O2D Some guys are going to the "warm water" region of Antarctica and decide to take a woman because that makes sense. They fly into a storm and while trying to land they somehow go thousands of feet below sea level.Did they enter a hole in the earth?We never find out. They land in a jungle and immediately call it "prehistoric" because they see 2 iguanas fighting.They spend a lot of time talking about what "existed in this time period" even though they are in the present day.They know everything about the prehistoric monsters but they find a lemur and act like it's from another planet. Of course there's another guy there and wouldn't you know it, he was flying the same kind of helicopter and may have spare parts. Despite all of this garbage, it's not bad for this type of movie.It has the best guy in a T-Rex costume that I have ever seen.Definitely worth watching.

Scott LeBrun Scientists determine that somewhere in the frozen mass of land known as Antarctica is a body of warm water. An expedition is launched to explore the area; along for the ride are intrepid Commander Hal Roberts (later Tarzan performer Jock Mahoney), lovely blonde reporter Maggie Hathaway (Shirley Patterson), pilot Jack Carmen (William Reynolds), and machinists' mate Steve Miller (Phil Harvey). As they reach their destination unforeseen circumstances force them to land in an area that turns out to be 3000 feet below sea level - an area still stuck in the Mesozoic era, full of reptilian menaces and Carl Hunter (Henry Brandon), a traumatized survivor of a previous expedition.As directed by Virgil W. Vogel ("The Mole People"), "The Land Unknown" is very agreeable escapism. What gives it an edge over other Universal-International product of the time is the CinemaScope aspect ratio, giving us more of an eyeful of some pretty good sets. There's plenty of vegetation and steam to add to the atmosphere. It's true that the special effects dinosaurs are on the silly-looking side, but this does add appreciable cheesy B movie charm. The script is full of the usual "science" and exposition for this type of movie. The actors all give a straight faced go at the material. Mahoney is a stalwart hero, and Patterson ("It! The Terror from Beyond Space") is fine eye candy. The standout among the cast is Brandon ("Assault on Precinct 13" (1976)), who's convincing enough as a modern man reduced to a state of primitiveness. (Look for Kurt Russell's dad Bing as a radio operator.) Enhancing all of it is appropriate stock music from such composers as Henry Mancini, Heinz Roemheld, Hans J. Salter, and Herman Stein.This is good straightforward fun recommended to fans of "lost world" cinema.Seven out of 10.

richard.fuller1 I saw this as a kid in the early to mid '70s one summer morning when our local network showed old movies during the day.I thought this thing was an absolute masterpiece, brilliant from beginning to end, with its 'Fantastic Four' cast of characters.As for the cheesy effects, that was just something I never noticed at my young age, and I enjoyed the story way too much; a helicopter just looked too out of place to me in a jungle with dinosaurs.The slow-moving dinosaur costume approaching the helicopter was just suspense-building for me as well. Marvelous! When I would finally have to track this thing down on VHS and watch it then, I was astonished at how short it was! The missing scientist was kind of unneeded to me. He was just trying too hard to perform, I guess.But it all worked out.Definitely a Saturday matinée flick for kids, if you ask me, but don't know if today's kids would get into it that much.But I have always liked it, so much so I even had to track it down in comic book form, but from England!

TheUnknown837-1 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.