This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

What would you expect from a movie that features Cliff Clavin?Not much, right?Well not much would be a huge improvement over what it actually is.There isn't a single thing in this movie that makes sense.It starts with two guys throwing a baseball(like girls) over a scientist who has a bunch of glass beakers sitting next to him and of course they end up breaking some of them.Why did they have to play ball there?Why did the scientist have glass beakers when he had no intention of ever mixing or even using chemicals?So anyway, the one guy has invented a diving bell that doesn't have a bottom and magically, it never fills with water.They get lowered down on a rope and find a large gold statue.They somehow manage to get it into the bottom of the diving bell and tie an extremely long rope around it and somehow the other end of the rope is tied to the ship above.Even though there was clearly no rope in the bell when they left.When it gets to the ship the captain immediately tells one of the scientists that his men may try a mutiny and then they immediately do just that.Weak.The crew cuts the rope to the bell and attack the others.Then a giant octopus attacks and drags them all hundreds of feet under water and they all live.Then he goes back for the bell.Once in Atlantis it just gets worse.They say they were brought there for taking the statue but later we find that Atlantis just needed to replace dead slaves.Did I mention Atlantis has guards that wear helmets that cover their face and the humans have no problem punching them and knocking them out?They get locked in a cell and it looks like they are doomed.Then two extremely slow moving monsters attack and they are content to just eat the one Atlantean slave who has a speaking part and then smash into the main characters cell, freeing them but not hurting them.Weak.Then they find a sewer grate with all the bars broken for easy access.Because in a world run by tyrants, who would notice that?The other end of the sewer(where all the non-slaves live) is just covered by some hanging beads?WTF?So they get back to the diving bell and drive it to the surface.If the bell was self-propelled why did it have to be lowered on a rope?Why was it inoperable after the rope was cut?Why did they even get out of it if it was still working?The octopus comes back and smashes their ship so they get in a row boat with no oars and the octopus just leaves them alone.Then it's implied that they all live.Somehow making it hundreds of miles with no radio or oars or food.This movie should never be seen by anyone.

This kind of cheesy adventure yarn was a staple of my youth - and every time I see one of these films, it brings a tide of nostalgia pouring through me. WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS is a film which just wouldn't stand up to a modern audience's viewing - it's not politically correct, the acting is poor, and the special effects not particularly effective. But to a child, the film becomes a wonderful story of monsters, aliens, and plenty of protracted fight scenes. The film starts off well with an excellently animated octopus attacking a boat and dragging the survivors to a new world. This octopus attack is really quite splendid, okay so it's not original but the model effects really do look good. After there things can only go downhill, but there are still plenty of laughs and fun to be had as our heroes enter a weird society of primitive gill-men and alien rulers.The chief nasty bloke in this case is Michael Gothard, a man who lent his unique persona to such schlock as SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN and the respectable JACK THE RIPPER before committing suicide in the early '90s. He always reminded me of a British Klaus Kinski. Gothard is at his sneering best here as the evil alien commander, although sadly he is given far too little screen time and not much to do apart from stand around and bark orders. Opposing him as the face of good is a solid Doug McClure, whose shirt gets torn off yet again and who pushes his way through the film with his own brand of wooden acting. He might have his critics (and many of them), but for me, McClure will always be a hero. Much like modern action stars, he's a man who never gets injured, who always wins out in the end. and who gets to fight loads of baddies and monsters single-handedly.Which brings me on to the monsters, which look a lot like dinosaurs. Sadly these are of the back-projected variety (the cost of the octopus must have eaten the budget), and even if they look quite nice, the projection does look awful, much like in AT THE EARTH'S CORE. You can almost smell the rubber on some of these monsters. The film reaches new depths with an attack of flying fish (a truly unbelievable scene), but I quite liked a toothy snake thing which came out of a swamp to grab somebody's leg. If your idea of fun is a cheesy and amusing film, then this one is for you. Packed with effects and action scenes which seem to go on forever, any child would love it. I would rate it as better than AT THE EARTH'S CORE, but not quite as good as that all-time favourite, THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT.

This is really the cheesiest sci fi film that I have seen in a long time.It is a cross between Jules Verne and Ray Harryhausen but doesn't manage to be either.Instead of stop motion animation it uses men in rubber suits who are totally unconvincing.There is a giant octopus that beats the vessel with a gold statue and is probably the best of the mirth inducing moments that constantly occur throughout this film.It is one of those films that is so consistently bad that it is almost good in a way.Everything about the film is second rate from the acting through to the effects down to the scripts.Not worth a second look once was enough.

"Harrihausen stop-motion animation in all its choppy glory". Where? I didn't see any, it all looked like sock puppets, guys in rubber suits and wood and canvass models to me, standard Amicus/Rice-Boroughs effects. If they had have used stop-motion the effects would have been a lot better, take the Empire Strikes Back made three years later or the Golden Voyage of Sinbad made four years earlier. Please, please don't say the effects were good for the Seventies, because in all fairness King Kong which was made 45 years earlier has better effects and there currently appears to be a trend to excuse anything made before the advent of CGI as "Good effects for their day". As if Spielberg would have used guys in suits a la Godzilla to make Jurassic Park if CGI hadn't have been around in 1992! It's a fun film, however, and very enjoyable, I liked it as a kid and like all the Amicus/Rice-Boroughs films I try to see them when they're on.