Ya know, it isn't easy to make a film about a marooned helicopter crew and a pretty girl being menaced by dinosaurs dull, by Universal just managed to do it in this 1957 clunker. Jock Mahoney does reasonably well as the intrepid crew commander, and the pretty girl is okay, even though her clothes are in tatters but her hair is perfect throughout. But the dinosaurs! You CAN'T be serious. Twenty or so years earlier, the brontosaur (or whatever it was supposed to be) that charged out of the swamp in "King Kong" was far more convincing than the plesiosaur in this loser. And the idea of attacking a tyrannosaur with the whirling rotor blades of a Sikorsky R-5 is just plain ludicrous. Still, we must admit that a man in a monster suit interacting with a model helicopter is probably the best they could have done back then, regardless of budget. Allegedly, the movie was inspired by the discovery, in 1947, of unexpectedly warm water in Antarctica. Swell. But is this movie really worth searching for? Well, actually. . .no. If this is the sort of movie you want, the silent version of "The Lost World" would be a much better choice.
Review of The Land Unknown
