Le Peuple des abîmes

You know what a typical Hammer production looks like, and "The Lost Continent" definitely doesn't fit that picture. It doesn't feature any old Gothic castles or torture dungeons, any cloaked vampires or mad Barons and it doesn't even star Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing. Surely Hammer also produced other mythologist films and stories revolving on time warps, but "The Lost Continent" is an entire league on its own and the complete opposite to what you expect. Right after watching this movie, you can't even properly determine for yourself whether it's good or bad … just plain weird. "The Lost Continent" is an outrageously plotted but awkwardly coherent film with two entirely different main story lines rolled into one. The titular continent (although it's merely just a small island) actually doesn't get reached until the twenty last minutes and, before that, it is just a suspenseful thriller set on a boat. The ambiance on the ancient and leaky cargo ship is rather tense and sinister. The captain ignores safety warnings and advice from his personnel and the passengers prefer facing a terrible sea storm rather than to return to the coast, even though they have been informed about the potentially explosive cargo. Suffice to say these aren't normal tourists, but people with dark secrets or even fugitive criminals. There are a lot of intrigues going on-board, but the sea is mightier. The captain and his passengers have to abandon ship, but they recover another one slowly drift towards uncharted regions. There they encounter ravenous seaweed and a lot of other things that don't make the least bit of sense, like gigantic crab-creatures, a native tribe under the impression that the Spanish Inquisition isn't finished yet and a local girl with the most gorgeous pair of breasts in the universe. In order to set food on land, they have to put watery pillows on their feet and attach balloons on their shoulders, which forms another very ludicrous sight to behold. "The Lost Continent" is an incredibly silly film, but all cast members perform their roles with a poker straight face, like as if they were starring in the greatest & most budgeted epic adventure in the history of cinema. The effects and monsters designs are extremely dodgy and laughable, but also somewhat charming. The film hasn't got a real ending, but (fortunately?) Hammer never bothered to make a sequel. Crazy little Brit-film, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to open-minded fans of cult cinema.

THE LOST CONTINENT is from a novel by Dennis Wheatley, a prolific writer whose books were a compilation of badly written prose, cardboard characters and often inaccurate details. They also happened to be enormous best sellers.

The movie captures his style. We are introduced to characters whose personalities change during the movie for apparent reason and plot threads that start promisingly then go nowhere.

Ben Carruthers is an almost cartoon-like sleazeball and good actors like Eric Porter, Jimmy Hanley and Hildegarde Kneff somehow manage to keep straight faces throughout.

The music is weird; from the opening crooning of a completely inappropriate title song it seems throughout to have been written for a different movie, having no connection with the mood of the scenes.

With it's painted sets and general air of cheapness it should have been a complete disaster but somehow in the end it all becomes strangely likeable.

One for those yahoo evenings with beer and popcorn.

I have sometimes confused The Lost Continent to the 1951 dinosaur movie of the same name. It is rather enjoyable though.

A tramp steamer with a motley collection of passengers and plenty of barrels of a dangerous explosive goes on an expedition and ends on an uncharted island in the Sargasso Sea which seems to be a graveyard for ships. When there, they discover the land populated by giant crabs, a giant scorpion, man-eating seaweed and survivors of the Spanish Inquisition! After several of the party and Inquisition are killed by the monsters and the explosive chemical, they set off and head back to civilization, along with some of the Inquisition.

Hammer made this movie in 1968 and I taped it when it came on Channel 4 some years ago. Some of the monsters look rather cheap and the movie has a good theme song.

The cast includes Eric Porter, Suzanna Leigh, Nigel Stock and Dana Gillespie.

This movie is worth a look at. Enjoyable.

Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5.

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

Michael Carreras often attempted to broaden Hammer's repertoire during his terms there and most of the company's artistic triumphs, and interesting misfires, can be laid at his feet. THE TWO FACES OF DR JEKYLL was a serious attempt to move the Gothics beyond the traditional limits expected of Hammer that failed due to the gap between intention and execution. Having pioneered SHE and ONE MILLIONS YEARS BC and put Hammer into the Summer family crowd pleaser market - and anticipating the modern Hollywood blockbuster - Carreras took advantage of hammer's relationship with Dennis Wheatley not to churn out another Black magic Chiller but a curious mish-mash of soap-opera, disaster movie, nautical adventure and sci-fantasy.

Eric Porter was hotter than a murder weapon at the time with his portrayal of the tormented, cuckolded Soames Forsyth on the BBC (and had become something of a sex symbol in the process - despite, or because of, his rough treatment of his capricious wife, Irene) so Hammer thought it worth taking a chance on him as leading man material - as they had Peter Cushing - instead of Christopher Lee or a fading American star. Porter was a top drawer classical actor - I had the good fortune to see his Malvolio in TWELFTH NIGHT at Stratford - and he has a convincingly craggy sea-faring face and a natural authority, and ain't half-bad as a man of action at the climax. His captain could give Cushing's Baron Frankenstein a few lessons in monomania - he fails to tell his crew (including, inevitably, Michael Ripper) about the dangerous cargo of Phophor B they carry. Having been beaten to the punch by Benito Carruther's sleazy character to sleep with Hildegard Knef, he cares very little when the man is carried off by an octopus. I doubt whether Porter lingered too long over the film on his CV but he's a first-rate lead and although he made an excellent Moriarity in the Granada series, might have been an intriguing Holmes. The women characters are unusually complex for Hammer. Hildegard Knef looked every inch a MILF and conveys the weary melancholy of a beaten-down woman who's had to compromise herself in the name of survival. Suzanne Leigh is one of Hammer's finest and most underrated bitches - look at the smirk she gives her hated father Nigel Stock when Porter berates him - and opens her thighs for anything with a pulse including the Sparks, Benito, and on-the-wagon Harry. Sadly, both fade from centre-stage at the climax - but there is compensation in the form of Dana Gillespie. We've suffered enough childish double-entendres with those gas balloons she wears for now, but she is a striking beauty and, as Hammer weren't overly concerned with the thespian ability of their ladies, it seems strange she never made another one for them - Christopher Lee could have sunk his fangs into her certainly. I suspect she's dubbed, but she certainly takes Harry's mind off the booze.

The plot structure is oddly similar to FROM DUSK TIL DAWN with the plot starting off as one genre and taking an unexpected detour in fantasy-land. Nonetheless, it remains a curio in Hammer's output (and an indication of what ZEPPELINS VS PTEROCATYLS might have looked like had it been made) and remains the guiltiest of pleasures.