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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Subterranean hokum at it's finest!, February 11, 2007
This review is from: War Gods of the Deep/At the Earth's Core (DVD)
War-Gods of the Deep aka The City Under the Sea scared the heck out of me me as a very small kid, but then I did live in a coastal town that was rumored to have it's own sunken town... Vincent Price and his immortal band of smugglers living in a somewhat mislocated Babylonian city under the Cornish stretch of the English Channel didn't have the same effect this time, but Jacques Tourneur's vaguely Poe-inspired subterranean/underwater adventure is still a fun romp thanks to superb production design which makes the film look ten times more expensive than it probably was and great Scope photography with a good use of color from Zulu's Stephen Dade. It's not a masterpiece, but it's a brisk and enjoyable period adventure with more than a passing nod to both Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Plus it has David Tomlinson sharing a diving suit with a chicken while pursued by gill men, and not many films can say that.
Aside from a couple of moments of negative damage the 2.35:1 widescreen transfer is surprisingly good. The only extra is the US theatrical trailer.
At the Earth's Core is an inspired companion piece, catching just the right tone for the appropriately named Burroughs' pulp adventure about Victorian inventor Peter Cushing and the inevitable Doug McClure ending up in the underground world of Pelucidar and battling its evil telepathic fighting dinosaurs. It's men in monster suits time, which is a lot more fun than stop-motion or CGI if you're willing to suspend your disbelief, and if you're not there's always Caroline Munro's cleavage to look at. Aside from what may well be Peter Cushing's worst performance, an irritating but dottier rehash of his movie Dr Who ("You can't mesmerize me, I'm British!"), it's easily the best of the John Dark-Kevin Connor-Doug McClure fantasy adventures, surprisingly well directed and boasting an atmospheric use of color. Never especially good at exterior scenes, Alan Hume's photography gains immensely from the control a studio set gives him (the film was shot entirely on soundstages) to paint a luridly vivid world worthy of a pulp novel cover. Not high art but definitely great Saturday matinee fun.
The only extra is the US trailer - which sells it as a horror film! - but the film has a very good widescreen transfer, although there is briefly a slight tramline in one scene at the end.
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20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Price, Cushing and McClure!, November 12, 2005
This review is from: War Gods of the Deep/At the Earth's Core (DVD)
This Beneath-The-Surface themed double feature from MGM is pretty mediocre. Neither film is really bad, but neither are anything to write home about either. War Gods Of The Deep starts things off. Basically Tab Hunter(who looks like an early prototype for Casper Van Dien) and David Tomlinson(with a pet chicken in a picnic basket) go searching for Susan Hart, who has vanished from her bedroom. Finding that old reliable secret passage behind the bookshelf they find themselves going deeper and deeper into a cave til they end up in a city beneath the sea ruled by Vincent Price. Price kidnapped the girl coz she looks like his late wife(how's that for original?) and I'm assuming he wants to get jiggy with her. He's also stressed coz an underwater volcano is a ticking timebomb that will destroy his beloved city. Price sees our heroes as meddling pains in the ass, so he decides to execute them though he doesn't keep them very well guarded coz they seem to just venture out whenever they want to. The first hour's a bunch of scenes of Price talking about his civilization and such. Finally are heroes are let out into the ocean with scuba gear and are hunted by Price's soldiers as well as the gill men that lurk around the city. These horrifying gill men are nothing more than guys in torn clothes and obvious rubber masks. The Creature From The Black Lagoon is much more believable. Price does alright with what he's given. He's always a decent villian even if the movie isn't all that decent. Hunter is typical tough guy and Tomlinson and his rooster are the comic relief characters. Not bad but far from good. Actually, kinda boring. The second feature, At The Earth's Core, is the better of the two, but that's not saying much. It's another collaboration between director Kevin Connor and star Doug McClure(The first being The Land That Time Forgot). McClure and Peter Cushing have one of those neato machines with the giant drill on the front that allows you to burrow through the earth. Well, somewhere in the middle, they get stuck and find themselves in a prehistoric kind of world very similar to the "Before Time" films. The center of the earth is pretty much a jungle with a red/pink sky and a cave. Lots of red lighting and lots of lava in this film. The primitive humans(that speak english) are slaves to evil pterodactyl men who control an army of neanderthal type goons(who have a bizarre way of speaking. You know the sound it makes when you are listening to a cd and you hit the FF button?). The visuals and monsters in this movie are at about Godzilla level. The arrival of the badazz McClure sparks a slave revolt and soon everyone's had it up to here with these pterodactyl schmucks. It may sound like cheesy B movie fun, and it is, but it's also a bit more boring than it should be. Cushing is the comic relief this time as an absent minded english scientist. He's got that "Oh, My!", "Oh, Dear!" reaction to everything. A very far cry from his Frankenstein portrayal for sure. Caroline Munro is there just to look hot like she always does. Not bad if you're a fan of rubber monsters and lava. Though I'm sure Edgar Rice Burroughs would want the negatives burned if he saw it. Both films are 2 and a half stars at the very best, but they both beat watching infomercials at 4am.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Camp at the earth's core, July 18, 2009
Best summarized as "not bad, if you take it for the fluff that it is." If you're a fan of early sci fi, you've seen far worse and survived. It's amusing to see Cushing in a role like this, after seeing his other work.
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