cinema history class: the land that time forgot (1974)

The session: "Holiday-Premiered Fantasy Films—Get Your Ray Harryhausen On"

All four movies in this session are fantasy films that were released during the holiday season. In addition, the first three featured the stop-motion special effects of Ray Harryhausen.

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 4: The Land that Time Forgot (1974)
Directed by Kevin Connor

My Impressions Going In:

I don't think I'd heard of this one.

Plot:

During World War I two groups of sailors, one German and one British, find themselves in a lost world of dinosaurs, cavemen and other prehistoric surprises. They must put aside their differences if they hope to survive.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

In some ways, this felt like two movies in one. There's a half-hour prologue played out mostly aboard a German submarine. It's a well-done, tense, drama in and of itself, as control of the sub repeatedly shifts between the Brits and the Germans. As this is playing out, the respective Captains develop a grudging respect for each other. It's a dynamic I enjoyed watching.* After that, we get to the titular forgotten land where the feature begins.

And once that feature begins, it's relentless. There's excitement, pathos and suspense. The animatronics that served to create the effects were a huge advance compared to the stop motion that Ray Haryhausen had developed for the other movies that we saw in this series. Having said that, I can acknowledge that -- for some -- the stop-motion may be more enjoyable. Like different styles of art, this is a Coke/Pepsi type of thing.

I was initially bothered by the fact that it took so damn long to get to the main part of the story. I was expecting a land of dinosaurs and prehistoric men -- not a war drama. But on reflection, I changed my mind. The extended prologue was necessary in order to establish the relationship between the captains that is such a driver of their life in the second part of the movie. The German Captain is shown to be a thoughtful, fully developed character. And that makes the movie work better than it would have if he were a simplistically-presented villain.

And that is an example of how this movie succeeded where Mysterious Island (which we saw two weeks earlier) didn't. MI included the same basic concept of enemy combatants getting stranded in a lost world and having to put aside the enmity that had been driven by their war. But instead of creating good drama, it seemed hokey. Of course, credit where credit is due: I noticed that tLtTF did borrow some gags from MI, which had been made a dozen or so years earlier. Notably, the scene (in tLtTF) in which the sailors feast on a dinosaur they had killed was reminiscent of the scene in MI in which the soldiers ate the giant lobster that had accidentally boiled itself.

I didn't much care for the ending, as it seemed too deliberately designed for a sequel. But in the scheme of things, it wasn't a bad ending.

Ratings

Me: 9.5

Bob-O: 9.5

Christina: 8.3

Dave: 9.5

Ethan: 9

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* It reminded me of one of my favorite moments in Star Trek (TOS):  In "Balance of Terror, the Romulan Captain's final words, spoken to Captain Kirk, are, "You and I are of a kind. In a different reality I could have called you 'friend.'"