Unknown World

Rating:
Summary: UGH!
Review: Let me start off this review by saying that this is a low budget 50's atomic paranoia flick. If this genre is your bag read on, if not there is a hundred other films of this ilk that will appeal to you. I suggest buying ANY of them instead of this [one].

The plot boils down to this...

A team of scientists decide to drive this wacky machine (called a cyclotram) into the heart of the earth to discover a shelter where human kind can hang out while an atomic war rages above. A few misadventures later (of the extremely boring variety) they eventually find an underground cavern that serves thier purpose. More misadventures later they return.

I usually dig low budget 50's sci-fi/horror films with bad acting and absurd plots...however, this movie is as lousy as can be. Where are the giant mutant whatevers? where are the blind morlock looking creatures? Give me anything! something! arrrrgh!

Not only is this a lousy boring movie, it's also a very poorly done DVD. Absolutly no extras, and as with all Alpha Video releases the scene selections don't even seem to work correctly. The print is grainy and full of cigarette burns. constant mult-colored banding runs throughout. There was not even a token attempt to digitally clean this movie! Save your money - and steer clear of Alpha Video's releases.

Rating:
Summary: Kinda deep down there, isn't it?
Review: This 1951 offering from Lippert Pictures takes us 2500 miles underneath the surface with a group of somewhat annoying scientists. Dr. Morley (dubbed the Prophet of Doom by at least one newspaper reporter) is an obsessive opponent of all things nuclear. Fearing that atomic weapons will destroy all life on earth, he recruits a group of scientists for his Society to Save Civilization, and they make plans to find a living space deep within the earth where man can survive and rebuild from the nuclear holocaust they see just over the horizon. After the group fails to secure any funding, a rich newspaper publisher's son forks over the cash and accompanies them on their monumental journey. It's your typical group of B-movie scientists: there is Morley, who seems lost and mad at the world all the time, a couple of scientists who basically push buttons and read dials, a young and attractive feminist scientist, an explosives man, and the paperboy. Of course, the group is constantly bickering and fighting, and no one likes the paperboy at all-at first. This had to change somewhat because, as you would expect, he has to put the moves on the lady scientist and she has to pretend to resist. How do our intrepid explorers go about their task? They design a cyclotram, basically a great big ugly metal boxcar with a humongous drill for a nose, ascend to the top of an extinct volcano, go down into the crater and start drilling through rock as they make their way downward. Every so often, they stop for a minute to fight or to provide an opportunity for one of them to die. They are rather bumbling amateurs when it comes to the deep exploring gig; you would have thought one of the scientists would have remembered to pack a lot of water. They sometimes even seem surprised to discover that it's actually pretty dark miles underground.

I was led to believe the group ran into dangerous animals in the depths of the earth, but that is not true. There are similarities between Unknown World and Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, as you would expect, but this film never develops the aura of plausibility that Verne's work had. To answer the question of how they will survive the intense heat of the earth's core, the geologist amongst them simply announces the fact that the temperature at the earth's core is actually lower than that on the surface. This movie is only about 70 minutes long, so it's short enough to not become too aggravating too quickly. Taken in the context of its time, it's really not such a bad movie. Some may also be interested to know that part of the movie was actually filmed inside New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns.

Rating:
Summary: Kinda deep down there, isn't it?
Review: This 1951 offering from Lippert Pictures takes us 2500 miles underneath the surface with a group of somewhat annoying scientists. Dr. Morley (dubbed the Prophet of Doom by at least one newspaper reporter) is an obsessive opponent of all things nuclear. Fearing that atomic weapons will destroy all life on earth, he recruits a group of scientists for his Society to Save Civilization, and they make plans to find a living space deep within the earth where man can survive and rebuild from the nuclear holocaust they see just over the horizon. After the group fails to secure any funding, a rich newspaper publisher's son forks over the cash and accompanies them on their monumental journey. It's your typical group of B-movie scientists: there is Morley, who seems lost and mad at the world all the time, a couple of scientists who basically push buttons and read dials, a young and attractive feminist scientist, an explosives man, and the paperboy. Of course, the group is constantly bickering and fighting, and no one likes the paperboy at all-at first. This had to change somewhat because, as you would expect, he has to put the moves on the lady scientist and she has to pretend to resist. How do our intrepid explorers go about their task? They design a cyclotram, basically a great big ugly metal boxcar with a humongous drill for a nose, ascend to the top of an extinct volcano, go down into the crater and start drilling through rock as they make their way downward. Every so often, they stop for a minute to fight or to provide an opportunity for one of them to die. They are rather bumbling amateurs when it comes to the deep exploring gig; you would have thought one of the scientists would have remembered to pack a lot of water. They sometimes even seem surprised to discover that it's actually pretty dark miles underground.

I was led to believe the group ran into dangerous animals in the depths of the earth, but that is not true. There are similarities between Unknown World and Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, as you would expect, but this film never develops the aura of plausibility that Verne's work had. To answer the question of how they will survive the intense heat of the earth's core, the geologist amongst them simply announces the fact that the temperature at the earth's core is actually lower than that on the surface. This movie is only about 70 minutes long, so it's short enough to not become too aggravating too quickly. Taken in the context of its time, it's really not such a bad movie. Some may also be interested to know that part of the movie was actually filmed inside New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns.

Rating:
Summary: "Unknown World" a 1951 "gem" to be discovered!
Review: This is an early Sci Fi film from 1951 and in that context deserves to be appreciated!

Years ago I saw this film on TV and I never forgot it ... there was a kind of lonely mystique about it.

It has a very strong anti-nuclear orientation... The thesis of the film is a group of scientists fearful of nuclear war decide to explore vast caverns under the earth's surface as a refuge. There are no phoney looking monsters running around... Some of the scenes were taken from actual caverns such as Carlbad Caverns, New Mexico.

The vehicle used for this exploration called a "Cyclotram" reminded me a little of a 1950 Lincoln...

Rating:
Summary: Bad, Boring, and not even Camp
Review: This movie is boring--so boring that I kept checking the box to see how long it was--too long. The acting is amateurish, the script probably writeen in a few hours, and the special effects (what there is of them) really lame. Why the production company wasted filming this BOMB in Carlsbad Caverns is beyond comprehension. Some movies are so bad that they are camp and fun to watch--not this turkey. NOTHING really happens. The characters talk a lot ("do we go on or go back?")and they shift their position on this topic often--so I wonder if the actor's scripts got mixed up. Fortunately (a matter of opinion), this Alpha DVD is made from a watchable print, so it is not as grainy or as scratchy as others in their catalog. I watched this DVD once and gave it away to my daughter in college. Now I feel guilty because life is too short to watch stuff such as this. If you are very short of money and need a DVD to give someone as a cheap gift, pass by this DOG and select Alpha's B-Western DVD "The Whispering Skull" with Tex Ritter or one of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes efforts.

Rating:
Summary: BETTER THAN YOU'D EXPECT
Review: Years before James Mason and Pat Boone undertook a "Journey to the Center of the Earth," a team of resourceful explorers made the same sort of trip inside a metallic contraption rather resmbling a house-trailer equipped with a big drill on the front. Their goal is to find underground caverns large enough to shelter the human race should nuclear war render the surface of the planet uninhabitable.

Not surprisingly, the low-budget special effects are amusing rather than impressive, and the no-name cast can't enliven the uninspired lines they'd asked to deliver.

Despite these expected failings, "Unknown World" earns a recommendation as one of the early 1950's least-known and most-underrated sci-fi efforts. It has an imaginative plot which, after awhile, almost seems plausible, and it avoids the B-movie cliches you might expect in this sort of thing. (No subterranean dinosaurs, no tribe of lost cavewomen, no signs of Atlantis.) It also has the sense to stick to business and not detour into romantic subplots or "comic relief" episodes.

If you can see beyond its dated, low-budget look, you'll find this "World" one that's worth exploring.