The Land That Time Forgot

Although having some cult potential this low-budget submarine fantasy thriller based on a 1918 Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel is neither good, nor bad enough to really qualify for a guernsey.  

Set during WW1 it tells of a (surprisingly sophisticated-looking) German U-boat which sinks a British supply ship. The survivors, including a square-jawed American  (Doug McClure) with a lady biologist (Susan Penhaligon) manage to take over the sub (well, it is a fantasy).  After some shenanigans they end up in the mythical lost world of Caprona, inhabited by dinosaurs and various of our prehistoric survivors. Things go from bad to worse and after virtually everyone is wiped out by a volcanic eruption the American and his biologist tramp on into the wilderness. Cue sequel. Indeed The Land That Time Forgot was the first of a series of lost world adventures from the team of director Kevin Connor and producer John Dark that starred McClure (titles were At The Earth’s Core (1976), The People That Time Forgot (1977), a sequel to this, and Warlords of Atlantis (1978).

Although the film starts well enough, with its low-fi special effects, including some really bad pre-historic creatures, it’s the sort of material that will appeal to aficionados of B grade sci-fi/fantasy genre film but in the absence of dramatic substance, very few others.  The script, co-written by sci-fi/fantasy author Michael Moorcock adds an incomprehensible evolutionary hypothesis to Burroughs’ original that does nothing to improve matters.

FYI: The same Edgar Rice Burroughs story was loosely remade by the low-budget US company The Asylum and directed by C. Thomas Howell in 2009.

Available from: Madman

 

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