At the Earth's Core Movie Review

A Victorian scientist (fantasy-film veteran Peter Cushing) invents a giant burrowing machine, intending to market it as a mining tool. During a test run, however, the gizmo goes haywire and digs right down to the center of the Earth, depositing Cushing and his assistant in the lost world of Pellucidar. Here they encounter hokey-looking “prehistoric monsters,” who look a lot like men in rubber suits. After assorted adventures, they are called upon to rescue Pellucidar's cave-person populace from a society of telepathic pterosaurs and their ape-man slaves. This film isn't much more than a celluloid comic book, but anyone who loves the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel it's based on will probably find it hard to dislike. Peter Cushing is charming as the absent-minded scientist and Caroline Munro is appropriately tough and sexy as Princess Dian the Beautiful. Most of the monsters are laughable, looking more like Godzilla's poor relations than dinosaurs, but the scenes featuring the flying “mahars” and their “sagoth” henchmen are surprisingly eerie. Follow up to The Land that Time Forgot and followed by The People that Time Forgot.

1976 (PG) 90m/C GB Doug McClure, Peter Cushing, Caroline Munro, Cy Grant, Godfrey James, Keith Barron; D: Kevin Connor. VHS, Beta WAR, OM