In case anyone’s noticed (which I doubt) that I’ve been discussing a spate of 1950s sci-fi/horror movies, I have a confession to make. Several years ago I needed to see Tarantula. (Anyone with similar headspace will know this need.) The only place it was available at the time was in The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection. Volumes 1 and 2 were sold together. I did what I had to do. Then I forgot I had the set before finishing volume 1. Who knows what might’ve been going on in my life then? Rediscovering it has been a budget-saving way to address my fix. I had never heard of The Land Unknown before, and although it has one of the goofiest T-rexes ever, it is actually a good story. Of course there are holes in the plot, but it is about the necessity of being humane, even when emotion dictates otherwise.
A helicopter crew on a South Pole expedition makes an emergency landing in a volcano that harbors prehistoric life in a hot spot in Antarctica. The crew has a female reporter with them—these movies certainly have fifties attitudes about women! Not having the parts to repair their copter, they try to survive among dinosaurs and an aggressive, giant monitor lizard. There is another person there, the sole survivor of an earlier expedition, who’s become mostly feral. The commander of the modern crew demands that they give him the dignity and fair treatment that all people deserve. There’s a bit of drama around who will get the girl (again, the fifties), with the commander ultimately winning out. How do our heroes escape this peril? They’re able to repair the helicopter with parts from the earlier expedition’s crashed vehicle.
With its budget the special effects had to be cheap, but the story has redeeming value. The message that we mustn’t let isolation drive us to bestiality is still as important as ever. There are those who watch such movies solely to laugh at the special effects. Hey, I laughed a bit too, but I’m only human! There is, however, more to this movie than the dinosaurs, which drew audiences then just as the Jurassic Park franchisedoes now. There’s even some serious talk about evolution, which was often present in these Universal creature features. There are some slip-ups on the evolution part, but apparently the monitor lizards were meant to represent stegosauruses—did I mention the budget was tight? I actually found the movie to be worth seeing for its intrinsic value. Not bad for a forgotten set purchased mainly for one movie in a time unknown.
