The Land Unknown

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I guess this is one of the classics because scenes from this movie often appears at other places especially the really cheezy looking T Rex. The plot is somewhat based on the alleged story admiral Byrd told of after his Operation High Jump, that he saw vegetation growing, and seen a wooly mammoth beyond the pole. Few men and a woman decides to travel the same route, and finds a land that time's forgotten. I'm sorry to say, but that's about all that's going for this movie. Far from the quality of Willis O'Brien's King Kong, this movie has no quality to it at all. The actors are crappy, chic is ugly, and story is dismal. Don't waste your time on this fail of the century. You can find better things to do.

source: The Land Unknown

A Navy pilot (to fly the helicopter), a Commander (to star in the movie), and a Machinist Mate (to strand them good by busting a part with a hammer and running down the radio battery too soon) fly over Antarctic but get lost in a hole in the ground. Typical of what you usually see in rubber-suit dinosaur movies: stiff, slow-moving, sluggish, unrealistic and hardly lifelike... and that's just Jock Mahoney's acting! (The T-Rex is slightly better.) Janet Leigh lookalike Shirley Patterson (using an alias of Shawn Smith) goes along for the ride to provide 1950s-style eye candy, and scream and faint at inopportune times. To provide suspense, she mentions that just about the time their window of opportunity for being rescued will end, her clothes are going to wear out (although that would presumably open different windows of opportunity.) Henry Brandon as the bat-crazy castaway Dr. Hunter comes the closest to being an interesting character, ranting about his months alone in the dark with the lizards, smashing dinosaur eggs with his Fred Flintstone club, and occasionally kidnapping Maggie ("I own everything in this valley... including YOU!") A little time alone with her seems to change his mind, though, and he risks his life to give her back to the Navy when it seems they might be trying to fly away without her. (The director apparently lost interest in Carter at the end, though; when the helo runs out of gas and crashes beside the ship, only very careful viewing lets you see him make it into the lifeboat, and he's not seen for the remainder of the movie.) High points: --- [1] In a lesser movie, once Maggie finds her cute little furry doll-eyed pet "Shakepeare", not only would he appear in every remaining scene, he'd probably end up saving everyone; in this movie he's immediately eaten. --- [2] It was a nice touch to make the T-Rex's eyes blink (although that apparently left only about $10 for the rest of the costume.) --- [3] I bet the the monitor-lizard wrestling death-match really ticks off the PeTA types. Low points: --- [1] The flaming Q-Tip in the mouth treatment for the Reptilicus clone in the lake is pretty badly done (Reptilicus gets tired of it the second time, too.) --- [2] They're rescued just one day before Maggie's clothes are scheduled to fall apart.

A helicopter with three Navy officers, led by Jock Mahoney, and the requisite woman reporter aboard, Shawn Smith, gets caught in bad weather over Antarctica and must land through a heavy cloud layer to find they are at the bottom of a volcanic valley. But wait a minute. This is not just ANY hot, steamy tropical jungle in Antarctica. This one is really old, inhabited by plants beasts that disappeared millions of years ago. It is also inhabited by the sole survivor of an earlier expedition, Henry Brandon. The half loco Brandon has the part necessary to repair the Navy's damaged helo -- a "push-pull rod" -- but he's hoarding his equipment because he wants to trade what they want for what he wants, namely the shapely Shawn Smith. And who can blame him? I mean, ten years? (The fact that Henry Brandon is reputed to have been gay adds a shiver of irony to the plot.) Well, everyone is attacked at one time or another by prehistoric dinosaurs but they all survive and escape, including Brandon who has come to his senses at the last moment and discovered his humanity. Brandon isn't much of an actor. He's probably best known for his role as Scar in John Ford's "The Searchers." ("You speak good Comanche. Someone teach you?") But his modest talent doesn't make him conspicuous in the context of this film. The other performers are no better. The most interesting cast member is Jock (nee Jacques) Mahoney, a stunt man raised in Iowa, and one of the best in the business. Among other memorable acts caught on film, he did the spectacular leap down the staircase onto Robert Douglas's villain in Errol Flynn's "The Adventures of Don Juan." His name ranks up there with Canutt, Eason, Perry, and Dar Robinson. Not that Mahoney is muscle bound. You don't need to be a body builder to be a stunt man. You need to be lithe, professional, competitive, intelligent, and you to be completely lacking a sympathetic nervous system. The men and women who do stunts don't have to be good actors, as Mahoney proves here. They're a proud group -- can I generalize like this? -- but not snooty. They don't feel they're humbling themselves if they hang around with the extras, as I know from experience. Mahoney was a parent to Sally Field. I don't like going on like this about stunt people but there's so little to say about the movie. The monsters are gaggingly cheap. The first shot we get of them is two ordinary monitor lizards, blown up to dinosaur size by photographic legerdemain, and they're tearing each other to pieces, literally. These are big animals and here they are throwing themselves around and chewing on limbs and heads. We can see the ripped skin. Nobody can claim that no animals were harmed in making this movie. I found it a little disgusting. The other minatory dinosaur is a T. rex -- and it's a hoot: a man dressed in a flabby plastic suit dragging a tail behind him. Another monster never lived -- a kind of gigantic pumpkin with tentacles. It eats a cute little mammal. I don't think it's a tarsier, though Mahoney the expert calls it such. Still, they got the time and the animal reference right. At least, I think the Eocene tarsoids lived about 60 million years ago. I was certainly happy to see the five humans get out of there at the climax. It meant the end of the movie.

The Land Unknown is one of the better and more interesting dinosaur efforts from the golden age of science fiction movies. The dialogue and acting are somewhat above other dinosaur adventures of the era (1960's The Lost World, Unknown Island, etc.) The story is simple and the action is frequent. SPOILERS ahead: Land Unknown concerns three military men and a woman reporter exploring Antarctica in a helicopter. A sudden storm makes things difficult during the exploration, and there's damage when a prehistoric flying reptile hits the upper part of the helicopter. With the damage the helicopter can't do anything but go straight down. It goes down way below sea level into a fog hidden valley. The valley is a land that has not gone through too many evolutionary changes, and is home to dinosaurs. It looks like the crew is stranded in the valley upon inspection of the helicopter, and unable to make radio contact with the rescue effort. Soon enough the crew is attacked by dinosaurs, and menaced by carnivorous plants. They learn there is a survivor of another Antarctic expedition living in a cave who they must rescue the kidnapped reporter from. The man, somewhat savage from all the time he's been stranded in this prehistoric valley won't give them the parts they need to fix the helicopter unless they leave the woman with him. The leader of the military men will not make a deal, and the group leaves. Later the reporter has moral issues on saving the three men she's with, and submits herself to the cave dweller. Humanity breaks through and the man hands the group the map to where his aircraft went down. There's more trouble with dinosaurs before the group now with a fifth member can leave The Land Unknown, but all are rescued and there's a happy ending. Luckily, The Land Unknown doesn't suffer from corny dialogue, and the characters were well written and played. The only real negative criticism I can give the movie is the dinosaur effects.--There are some lizards meant to be large dinosaurs, which do look good when placed with the cast but fail to be believable as dinosaurs. One scene has two lizards in an unpleasant fight which seems to end in actual death for one of the lizards. The tyrannosaurus is a man in a tyrannosaurus suit which doesn't look too bad as long as it's shown from the neck up. From the neck down the body of the beast was not crafted very well, and is not a very good representation of a tyrannosaurus. I will say I was impressed with its blinking eyes. Also, the tyrannosaurus is stiff and walks at a slow pace. The mechanical elasmosaurus doesn't look too bad; except its neck is very stiff and its eyes don't blink at all. Possible wonders could've been created if Universal would've put more money into the picture. With the negative criticism out of the way, The Land Unknown is an interesting movie that makes fine, lightweight entertainment.

This is a Universal low, low budget sci-fi movie modeled after "The Lost World". Naval classes are being held before the next expedition to the South Pole. Harold Alan Roberts (Mahoney) will be in command, and reporter Margaret Hathaway (Smith) will be tagging along with two other crew members. They reach the South Pole, but then their helicopter crashes into a subterranean valley, still tropical in climate, with dinosaurs from the Mesozoic Era (according to the film). It follows a predictable path from here. The acting varies from boringly bad (Mahoney) to amusingly bad (Smith). The movie is full of mistakes. Watch for: The blown takes that made it into the finished film. Apparently the actors forgetting what mode of transportation they used wasn't deemed important enough to reshoot or the goofs weren't noticed. There is also the giant iguana's costumes being ripped in their initial fight, the zipper running down the Tyrannosaurus Rex's costume, brooms disguised as oars, and the tiny set disguised as a forest, complete with lagoon. But without all of these mistakes this film would just be a bore.

It is a shame that this little known movie hasn't gotten more exposure over the years. For fans of all ages The Land Unknown is a great film that is sure to delight all but the most critical of viewers. This has got to be one of the most atmospheric movie sets ever to be captured on film, and it just gets better from there. The acting is very decent, as is the storyline and pace of the movie. We are treated to many dinosaurs that, although not the most realistic looking, are quite effective and are integrated well into the movie and the overall storyline. Yes, the FX are somewhat lacking, but compared to the many, many low-budget horror and SciFi films of the 1950's, The Land Unknown stands tall and delivers a face-paced action adventure that surpasses many of this era. Actually, this movie reminds me a bit of the 1925 silent The Lost World...from what I have read was indeed an inspiration for this film. If you are a fan of dinosaurs, action-adventure, SciFi, thrillers or just plain fun, well made movies, The Land Unknown has just what you are looking for and will deliver a pleasant viewing experience for all ages.

This film is a very good entry in the late '50s sci-fi cycle, about a group of explorers and scientists who discover a lost tropical world below sea level in Antarctica (!) Reynolds (the pilot), Mahoney (the scientist), Smith, and Harvey crash-land and encounter dinosaurs and a survivor from an earlier expedition (Brandon). Great (although obviously indoor) sets, literate script, and good acting are the pluses. The dinosaurs are pretty shaky, especially the Tyrannosaurus (a guy walking around inside a dinosaur suit). Mahoney seems a little miscast, but Brandon steals the show as the loner...his acting actually conveys the feeling that he's been stuck here alone for years. This is a very good B+/A- sci-fi film that should better known than it is.

a JUNGLE IN THE MIDDLE OF ANTARCTICA YEAH RIGHT! Monsters so badly done you will laugh out loud. NO one acting that ever made another movie. Janet Leigh 'wanna be' has her has lived in the JUNGLE and has her clothes in tatters but her HAIR IS PERFECT! the back ground Matts are the only good thing about this movie. and then after the Hero and Heroine escape jungles, monsters, traitors and months of hell the end is a Kiss on the Deck of a ship and he ask her if she will go back next year.....add this to the PLAN 9 LIST OF SO BAD IT IS GOOD! BUT ONLY ONCE!