James Mason was clearly cast because he had done 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and after all that was a Jules Verne story and this was a Jules Verne story so why not. He's actually pretty good. Arlene Dahl with her flaming red hair shows up well in De Luxe Color, Fox's crappy version of Technicolor.
What are you going to say about Pat Boone the king of the covers. You know your daughter would be safe dating this blandest of bland singers. Boone made his singing career re-recording R&B songs, a guy with strong religious convictions, he was the perfect lead for a family film.
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| More terror under the earth, Pat Boone singing. |
The director Henry Levin sets up the shots, calls action and probably quit everyday right at 5:00 pm so everyone could get home for dinner. The photography is nice and pretty as the action moves between the Carlsbad Caverns and lots of phony studio sets. The screenplay was by Charles Brackett who had worked many years with Billy Wilder. Brackett was also the producer of Journey To The Center of the Earth. This film is pretty standard stuff but apparently Bernard Herrmann didn't get the memo because he wrote a really superior score.
Most of the special effects are optical shots and matte paintings and they are pretty well done. The monsters are big lizards which are optically enlarged. This was something Irwin Allen would do in his tacky films but they actually look good here for a change.
The film is fun but a long haul. Brackett was a talented enough writer to keep the film interesting he probably should have kept it shorter.
132 minutes.
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1 comment:
you think that was long just wait for fall of the roman empire.
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