At The Earth's Core (1976)

 

The success of The Land That Time Forgot enabled the same team to make At The Earth’s Core . While it had a bigger budget than its predecessor it’s not always deployed as effectively.  The adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tale of a burrowing machine accidentally taking its passengers to the centre of the world is a lively affair. Kevin Connor directs with as much regard for the fact that this is studio bound for its entirety as he can and deploys some impressive flourishes in an environment over which the production has complete control. The results may seem mixed from this distance but I remember seeing films like this in tv during the school summer holidays and finding them hugely exciting. 

 

One of the things about watching something made a long time ago, especially if you know it could be far better realised now with digital effects, is to give it a break! Warbling about how terrible the effects are ignores how good they are for the time when they were produced. The other thing is that nobody then was able to watch stuff that had clear, crisp pictures the way we can now. TVs were grainier, cinema screens full of tiny fractures, marks and a patina quite different from what we’re now used to. In that context then, At The Earth’s Core works hard and often hits the target if not always as seamlessly as it might.

We open at a trial run of a digging machine dubbed the Iron Mole created by Doctor Abner Perry (Peter Cushing) with finance from the American David Innes (Doug McClure).  Shaped like a long torpedo with `feet` that help propel it though rock, it is one of those classic fantasy ideas that both makes sense and is silly at the same time. It actually looks a little like one of the Thunderbirds. Anyway, the duo’s inaugural trip goes awry when the machine fails to maintain its planned trajectory taking it through to the other side of a mountain and instead malfunctions and begins to borrow down into the Earth’s Core. The passengers first pass out with heat but are awoken by freezing cold. Clambering out of the stricken craft they find they are in an overgrown jungle that resembles prehistoric times and sits under a pink sky. Abner realises “we’re not on Earth, we’re under it”.

To be honest and trying to give this film as much leeway as I can its’ fair to categorise Innes’ reaction to this and subsequent predicaments as `slightly perturbed`. Then again he is there to do all the fighting while Cushing’s Aner brings archetypal dotty English professor energy to the table. His performance is actually very similar to the ones he gave in the Doctor Who big screen movies a decade earlier. It does feel at times as if he is trying to overcompensate for McClure’s laisse faire style.

The story sees rival tribes under the thrall of the bird like Mahar and their slaves the Sagoths, ape like humanoids who soon round up the strangers for slave detail. People being captured and forced to work in unpleasant mines was a Seventies sci fi trope; here they are literally keeping the place going replacing rock worn away by nearby lava. They are also various large monsters out to eat or stamp on anyone regardless of which side they’re on.

The filmmakers devote a large amount of the brief run time (eighty four minutes) to these large creatures chasing people so any characterisation of the inhabitants is basic. David does fall for the princess Dia (Caroline Munro) and in doing so breaks some of the traditions of these people. Somehow the newcomers have to overcome tribal rivalries and bring everyone together to overthrow the Mahars. There’s no attempt to put any of this into context so how this scenario has come to be is parked. Like why do the Mahars run this awkward regime when they could just fly around and eat people? How did a world like this even come to exist anyway? Where the jiggins is the oxygen coming from for everyone to breath? Best not to ask.

The original story had first been published in 1914 as a four part serial in the magazine `All Star Weekly with a hardcover book version following in 1922. It was the first in a series about a hollow Earth called Pellucidar. The film largely follows the same plot though the novel provides some more background on the Mahar who are all female and able to reproduce thanks to a so called `great secret` contained in a book which David steals. Also, the method of defeating the Mahars differs. The original story is told from a first person perspective of someone to whom David Innes relates the tale in retrospect inspiring the former to suggest a return to this world.

Design wise the giant monsters are obviously men in costumes – maybe two people in the larger ones- and there is some movement of the masks. Unfortunately, the big bird we see at the start and the hippo like animal that is sent in to battle with Doug later have very little movement in their mouths which only draws attention to how unthreatening they can seem.

The sound mix of the film is tremendous sometimes flattering the action we’re watching. A succession of roars or the falling of lava is superbly rendered from an aural perspective and this extends to some of the incidental score. Sometimes the music can fall back to generic action themes of the day yet on other occasions uses a wholly electronic soundscape reminiscent of Vangelis that really suits the mood. The principal villains, the bird creatures called Mahars are introduced wreathed in mist atop a cliff edge and are most effective when still and in shadow. They hold a psychic control over the locals, depicted using a blink of their pale blue eyes. Combined with electronic effects and close ups of those blinking eyes the results are  very effective.

Its only once they lift off that the `actors on wires` scenario kicks in though being birds I suppose they do have to fly. However the editing ensures we don’t linger too much on that aspect and, combined with Connor’s favouring of zoom shots to show the different perspectives, makes the later scenes very effective. The director did later say they had a lot of accidents with these stunts as the performers kept crashing into the plaster walls on the set!  I also like the clicking noise by which the Sagoths communicate. The cave sets are high quality; believably narrow and awkward to traverse and the Mahar’s central lair with bubbling lava feels genuinely volcanic.

It’s a bit of a shame that the film resorts to, in this case, multiple damsels in distress, to inspire Doug and co to win the day but it does provide an energetic denouement. As a lively adventure for kids the film delivers what is needed and certainly has a momentum that carries it through its rockier parts to deliver for its time and retain a certain power even now.