Today, a little over a week from the day I saw "The Land Unknown" for the first time, I am still wrapped in the binding chains of utter disappointment. I had read and heard a lot about this film and even seen the trailers for it and I knew right from the start that it was a B-dinosaur picture. Well, I personally LOVE B-dinosaur pictures. Especially when the special effects are cheesy at best. There's a certain level of charm and humor to films like this that I, for some reason, find appealing. But still, even to the kingdom of the fans, there are entries of schlock that come across as disappointing.
The plot is pure formula—just what I expected. We have news of a discovery in the Antarctic Circle and a government expedition to be sent in to explore the area. We have verbose scientists, macho tough guys, and pessimistic mechanics along with a lone female companion (what a surprise) to explore the area. They come in by helicopter and are forced to land in a warm, tropical jungle in the middle of the ice that is populated by gee, guess what dinosaurs! Yeah, it's all formula, but under the right kind of treatment, "The Land Unknown" might have turned out to be a passable entry for the right fans. Maybe I'm just not the ideal fan and maybe I've become too sophisticated over the years, but this was a mediocre endeavor at best.
It was not the dinosaurs I didn't like. I loved the dinosaurs. They were just what I was expecting—and frankly hoping—for them to be: cheesy. The tyrannosaurus rex in this B-movie is one of the most notoriously bad man-in-a-rubber-suit cases ever put on film. The costume for the dinosaur is so stiff and so erect and the head so massively out of proportion and with that silly looking grin on its face and so strange when in comparison to those itty bitty little legs, that you can't resist laughing at it. There were at most, ten seconds of passable appearance from the T-rex. The pterodactyl that attacks the helicopter early in the film is an even worse effect: it looks like cardboard and is completely immobile. Along with a corny-looking elasmosaurus, there are the slurpasaurs: the graphically enlarged lizards. All fun, but not even they cannot save the film.
But what I didn't like was the plot-movers: the humans in the foreground. Instead of focusing on these laugh-raising dinosaurs, the camera stays too long on the badly-acted characters running about in the jungle set. No, I was not expecting them to be Oscar-caliber characters with Oscar-caliber performances. Of course that's not what I was expecting. But even for a B-grade dinosaur picture, the characters are flat out dull and boring. The dialogue they are given is simply put abhorrent and there's not an interesting moment at all from them. We have the typical love subplot and it fails as well. Again, if we cut away from them just a little more often, this might have been forgivable. But we don't and it's not. And what shocked me most was how calm these characters were given their situation. In most B-movies, the B-grade actors attempt a corny look of shock or awe when they see the fake monsters. It brings a grin to the viewer's face. But here there's none and we don't grin. In fact, we lower our jaws when the characters look at the approaching tyrannosaurus rex or open-mouthed giant lizards with the utmost serenity. No emotion. No attempted emotion. They look far too serious. We imagine we probably look a lot like them as we watch this simply put dully-crafted "gem." And thus, it's boring.
So ultimately, "The Land Unknown" just results, at least for me, as being a less-than-average B-monster flick with very few moments of guilty pleasure entertainment, which is what any person would venture into the film for in the first place.
What was the problem for me? Was it too cheesy? Or not cheesy enough? I'm still not sure.
The plot is pure formula—just what I expected. We have news of a discovery in the Antarctic Circle and a government expedition to be sent in to explore the area. We have verbose scientists, macho tough guys, and pessimistic mechanics along with a lone female companion (what a surprise) to explore the area. They come in by helicopter and are forced to land in a warm, tropical jungle in the middle of the ice that is populated by gee, guess what dinosaurs! Yeah, it's all formula, but under the right kind of treatment, "The Land Unknown" might have turned out to be a passable entry for the right fans. Maybe I'm just not the ideal fan and maybe I've become too sophisticated over the years, but this was a mediocre endeavor at best.
It was not the dinosaurs I didn't like. I loved the dinosaurs. They were just what I was expecting—and frankly hoping—for them to be: cheesy. The tyrannosaurus rex in this B-movie is one of the most notoriously bad man-in-a-rubber-suit cases ever put on film. The costume for the dinosaur is so stiff and so erect and the head so massively out of proportion and with that silly looking grin on its face and so strange when in comparison to those itty bitty little legs, that you can't resist laughing at it. There were at most, ten seconds of passable appearance from the T-rex. The pterodactyl that attacks the helicopter early in the film is an even worse effect: it looks like cardboard and is completely immobile. Along with a corny-looking elasmosaurus, there are the slurpasaurs: the graphically enlarged lizards. All fun, but not even they cannot save the film.
But what I didn't like was the plot-movers: the humans in the foreground. Instead of focusing on these laugh-raising dinosaurs, the camera stays too long on the badly-acted characters running about in the jungle set. No, I was not expecting them to be Oscar-caliber characters with Oscar-caliber performances. Of course that's not what I was expecting. But even for a B-grade dinosaur picture, the characters are flat out dull and boring. The dialogue they are given is simply put abhorrent and there's not an interesting moment at all from them. We have the typical love subplot and it fails as well. Again, if we cut away from them just a little more often, this might have been forgivable. But we don't and it's not. And what shocked me most was how calm these characters were given their situation. In most B-movies, the B-grade actors attempt a corny look of shock or awe when they see the fake monsters. It brings a grin to the viewer's face. But here there's none and we don't grin. In fact, we lower our jaws when the characters look at the approaching tyrannosaurus rex or open-mouthed giant lizards with the utmost serenity. No emotion. No attempted emotion. They look far too serious. We imagine we probably look a lot like them as we watch this simply put dully-crafted "gem." And thus, it's boring.
So ultimately, "The Land Unknown" just results, at least for me, as being a less-than-average B-monster flick with very few moments of guilty pleasure entertainment, which is what any person would venture into the film for in the first place.
What was the problem for me? Was it too cheesy? Or not cheesy enough? I'm still not sure.