Review: The Land Unknown (WTF-flims)

The last DVD I looked at was The Deadly Mantis, a Universal sci-fi flick that managed to get a lot wrong. So today I'm going to talk about The Land Beyond, another late 50s Universal sci-fi that manages to get closer to right. Mind you, it's not a great movie, but if you're a fan of 50s sci-fi/giant monster flicks, you're going to enjoy this one.

I'm not going to lie to you and say this is some mold breaking sci-fi work. It's not. As usual, we have the reporter lady Maggie tagging along with the scientist/military guys on an expedition. This time they're going to the South Pole for reasons I missed. Their helicopter is clipped by what looks to the audience to be a pterodactyl and they are forced to land in a balmy crater well below sea level.

Exploring the terrain proves they're not in Kansas anymore. Our leader Hal quickly surmises they're in the mesozoic period, a fact which everyone seems nonchalant about. Maggie's clothes start to fall apart (though in one scene, her sleeves magically reappear, then dissapear) and the group discovers the survivor from a previous mission who's magical conch shell sounds like the Stan Kenton horn section and keeps the dinosaurs away. He and Hal fight over Maggie while the guys try to find the parts to fix their helicopter.

What helps here is the actors aren't entirely incompetent and the effects are actually pretty good. The t-rex is a suit with a big old animated head. Kind of cool. Not the best, but neat enough. The sets are pretty decent though. You can tell it's a sound stage, but at least they tried.

Interesting that you can tell they put some money in to this, they even went so far as to film in Cinemascope, but they didn't go so far as to use color film. Granted, that wouldn't have changed the fact that this is still a pretty silly movie, but it might have give it a touch of class over the other B-movie sci-fi of the day.

WTF's disc is letterboxed and looks good. Crisp image, good blacks, etc. (By contrast, I have a Cryptflicks disc of this that's almost gray and white.) You also get the trailer, an image gallery (short as it is) and an easter egg with Italian opening credits. The only beef I have is the menu is a little wonky. All the items are accessable, but the direction buttons don't go the way you'd expect them to.

Good stuff here. Fun movie, not a great one, but if you're into the genre and ready to dig a little deeper, you could do a lot worse than The Land Beyond.

Available from WTF-film. Use coupon code cdr10 at check out for 10% off.

Review: The Deadly Mantis (WTF-flim)

You can't deny Universal Studio's might in the world of monster movies. Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Creature and on and on and on. Classics all. Then you discover something like this lurking behind the Universal globe and you have to wonder what the hell they were thinking. Were they trying to fill the lower half of a double bill and didn't feel like re-running one of their classics? Was the market for Z-grade flick like those that Astor and Lippard cranked out that lucrative?

Anyway, the key with these bottom of the barrel monster movies was suspense and advertising. Give the movie a name like "The Thing that Killed" or "Hell Creature of the Sky" and keep the audience guessing as to the creature looks like. Of course, it's going to be silly and cheap, but there was always that anticipation that it might be scary. However, even the title of the Deadly Mantis gives it away, so when the characters spend half the movie trying to figure out what's taking down airplanes, we already know.

Aside from that, you can go down the Z-grade monster movie check list and pretty much check the box by every cliche. Three main characters; scientist guy, military guy and reporter girl. Check. Cold war underpinnings? Check. Atomic energy as the trigger? Check. Narriator? Check. Copious stock footage? Yep. Giant bug? How's this guy for ya?


I know a lot of people like to take the piss out of Bert I. Gordon, but watching this movie seriously makes one appreciate what he could do in the giant bug genre. I'm not going to suggest Mr. BIG was a great filmmaker, but you could never accuse him of being less than entertaining. I fell asleep twice during the Deadly Mantis. No lie. There's only so much army stock footage a man can take.

Anyway, I'm sure you're all going to want to run right out and secure a copy of this for your very own, so let me tell you a little about the DVD. As usual, WTF-film does a great job with the disc. From cover to menus, the whole thing looks great. The transfer (which, I'm assuming comes from the old Universal Sci-Fi laserdisc set) is slightly windowboxed full frame and looks really good*. This looks about as good as the Sci-Fi set Universal put out last year and has extras (trailer and photo gallery) that Universal didn't bother with to boot. Unless they decide to put out another Sci-Fi collection, I think this is going to be the best way to own this movie, even if I can only really recommend it for genre completists.

Available from WTF-film. Use coupon code cdr10 at check out for 10% off.


* note, if you were reading message boards around the time Universal released This Island Earth on DVD, you'd know there's a ton of controversy over the correct aspect ratio for the Universal Sci-Fi and Horror films of this era. I'm in the camp that believes these were meant to be cropped to 1.85:1 widescreen, but transfers like this that are full frame rather than pan and scan don't bug me too much.