The Land Unknown

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georgan g @RT98616417 09/20/2022 This adventure film had a ridiculous plot and such a low-budget for special effects that you'll see a man in a dinosaur suit, puppets and monitor lizards standing in for dinosaurs. Somehow it held my interest. See more Michael C @Michael71 08/22/2022 Before there was "The Land of the Lost", there was "The Land Unknown". This 1957 science fiction adventure is not perfect (How ridiculous does that Tyrannosaurus Rex costume look?) and the special effects are not the best I have ever seen, but I still could not help but like the movie at least a little. I was never bored and as I said previously the special effects are not that good, but at the same time they are not terrible. To be fair the producers did not have much of a budget to work with. The movie was supposed to be filmed in color and the special effects were supposed to be more elaborate but Universal made several budget cuts which forced changes. The original director of the movie quit out of protest of the budget cuts. What made me enjoy the movie to a certain extent is the main cast. I think they all do a very good job in their respective roles. The late Jock Mahoney and the late Shirley Patterson (Billed as Shawn Smith.) had good chemistry together. Also, I think "The Land Unknown" is a good length in that it was not too long. The movie took just the right amount of time to tell its story (Something Judd Apatow needs to learn.). So in the end, for all of its flaws, "The Land Unknown" is good entertainment. The movie may not have a lasting impression on you (As it may have on Sid and Marty Kroft.), but I think you will enjoy it for what it's worth. See more 09/16/2020 On an expedition to the Antarctic an airplane carrying three men and one female crash-land in a strangely-warm deep crater which contains a prehistoric world. For weeks they avoid the dinosaurs only to discover a savage man who has mastered life among the ginormous beasts. The wildman wants the female to himself which causes all sorts of drama. Slow at times, but the story really picks up with the introduction of the wodewose. Dinos: 2/10 See more 09/03/2020 This is a very good Dinosaur movie......Great script, great basic idea, great matte painting backgrounds....the only real bad thing is the T-rex....Man-in-a-suit Dino but so poorly done (Although the eye-blinking gives me chills) The tech discussion about the Helo is very good, and the idea of dropping thousands of feet BELOW sea-level in the antarctic leading to a warm, geothermal-heated valley is smart. I especially like that they found the dead Pterodactyl but never realized it's significance, and also liked that they found a small mammal. The marine reptile is a Plesiosaur and substantially better than Rex. And yes, the woman does scream too much! Give it a chance (While realizing the budget was cut after script, Matte paintings and helo special effects were completed...That is why Rex looks so....BAD!) See more 07/25/2020 Typical 1950's Dinosaur world just under ours. Actually has fairly good stop motion work. Worth a Saturday viewing See more Phil H @P-Hubbs 09/18/2015 I happened to come across this lovely gem of a movie whilst looking up information for a review about another 50's B-movie. Honesty, I had never heard of this movie before and up to this point, I thought I had covered all the unknown island/continent/world fantasy movies. Interestingly enough this film was inspired by a real time event in 1947 when warm water was discovered in Antarctica, but no dinosaurs. The plot involves an expedition to simply map the vast area of Antarctica and check out this unusual body of warm water found in 1947. As per usual we have the predictable set of short, back n sides, military types running the show, and just for eye candy purposes we have the attractive lady too. Whilst on a scouting mission in their helicopter a small team of explorers (three blokes and the lady) hit a bad storm and are forced to land. As you may have guessed they land in an unknown deep warm volcanic crater many miles below sea-level. This crater just so happens to be the home for an entire prehistoric jungle complete with dinosaurs, man-eating plants and various extinct flora and fauna. All that's missing here is Doug McClure. Again to be honest I was expecting a bit of a crap fest here, the films poster looked hokey as hell, as said I'd never heard of the film and pictures I had seen online looked pretty terrible. Much to my surprise, when the team vacate their chopper and start to explore their new ancient surroundings, I was really pleasantly amazed at how decent the sets and props were and how large it all appeared to be. Yes everything looked like a set, that was to be expected, but there was a lot of solid depth and detail here. Add to that the lovely large matte paintings for the background landscapes and you have a really atmospheric little picture going on. The use of a smoke machine to create swirling mist and fog really helped to add a good level of depth and perspective whilst also hiding obvious plastic plant life and rocks. The real fun came along with the dinosaurs of course, were they realistic? well no, lets not get carried away here. The first special effect was the old concept of using real monitor lizards on a small model landscape complete with matte painting backgrounds. That footage would then be added to live action footage of the actors as a rear projection effect. This idea was further used in a few similar themed movies, although I'm unsure if this movie started that trend. Overall it does work to a degree, the lizards look good, but the hopelessly obvious rear projection effect against the actors footage never really works. The lizards don't really pull off the size trick either, you can see they aren't huge because we know they aren't. The other main effect is that of the T-Rex, in this case a man in a rubber suit just like 'Godzilla'. Now although this sounds ridiculously hokey (and it was), it did look really good. Suspension of disbelief is the key here folks, yes we all know its a man in a rubber suit, yes the suit looks rubbery, yes the dinosaur clearly walks like a man...but hey, it still looks cool and its a fun fantasy people. Another dinosaur effect was the large Nessie-like Elasmosaurus in the lake. Now this was a mechanical puppet that clearly only had so many moves at its dispersal, head up, head left, head right, head down and submerge. What makes things worse is the fact its mouth and eyes never move, its one of those creature puppets that, due to technical limitations, always had a static expression which reduces the thrill factor really. So yes it must be said that despite what you might think, the effects in this rather unknown film (no pun intended) are in fact pretty sweet and highly atmospheric. Everything looked suitably murky, moody, mysterious and eerie, the sound effects added to that and at times the film could be a tad scary even, slightly more gritty than other similar movies of the era. Hell at one point we see a cute little Tarsier get scooped up and devoured by a flesh-eating plant...not literately of course. The only thing I didn't really get was why the lone survivor Hunter (a convenient crash survivor from a previous expedition), didn't want to leave the crater with the others. OK he's been stranded there a long time and gone a bit loopy, but surely you'd want to leave, right? Don't expect anything new here, lets face it, if you've seen one lost world with dinosaurs flick, you've kinda seen them all and this is no exception. All the actors do their thing well, nothing particularly outstanding really, its all clockwork and passable stuff, again, we've seen this all before. That being said, this is still a highly enjoyable, atmospheric and visually exciting movie with some great monster moments like the T-Rex, any 'Godzilla' fan will love that. You know what to expect basically, you know to appreciate these films for what they are and nothing more, just sit back and enjoy the charming ride. See more Read all reviews

The Land Unknown

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