Battle Beneath the Earth

A classic. Utterly dismal. This film must have been made with the change left over from the first Blair Witch project. The rock wall tunnels practically wobble, truck headlights pretending to be rock boring lasers. Englishmen pretending to be Chinese with silly slant eyes - you know the style seen in every lame 60 or 70's movies - how hard is it to hire real Chinese as actors? If the effects stink they are fragrant compared to the plot. At one point to detect the Chinese tunnels the military orders the US to go silent for Gods sake; like it was a submarine on silent running! The whole things is so bad as to be camply hilarious.

In Las Vegas, a crowd has gathered to watch Arnold Kramer listening to the ground. He hears something like ants crawling beneath them. The cops arrest him as he tells them to talk to Cmdr. Jonathan Shaw. Shaw led a underwater sea research project which collapsed and killed 27 men due to unknown cause. He goes to the asylum to see his Korean war buddy Kramer who has a crazy idea. The Chinese are tunneling under the country to attack us.

It has a fun opening which reminds me of the Radiohead music video. It's a great scene but it's a long slow downhill slide from that point on. The movie really wants to be too big. Getting the military involved is a bad sci-fi move. It's a 50's sci-fi Yellow Peril B-movie and not a good one. It's a silly action film worthy of Flash Gordon. It's a cartoon. Once they got into a tunnel, one could expect that they follow the tunnel back to where-ever in the network. They should be calling for backup and flood the mine with men. It's all non-sense from a sci-fi comic book.

The picture concerns upon Chinese communists (leader is Martin Benson as general goes berserk and who places atomic bombs) trying to destroy United States via some continued series of underground tunnels , made all the way from China under the Pacific Ocean , but some US Navy soldiers , scientists , military (Kerwin Mathews , Al Mulok , Ed Bishop) and a gorgeous geologist (Vivienne Ventura) discover the scheme and go underground to repel the invaders .

It's a pulp movie of science-fiction genre in which there are noisy action , suspense , intrigue , tension and results to be quite bemusing . The history deals with nasty Chinese people and American patriots who fight strongly to vanquish them . In spite of lack luster and budget is quite agreeable and fun . The plot is almost ridiculous and senseless but it's developed in fast moving and numerous surprises and that's why it is amusing . The movie has precedent in those films of the 30s with Fumanchu (by Sax Rohmer) and Boris Karloff as heinous starring and nearest the series of the 60s (produced by Harry Alan Towers with Christopher Lee as the Chinese baddie) in which the ¨yellow danger¨ was a fearful enemy . The motion picture takes part of a genre which in the 80s attained splendor , thus : ¨Red Dawn¨ (by John Milius with Patrick Swayze) , ¨Invasion USA ¨ (by Joseph Zito with Chuck Norris) and ¨Amerika¨ (by Donald Wyre with Kris Kristofferson) where the communists -Russkies generally- execute invasion on America . Rating : Average but entertaining .

"Battle Beneath the Earth" is an enjoyable film. But just because I enjoyed watching it does not mean that it's a particularly good nor intelligently made movie! After all, the plot is utterly ridiculous and the 'Chinese' in the film look about as Chinese as Steven Seagal or Bela Lugosi!

The story begins with a seemingly insane man ranting and raving in Las Vegas about sounds he's hearing beneath the pavement. Eventually, however, they realize that the man should be released from the asylum because there IS something going on under the ground....and it's a Dr. No-like Chinese general who is bent on world domination! Can he be stopped?

As I mentioned above, the Chinese in the film are certainly NOT Chinese but are Brits with Bela Lugosi hairdos and bits of prosthetic material around their eyes to make them look Asian! While the Americans are all played by Brits isn't that badly done, the Chinese in the film were embarrassingly bad. Plus the notion of Chinese folks tunneling from China throughout America....utterly silly and impossible. But despite all this, the film is fun and enjoyable...provided you first turn off your brain!

I knew this movie was going to be silly but I tried to watch it as objectively as possible. In the beginning this still went well but as the movie progressed the story lost more and more credibility, which was not only due to the poor silly story but also due to the poor film-making in general.

The story is not just only silly in terms of its premise but it's also filled with some implausibilities and giant plot holes. Like for instance, why don't the Americans launch a full scale attack after they discovered the Chinese rouge army, that plans to explode nuclear bombs on (or under) American soil? Instead they send about a dozen man, of which some aren't even used to combat situations. And why do the Chinese transport a couple of nuclear bombs without even an escort? The more you start thinking about this movie and its story, the sillier it gets. Perhaps you should try to watch this movie without thinking too much. It's the kind of story material normally used in a simple "Thunderbirds" episode, in which they have to save the world in 20 minutes time.

The story is original and in its core it had potential. However the way everything is brought to the screen is far from impressive or credible. I mean when they basically use giant flashlights for laser-beams, it's hard to take this movie serious. Also throughout the movie they occasionally use multiple sequences multiple times, in some cases even three times the same shot! Due to money or time problems? Anyway, it doesn't do the movie much good.

And why aren't the Chinese main villains being portrayed by Chinese, or even just Asians for that matter. Instead they are now being portrayed by British actors, with make-up, which works far from convincing to say the least. But also the rest of the actors aren't much good. Hard to say if that's entirely their fault, since the characters that they have to play are also far from well developed or even interesting enough to follow.

Guess in a way it's one of those movies that is so bad that it becomes good. The movie still does has its entertaining moments but yet the way the movie is made as a whole makes sure that you can't help to laugh and cringe at this movie.

4/10

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