El continente perdido

Perhaps the strangest film to come out of Hammer Studios, The Lost Continent is literally like watching two movies in one. Similar in format to Tarantino's From Dusk 'til Dawn, the film shifts from a taut "mutiny on the bounty" type nautical drama play (with a little funky late sixties weirdness thrown in) to a whacked out sci-fi freak show complete with corny monsters, strange & hostile plants, an unnaturally large breasted woman, a child King, an oddball religious cult, and balloon-type thingies to keep the characters afloat on the marshy alien wetlands! Whew! Talk about your shift in gears! A must see for fans of oddball cinema. And to think it came out of Great Britain . . .

First time I saw it, there was a scene where Porter hears Neff's life story (she was mistress of a banana republic dictator and has a son somewhere). He (I think) says he'll impound her passport unless she sleeps with him. He goes to her cabin to find Ricaldi (played by Benito Carruthers and whatever happened to him?) emerging and buttoning his jacket in a lewd way. Porter opens Neff's door to find her naked on the bunk. He throws her passport at her and exits. I watch this movie every time it's screened and have never seen this scene again. In a scene that's still present, Neff agreed to give Carruthers sexual favours if he'll let her keep the securities she's stolen from the dictator. But the absence of this key scene makes nonsense of the conversation between the three of them in the lifeboat... See this film anyway, it's a gem. xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx

The Lost Continent belongs in the same category as films like The Island (1980) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). It's scientifically implausible, childish but fairly inventive in plotting, and surprisingly enjoyable if you allow yourself to be drawn into the story without clinging too stubbornly to reality.

In this one, a ship is fleeing from African customs officials when it runs into heavy weather in uncharted waters. The passengers and crew abandon ship, but later they rediscover it, trapped in a peculiar section of sea infested with weeds. This same seaweed world turns out to be the home of a long-lost community of sailors, ruled (somewhat tyranically) by descendants of the Spanish Inquisition.

Eric Porter plays the lead role with a commendably straight face, getting over a convincing reading the ship's captain. Other members of the cast take things less seriously and seem to have their tongues pretty firmly in their cheeks, but they still give interesting enough performances. The script is a real piece of lunacy, with loads of obvious plot holes and unlikely situations - in many ways you wonder if they wrote it over a drunken weekend - but again there is sufficient imagination to carry the picture through.

This is undoubtedly a wild, wacky and downright infantile adventure film. But, in spite of its many faults, I like it to a certain degree because it has the courage to ignore its own daftness and run along at an entertaining and lively pace.

When I saw this as a kid, I thought it was cool, because it had creepy monsters and a theme song that sounded like Andy Williams in some lounge. A group of forlorn passengers on board an unseaworthy steamship, which happens to be carrying high explosives, set sail for South America. They get caught in a hurricane, the crew mutinies, they get in a lifeboat, man-eating seaweed tries to eat the captain, then they find their ship again and go back on board. that's when the fun begins. The evil seaweed pulls the ship into the Sargasso Sea, where it is chow-time for all the creepy sea creatures that attack and devour the ship's passengers. Also on hand are a bunch of Spaniards who think it's the 1500's. They have managed to peacefully co-exist with these slimy creatures. They are ruled by a petulant boy-king who tries to seize the ship and it's supplies. Our heroes must battle the Spaniards and the monsters and get home.

One of my favorite rainy weekend movies, The Lost Continent also is one of the best ripe Hammer films of the Sixties.

A freighter is blown off course and finds itself in a fog-shrouded part of the ocean where the seaweed enjoys flesh and mutated creatures with claws scamper about. It's a mild horror version of the Sargasso Sea and Bermuda Triangle. Eventually the surviving crew and passengers encounter humans who scitter around the seaweed with paddle-like shoes and balloons. The ship these people are from is a Spanish galleon several hundred years old, the crew of which survived and bred into the generations, evolving an Inquisition-like culture on board.

It's really pretty good, thanks to the interesting ideas of seaweed that bites back and the evolved life on the Spanish ship, plus the skill of the two lead actors. And it has a great look. Eric Porter and Hildegard Knef were both heavyweights in the acting department. I'm not sure why they agreed to this film, but I assume the money was good. Porter is one of my favorite actors. He wasn't handsome enough to make a career as a movie leading man, but if anyone doubts his abilities to command watch him as Soames in the original BBC Forsyte Saga. Knef had a so-so career as a lead actress in a handful of American and British films, but returned to Germany for better stuff. She was sexy and self-confident.