Review: The Land That Time Forgot

During WWI, a German U-boat commanded by Capt. Von Schoenvorts (John McEnery, apparently dubbed by Anton Diffring) sinks a cargo boat. That boat’s passengers (Doug McClure and Susan Penhaligon among them) wrangle their way aboard the sub when it rises to the surface. After some scuffling, the two parties agree to a tenuous truce until they can find suitable neutral land to port. Instead, they losing their way and end up on an island called Caprona, which houses dinosaurs,  neanderthals, and a volcano. Anthony Ainley plays German Lt. Dietz, who is our obligatory disruptive mutineer.

 

Average adventure film from Amicus Films may as well have been titled “The Sub That Wasted Time and Forgot to Go Somewhere”. Directed by Kevin Connor (“From Beyond the Grave”, “Motel Hell”, the much better “The People That Time Forgot”), it’s at least 30 minutes before we get out of the submarine an onto land. Which means it’s 30 minutes worth of a submarine movie, and that’s not what I was here for. Submarine movies are generally all alike anyway. At least when Hammer’s somewhat similar “The Lost Continent” took its sweet time getting to the title land mass what it gave us in the meantime was genuinely entertaining and interesting. I also didn’t like being thrown into the deep end at the beginning. I wouldn’t say the scenario is confusing, so much as we’re just not given enough details for my liking as to who all of the players and what their allegiances are. I don’t need to be spoon-fed, but I was feeling a bit peckish early on nonetheless.

 

Acting-wise, John McEnery (in a not very interesting role, admittedly) and Anthony Ainley take top honours here, with a bored-looking Doug McClure our unsatisfactory lead. Susan Penhaligon isn’t my favourite actress but by comparison with McClure she’s not bad here. She seems invested, McClure does not. Once we’re on land, things perk up a bit with various dinosaurs (pterodactyls, triceratops, and diplodocus for instance) that although hardly great examples of special FX will still amuse anyone raised on Toho’s Godzilla franchise. I particularly like the dinosaur fight with a triceratops and another dinosaur that gets gored to death. Who knew herbivores could be so blood-thirsty and violent? So at least the dinosaurs are able to pick up some of McClure’s slack.

 

Cinematographer Alan Hume (“Kiss of the Vampire”, “Return of the Jedi”) and production designer Maurice Carter (“From Beyond the Grave”, “The People That Time Forgot”) do a real bang-up job for what was likely not a huge budget, and the music score by Douglas Gamley (“Asylum”, “From Beyond the Grave”) is solid too. So there’s some stuff to admire and enjoy here, for sure. However, aside from the dreadful pacing the one thing that really bugged me here is the same thing that bugged me about Mark Wahlberg’s performance in “Planet of the Apes”: No one here has the necessary awe looking at these dinosaurs and their stuck-in-time situation. I’m no fan of “Jurassic Park”, but that’s one thing the 1993 megahit got absolutely right. Actually, there is one other thing that bugged me, we get way more emphasis on grunting neanderthals than we do on dinosaurs and I was way more interested in the dinosaurs. So that was a shame, though the neanderthal makeup is interesting.

 

There’s some fun moments and creatures in the back half of this adventure film. It’s a nice try from Amicus, but you have to wade for far too long in a submarine movie plot before you get to the good stuff (perhaps due to the budget), and even then there’s some less interesting stuff thrown in too thanks to a dull Doug McClure. Terrific fiery finale for the budget, middling film overall. Based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, the screenplay is by the curious duo of James Cawthorn (no other IMDb credits) and Michael Moorcock (an author, magazine editor, and musician).

 

Rating: C+

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