The Land Unknown
The Land Unknown
NR | 30 October 1957 (USA)
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Navy Commander Alan Roberts is assigned to lead an expedition to Little America in Antarctica to investigate reports of a mysterious warm water inland lake discovered a decade earlier. His helicopter and its small party, including reporter Maggie Hathaway, is forced down into a volcanic crater by a fierce storm. They find themselves trapped in a lush tropical environment that has survived from prehistoric times.

Reviews
Cubussoli

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

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MoPoshy

Absolutely brilliant

ThrillMessage

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

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Allison Davies

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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AaronCapenBanner

Virgil Vogel directed this science fiction yarn about a Naval expedition in the Antarctic(led by Jock Mahoney, William Reynolds, and Phil Harvey) along with a female reporter(played by Shirley Patterson) who land in a crater well below sea level that contains a prehistoric world containing dinosaurs(both on land and in the sea) as well as carnivorous plants and a deranged sole survivor(Dr. Hunter) of a previous expedition. Can they repair their helicopter in time to rendezvous with their ship, before they are stranded in this lethal land? Marginal film has good story but clichéd treatment and characters. Some model F/X are poor(the T-Rex) while others aren't bad at all(the sea dinosaur). Watchable as a rainy-day diversion, but little more, though is an understandable cult item.

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wbswetnam

The Land Unknown is a low-budget black and white sci-fi film from the mid-1950s about an exploratory crew who stumble upon a "tropical" (and unknown) part of Antarctica. Supposedly, geothermal activity in this tiny area of Antarctica has melted through the ice cap and created this artificially warm, "tropics-like" area where giant carnivorous plants grow and dinosaurs amble about. The dinosaurs are giant lizards, a tyrannosaurus-looking creature, a plesiosaur-looking creature, some gigantic gila monsters (filmed in forced perspective), and some flying reptile things. Hmmm - no herbivorous dinosaurs? Anyway, our exploratory crew has helicopter trouble and is forced to descend into a cloudy maelstrom of clouds down 3,000 feet into this tiny "tropical" area. While they deal with their dying radio battery and hungry dinosaurs, they must find some way to contact the outside world to come rescue them. All the while, the heat and humidity cause their clothes to disintegrate, which was a delight to see on actress Shirley Patterson (a former Miss California) as her clothes gradually become more and more revealing.Overall, if you can forgive the cheesy dinosaurs, it's a decent sci-fi / dinosaur flick, well worth watching if you like B-movies.

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Lee Eisenberg

As can be expected of a 1950s movie about people having to battle monsters, "The Land Unknown" is totally hokey but very enjoyable. When a navy expedition is forced to make an emergency landing in Antarctica, it finds a land where dinosaurs still exist. It's Jurassic* Park as a surprise! The best scenes are of course the dinosaurs. There's a tyrannosaurus and an elasmosaurus, and even some monitor lizards. Hell, there's even a man-eating plant. Obviously, a lot of the content is pretty dated, but we can expect that in one of these movies. The point is to luxuriate in the occasional confrontations between the humans and the dinosaurs. I figure that the cast probably had a lot of fun making it.PS: Jock Mahoney was Sally Field's stepfather.*They actually say that the area is trapped in the Mesozoic Era.

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gavin6942

Three men and a woman (Shirley Patterson) crash-land in a deep crater in Antarctica, where they find a prehistoric world.I want to comment on this film and its comparison to the Savage Land of Marvel Comics (particularly the X-Men). Where did the idea of a prehistoric world in Antarctica come from? Was it this film? I think maybe so. The Savage Land was not until 1965, so this predates it by about 8 years... and it is entirely possible Stan Lee or Jack Kirby saw this film.There was an earlier story of warm water found there, but that hardly turns into a tale of dinosaurs (or of men who dress up in T-Rex costumes, or men named Hunter who fight the Loch Ness monster).

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