There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, if you can’t go big, you can at least go big enough…
The Land Unknown (1957)
Distributed by: Universal International
Directed by: Virgil W. Vogel
Mention “Lost World” to someone of a certain generation, and what comes to mind are big adventures.
For someone needing a clearer reference, a “Lost World” tale is one where people in our age find a spot on the map where the Mesozoic never ended, named after the novel The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. More often than not, the tourists end up in the preserved past by accident, with their main objective being to find a way home. Sometimes, said lost world is more than just a naturally occurring Jurassic Park, such as in Land of the Lost for example, but more often than not it was a big oversight in the natural order that allowed time to stand still there.
Your typical lost world story would be filled with huge acts of heroism, bursting with beastly behemoths. Characters would be clashing over every decision, with fraught flashes of emotion as explosive as any volcano that could spectacularly wipe everything away in a fiery climax.
Mind you, as this film proves, size isn’t everything:
We begin after the credits at a naval briefing in Washington, DC. There, Captain Burnham (Douglas Kennedy) is giving a briefing to the naval officers in command of an expedition about to go to Antarctica. Their mission is to do a follow up to Operation Highjump and continue the survey of the seventh continent.
Attending the briefing are Commander Harold Roberts (Jock Mahoney) and Lieutenant Jack Carmen (William Reynolds). There they meet the reporter who will embed with them, Margaret Hathaway (Shirley Patterson, credited in the film as “Shawn Smith”), and some playful banter mixed with mutual admiration starts between Hal Roberts and Maggie Hathaway.
During the briefing, one of the phenomena noted that’s high on the navy’s list to examine are the bodies of warm water in the middle of the ice that would not freeze. Byrd did discover these lakes, the Bunger Oasis, during Op Highjump, presenting us with foreshadowing that’s remarkably well grounded.
They get to Antarctica after a long trip, represented by all the footage the USN took that the 1948 documentary The Secret Land also pulled from. From there, the three of them take a helicopter, accompanied by Machinist’s Mate Steve Miller (Phil Harvey), for a recon. They view the lake while wondering if such a warm spot surrounded by ice was a holdout from the past, or a sign of the future.
(Insert snarky global warming joke here…)
They don’t have much time to consider it, though, as they get a message from the fleet; there’s a big storm coming, and get recalled for their safety. It’s going to be a difficult journey back, as the storm threatens to overtake them. With their fuel supply low and rough terrain beneath them, they look for a way to press on, which was a pretty well thought out set of choices until the pterosaur collided with the chopper…
Jack, who’s the pilot, manages to land the copter under difficult conditions, including the fact that he flies in blind and according to instruments touched down in a crater about 2,500 feet below sea level. Still, everyone is able to walk away from the landing, but the rotor control and antenna were too badly damaged by the pterosaur to allow for a liftoff.
The expedition finds the humidity unbearable and have to shed as much of their winter gear as they can, before they find the location unbelievable…
They four soon find that there’s a lot more down here with them than just flying dinosaurs in the sunken ancient swamp. They soon encounter stegosauri (played by monitor lizards), a tyrannosaurus rex (Tim Smith), an elasmosaurus (a practical effect), and the most dangerous monster of them all, Dr. Carl Hunter (Henry Brandon).
Dr. Hunter was a member of the 1947 expedition whose plane crashed in the crater, and over the last ten years he’d gone feral. He’s kept enough wits about himself to come up with clever ways to survive and repel the other predators, but his isolation destroyed his social skills. The greatest danger Hunter poses to the stranded naval mission, is whether his actions might make them lose their humanity as well…
Speaking of keeping their heads, it’s remarkable how rational everyone is in the film (excluding Dr. Hunter, somewhat…). There are no actions taken just because the script demanded someone do something stupid. Most of the male characters act the way well-practiced naval officers should, and Patterson’s Maggie avoids devolving into the helpless female in distress character found in way too many 1950s science fiction films.
As well constructed as the characters and script were, the sets for this lost world, well-l-l-l-l… The matte work for long shots is above average, but the fauna (and one dangerous plant) fail to inspire much wonder or fear. The T-rex in particular, an actor in a bad costume, is so stiff and jerky that it makes the people in inflatable dinosaur costumes that have overrun YouTube and TikTok look like quality work from ILM.
Which is too bad, as originally the plans for the film were much grander. When the pic was greenlit, the studio had much bigger plans: They were going to shoot the film in CinemaScope and in Technicolor, with Jack Arnold (who directed The Creature form the Black Lagoon) at the helm with undetermined A-list actors. But the studio had to cut back (supposedly because This Island Earth did not have a good ROI when released), so they went with shooting the film in CinemaScope and in black-and-white, with the director who helmed The Mole People handling available B-list actors.
The inglorious result is a shame, a shadow of what it could have been. The script does its best to keep the film together, and the cast tries to give their characters the best shot possible, but the shoddy effects under Vogel’s only workman-like direction keep the film from being everything it could have been. Had Universal not pulled the purse strings so hard, and let this film be what it was originally meant to be, it might have been better remembered years later.
Because of the accountants, that better picture, like the dinosaurs, can only be seen in a lost world…


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