the level of stereotypes, but the script is also poorly structured, suddenly introducing a female lead/love interest two thirds into the running time, and characters that just vanish mid-plot and are seemingly forgotten about, for instance.  Moreover, some of the key sequences seem very poorly thought out - at the end, for example, the hero foils the villain's attempts to defuse the bomb he has activated by the expedient of taking the Allen key needed to open it up from its carrier's tool kit!  Begging the question of why the villain doesn't simply use the tool kit from one of the other bomb carriers parked alongside?  Instead, he meekly sits down and awaits his demise.  There seems to be a lot of hate for this film out on the web which, I feel, is undeserved.  Battle Beneath the Earth might not be the big budget epic its publicity implied that it was, but it is a pretty solid B-movie typical of its era.  Moreover, it at least has a reasonably original idea at its heart and runs with it.  Director Montgomery Tully (a veteran of British B-movies, including fun space opera The Terrornauts (1967) and the intriguing ghost story The House on Marsh Road (1960),  for whom this was his last directorial credit, keeps things moving along at a brisk, efficient, pace, providing ninety minutes or so of undemanding entertainment.