[DAVID] You realize it’s been nearly four months since our last movie review?
{NICK} It took me that long to recover from Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie.
[DAVID] Well, now we’ve got a bi-weekly schedule worked out, and I’m holding Mr. Professor here to it.
{NICK} I just wish you’d let me pick some of the movies.
[DAVID] No, we’re not doing Citizen Kane.
{NICK} Right. No boobs or monsters in that one.
[DAVID] You should be interested in this week’s pick: At the Earth’s Core, the 1976 movie made in England, directed by Kevin Connor. It’s based on a book by Edgar Rice Burroughs. He was one of your favorite authors growing up, wasn’t he?
{NICK} I read ERB ravenously, up until my mid-teens. I remember seeing this movie in the theatre—I must’ve been about five—with my Nan and Granddad. Granddad introduced me to ERB. The Warlord of Mars I took down from his bookshelf when I was in the third grade. I read the first few lines of that book, and I was swept away and hooked on fantasy and sci-fi for ever more.
[DAVID] A film adaptation of A Princess of Mars is in pre-production, you know.
{NICK} I’m sure of one thing: the special effects won’t be men in rubber suits.
[DAVID] The effects in At the Earth’s Core are somewhat dated.
{NICK} They were dated when the film came out in 1976. The fx in the 1933 King Kong were superior to this.
[DAVID] But it wasn’t torture.
{NICK} It’s goofy. But there are two categories of bad film: so bad it’s good (in other words, fun to watch), and so bad it’s painful. Garbage Pail Kids falls in the latter category; if the people responsible for it were being flogged in a public square, you’d want to go and throw rocks at them. But At the Earth’s Core is sometimes entertaining, in a spectacularly cheesy way.
[DAVID] The adventure commences right off the bat. We are spared lots of scenes of expository blabber. David Innes, played by that inestimable B-movie star Doug McClure, is copiloting the first test-run of the Iron Mole, a “High-Calibration Drilling Machine” designed by Dr. Abner Perry.
{NICK} Achieved by unimpressive miniature and matte-work.
[DAVID] Perry, played by the venerable Peter Cushing, has gotten his calibrations wrong, because the Mole doesn’t punch a hole through to the other side of the Welsh hills. It starts burrowing straight down into the Earth’s mantle.
{NICK} I like the Victorian-style interior of the Mole, with its green-shaded wall lamps and dials and controls reminiscent of the old Time Machine.
[DAVID] David and the Doctor both pass out from the rising heat. But when they come to, they are shivering with cold and the instrument panel is frosted with ice. They hit an underground body of water, the temperature stabilizes, then they punch through another rocky crust and the Mole shuts down. Since the front view portals are offline, they throw open the hatch. They’re not in the UK anymore.
{NICK} They’re on a studio set lushly decorated with strange plastic flora.
[DAVID] They are, in fact, in Pellucidar, the world in the Earth’s hollow core—a popular trope with Victorian-era fantasy writers. The other night I heard a fellow on the Coast 2 Coast with George Norrie radio program talking about an expedition he was arranging to the North Pole to prove that the Earth is hollow and teeming with strange life, so the idea hasn’t completely died out.
{NICK} It’s all bunk, of course. But can you imagine if they really did find a way into a hollow Earth, and came back with strange descendants of prehistoric life?
[DAVID] If there is a world beneath our feet, it probably doesn’t look like this. Unless it was decorated by the guys who did the covers of psychedelic albums, or early 70s pulp sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks. And the soundtrack is all done on a Moog synthesizer.
{NICK} This place gives a literal meaning to the term “Neon Jungle,” all the oranges and violets and purples, with a hot pink sky.
[DAVID] “But where on Earth can we be?” David asks. Doctor Perry, observing his compass, replies, “We are not on Earth. From my observations, dear friend, I can positively state that we are under it. At the Earth’s core.” The Doc then goes gaga over “Mesozoic moss—I’ve only seen it before in fossilized form.” And to dispel any doubt, a giant monster suddenly emerges from the jungle, making straight for them.
{NICK} Big Bird! That’s what my Nan called it. It’s a guy in a rubber suit, reptilian body, parrot head, shrieking as it lumbers along. “Doc, I don’t think you want to get too close to that,” David says to the insatiably curious Doctor Perry. Doc climbs up into a tree and waves his umbrella at a terribly integrated blue screen of the monster. Again, a similar scene done forty-three years before in King Kong was pulled off better than this. Were we really this far ahead of the British in the movie-magic department?
[DAVID] David throws some rocks at the creature to draw it away from its treed prey, then runs off—straight into a pool of quicksand. Things look bad! The monster is rumbling toward him, when just in the nick of time—
{NICK} —spears whistle through the air, bouncing harmlessly off the rubber suit. But apparently this is enough to deter the monster. Man, the suits in this movie are several steps below the monsters in Godzilla flicks from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Were the British really that far behind Japanese movie magic? Why didn’t they get Harryhausen or somebody to do some decent stop-motion?!
[DAVID] Yes, it would take an upstart New Zealander, two decades later, to finally surpass us in the movie-magic department. But back to this movie: a rope is thrown to David, and he and Doc are taken prisoner by Mongoloid monkey-men.
{NICK} They look like the offspring of Huns and Klingons. The synthesizer-created gibberish the ape-men converse in is very annoying. But at least they speak a different language, which of course you’d expect from a race separated by hundreds of thousands of years from their surface-primate relatives. This criticism will make sense in a minute.
[DAVID] Our protags are chained to a line of other human prisoners, a chain gang of primitives who look like extras from a Hollywood Biblical epic. David—lucky dog—gets chained to Dia, played by Caroline Munro, a hottie in an outfit that is constantly crying out for a Wardrobe Malfunction.
{NICK} David and the Doc immediately begin conversing with the natives in perfect English. Huh? In his books, ERB skims over language barriers by having his characters master new languages in the space of days—often when they are, as in this case, helpfully incarcerated with some natives. But he never would’ve gotten away with having a foreign culture conveniently speaking English. This is, of course, never explained.
[DAVID] I couldn’t help but notice that Dia’s cleavage is well-oiled throughout the movie. But this isn’t a criticism.
{NICK} Anyway. In a rare bit of exposition (one thing the director does a good job of avoiding is long pauses in the action to make sense of what is going on), we learn that the ape-men are Sagoths who serve the Mahars, bird-like flying reptiles with telepathic powers. The humans are the subservient race, captured by Sagoth raiding parties and sent as slaves to the Mahar city to toil in the lava pits.
[DAVID] “A sub-human species, yet the master race. Isn’t that always the case?” Doc observes. “Yes, brawn before brains,” David concurs.
{NICK} An odd bit of dialogue coming from two white European males of the early twentieth century. Perhaps a PC attempt by the screenwriter to offset some of the white-superiority attitudes that may be detected in ERB’s work. Then again, that’s a lot of thought to attribute to a writer who doesn’t bother with explaining why the Pellucidarians speak English.
[DAVID] “Who’s that fellow up there who keeps looking at me?” David asks Dia, indicating a shady-looking character a few paces back on the chain gang. She says, in an impressive character synopsis, “He’s Hoojah, the Sly One. Do not trust him.”
{NICK} And they’re off, marched toward the Mahar city with the Sagoths always whipping and pushing them while emitting their irritating electronic burps.
[DAVID] At one point there’s an altercation: Hoojah is giving Dia some unwanted attention, and David clocks him. Dia waits expectantly for David to say or do something else, then gets all huffy and gives David the cold shoulder. “Your act of chivalry didn’t seem very popular, David,” the Doctor notes.
{NICK} A mystery of cultural misunderstanding. How intriguing!
[DAVID] More intriguing is when the march is interrupted by a giant bipedal warthog who snatches one of the slaves off the chain and starts snacking. Everyone takes cover as a second Warthoglin charges the first and the two throw down, goring each other with their tusks over the tasty treat.
{NICK} The “tasty treat” in question may be the worst effect in this whole movie—and that’s saying something. It looks bad even for a mannequin, a cheap segmented doll with one leg that twitches mechanically while the warthog chomps on it. But I must admit I loved this rumble of the gargantuan warthogs when I was a kid. I still like them—they don’t look real, but they’d make great Halloween costumes.
[DAVID] The victorious Warthoglin stomps off with his meal, and the march continues—minus Dia. David asks the old chief with the crazy beard where she went. “Dia’s gone. Stolen by Hoojah.” He also clears up the cold-shoulder question: “You insulted Dia. When a man in Pellucidar fights with a man for a woman, she belongs to he who wins. You should’ve claimed her or freed her. By ignoring her, you brought shame on her. Now she cannot be had by any man.” Darn the bad luck. If that wasn’t bad enough, crazy-Moses informs David of Jubal the Ugly One, who wants Dia as a mate. Oh, and he adds, “There is something you should know, my friend. Dia is a princess, daughter of kings. She is proud. She will never forgive you.”
{NICK} David’s course of action is now clear. Rescue Dia from Hoojah. Then save her from Jubal the Ugly One. Then apologize profusely for his cultural faux paus. Oh, and along the way defeat the Sagoths and overthrow the Mahars. All in a day’s work for Doug McClure.
[DAVID] Now we come to the Mahar city, which looks like a model of a Mayan ziggurat against a matte-painted backdrop.
{NICK} They are brought into a labyrinthine cavern system under the city, to a passage blocked by a curtain of falling molten lava. The Sagoths are able to turn this on and off, using it as a fiery portcullis.
[DAVID] Doc gushes about the wonder of the sight—“a curtain of fire!”
{NICK} The quirky enthusiasm Cushing brings to the role is infectious, almost. But the scale of it really isn’t that impressive. And when he’s gushing about extinct life forms that are men in rubber suits, it’s unintentionally campy.
[DAVID] For a guy his age—and Cushing looks pretty old, thin, and frail—he radiates jovial spunk, capering around like the Scarecrow. Now we are introduced to Pellucidar’s oppressive masters, the Mahar. Perched on cliffs around an arena, their leathery wings folded, they are lords of all they survey. And when their eyes turn milky green and they blink, they send out telepathic mind-control powers.
{NICK} More guys in rubber bird suits. And I’m thinking, the puppets in The Dark Crystal are more convincingly life-like than these things. Far more. And the Skeksis had personalities.
[DAVID] Doc exclaims that they are specimens of “rhamphorhynchus, of the middle Jurassic period.” But, he adds in amazed glee, “the remains we’ve found have never indicated they attained a size any bigger than an ordinary crow.”
{NICK} Whereas these are about the size of a man in a rubber suit. So the Mahar are highly-evolved pterosaurs. These things, by the way, look nothing like rhamphorhynchoidea. They look like parrot piñatas, with a green ruff around their necks just like the one Kermit the Frog has. Their motion is quite limited and clumsy, their beaks are not able to close, and the only facial movement they can achieve is blinking eyelids.
[DAVID] Our protags are put to work in the underground lava pits. In the ensuing days, David’s main job seems to be making bricks, while Doc (for reasons unexplained) gets his own room in a sort of Mahar library doing scribe work. A Sagoth pulls down stone tablets engraved with cuneiform script, which Doc copies with a stylus onto a clay tablet.
{NICK} Somehow, he is fully proficient in reading this foreign script, and learns a great deal about the Mahar during this time. Like the fact they are telepathic—a concept that must be hard to convey in cuneiform.
[DAVID] One day David decides he’s had enough when a Sagoth begins beating on another slave. He grabs the Sagoth’s hatchet, puts monkey-boy down and escapes into the caves.
{NICK} He wanders around lost for a while, marking arrows with chalk on the walls should he need to find his way back, until he finally sees the hot-pink light of the Pellucidar sun (the movie never explains where the internal light source comes from, but in the books ERB provided a mini-sun at the very center of the Earth).
[DAVID] He emerges to discover a campfire. He’s about to steal a spear someone has left unattended, when he is tackled by a dark-skinned man with a curly mop of hair. They punch and wrestle for a while—neither of these men would be contenders in the UFC—until their hand-to-hand sends them rolling into a diabolical cave.
{NICK} Diabolical because it is host to three relatives of Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. The giant plants have big hairy mouths with red lips, and their throats glow with pulsing red light—it’s a disco inside there!
[DAVID] One Pellucidaran Man-Trap grabs the Pellucidarian with one of its many octopus-like tentacles and starts dragging him towards it orifice, but David uses the hatchet to cut the tentacle and free the fellow.
{NICK} They clamber out of the cave and sit catching their breath. Then, somewhat unconvincingly, they begin to laugh.
[DAVID] With the shared laughter, their friendship is cemented.
{NICK} And—this is unintentionally hilarious—David introduces himself the way you would to a foreigner, saying “David” and patting himself on the chest. The other guy introduces himself as Ra and the two proceed to converse in plain English. The fact that the Pellucidarians speak modern English is taken completely for granted, so why the pretense of “David, me David” pat pat pat “You?” point point?
[DAVID] David shares his plan for starting an uprising, which Ra tries to dissuade him from. To this end, he takes David back into the cave and they sneak in to where they have hidden vantage of the Mahar arena. They witness a feeding. Four slave women are brought in, and David gets a brief scare when one of the women looks like Dia from behind. But she turns around and, no, its just an extra wearing Caroline Munro’s costume. Whew! The king Mahar, rather than being green like the others, is the shade of dog poop after it’s sat in the sun for a long time. It puts one of the girls under its mind control and silently calls her out. She compliantly walks forward and bows. Then one of the Mahar leaps off its perch—
{NICK} Well, sort of tumbles off the cliff and is buoyed up by its fly-wires. The nearly-invisible wires swing it across the arena in the most clumsy flying spectacle I’ve ever witnessed on film. Then we cut to a shot of the Mahars’ legs grasping the woman by the shoulders and carrying her off. The remaining three women scream as the other Mahar make their ungraceful descents.
[DAVID] We don’t actually see any of the feeding, only David and Ra’s disgusted reaction to it. David is so outraged that he picks up a stone to throw at the Mahar—good thinking, you big man-twit. Ra grabs his arm to keep him from getting them both killed, but David loses his balance and falls down into the bottom of the Mahars’ lair!
{NICK} Oh no oh no.
[DAVID] Fortunately the Mahar, bellies sated, are now napping. The only way out is through a tiny crawlspace right behind one of the Mahars’ legs.
{NICK} This is supposed to be a suspenseful moment as David wriggles past, trying not to wake the Mahar. But it only gives us ample time to laugh at how goofy the Mahar looks. The rubber feet with their stubby, rigid claws obviously could not grasp anything, much less lift a woman. If, during a moment that’s supposed to be full of tension, you’re thinking, “Just push the silly thing over,” that’s not good.
[DAVID] David rejoins Ra, but as they’re heading out, they’re captured by Sagoths.
{NICK} Wasn’t it a dumb place for Ra to set up camp in the first place, right outside the Mahar caves? Kinda like a fox taking a nap outside the hound kennel.
[DAVID] They’re brought back to the underground arena, and now they’re the main event. Ra is chained to a pole in the center of the ring, and David is given a spear. All the slaves are on hand to witness the event. Doc, ever the optimist, waves at David from the crowd. At least their captors provide periodic entertainment, a brief respite from their labors.
{NICK} Likely it’s to teach a lesson about what happens to people who try to escape. Because suddenly there’s a low rumble from a cave, a portcullis is raised, and out trundles HIPPOSAUR!
[DAVID] Rubber suit, of course, but via the wonders of blue screen it’s made to look the size of a Chevy Suburban.
{NICK} They also have a full-scale model of the creature’s head, which they inter-cut for some awkward footage as David ineffectively pokes at its snout. The jaws of the full-scale puppet are pretty rigid, and so it just looks like it keeps nudging David. Doug McClure would have to crawl into that mouth for the creature to actually bite him.
[DAVID] Ra helpfully yells to “Go for the ear!,” apparently the beast’s one weak spot. Eventually David does manage to poke it in the ear.
{NICK} It stands still a bit, grunting in pain from the ear piercing—
[DAVID] Ha!
{NICK} —then keels over on its side, its legs jutting out in that funny way they do when it’s a guy in a rubber suit.
[DAVID] The Mahar, apparently because of their telepathic connection to their pet beastie, croak in synthesizer-modulated pain, then one flies down to do what Hipposaur could not.
{NICK} oh no oh no
[DAVID] Fortunately, Ra breaks his chains at just this moment, and uses the chain to garrote piñata-bird. “Freedom!” he yells, and a full-scale uprising is on. David, Ra, and most of the other slaves escape.
{NICK} When David emerges from the cave, he conveniently comes upon Hoojah holding a spear to Dia’s belly.
[DAVID] “There is a shortage of perfect bellies in Pellucidar. ‘Twould be a pity to damage yours.”
{NICK} He doesn’t say that. And before you ask, yes, I recognize what you’re paraphrasing.
[DAVID] As if Hoojah weren’t threat enough (well, really he isn’t), a burst of flame suddenly laps at the Sly One and the woman who has refused to make Pellucibabies with him.
{NICK} It’s a fire-breathing dinosaur! Who knew? And since this one is belching fire from a cliff far below them, the fx team didn’t even bother with a rubber suit or a full-scale puppet. It looks just like some of the dinosaur toys I had when I was a kid.
[DAVID] Kinda cute, really. Made me reminisce of the days when I’d hop in the bathtub and just such a plastic toy would rise from the bubbly depths to chomp on a GI Joe.
Suddenly the creature is struck with an arrow! And a second, and a third. Who’s turning it into a pin cushion? None other than Doc, who’s found time to make a bow and arrows.
{NICK} Dragontoadithicus tumbles from the cliff to the valley below and…..EXPLODES! That’s right it explodes on impact in a ball of flame.
[DAVID] Yes, you erupted into peals of laughter, I recall.
{NICK} I’d never seen a self-detonating dinosaur before.
[DAVID] In the ‘70s
