Centre Terre : 7ᵉ Continent

Dr. Abner Perry (Peter Cushing) is a Victorian era scientist who is about to take his revolutionary vehicle, capable of boring through the Earth, on its maiden voyage. Accompanying him is former student turned businessman David Innes (Doug McClure). The vehicle is more powerful than they thought, and they end up deep inside the Earths' core. Here they encounter a nonstop assortment of monsters, a kingdom named Pellucidar, a tribe of primitive people, and their subhuman captors / tormentors, who pray to dinosaur gods.

Now how can you resist any hokum featuring those elements? Produced by Amicus, and scripted by Milton Subotsky (based on the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs), this is decently executed by director Kevin Connor, who was a real go-to filmmaker for this kind of fantasy material in the 1970s. McClure is a jut jawed hero, and Cushing seems to be relishing a rare opportunity to ham it up. His performance may not be one of his most accomplished, but it's certainly a fun one. Caroline Munro is *extremely* alluring as cave girl Dia. Also performing this amiable nonsense with straight faces are Cy Grant as the helpful Ra, Godfrey James as the stolid Ghak, and Sean Lynch as the devious Hoojah (just to be sure we get the point, Hoojah is nicknamed "The Sly One").

The movie begins in grand style, with some striking opening titles and a beautiful, rousing piece of music. It promises a solid diversion, and that's what it delivers. The understandable criticisms often leveled at the production are its obvious budget issues, and rubber monsters. But these monsters are just so damn amusing, especially the exploding fire breathing frog. All of this is done in an agreeable tradition of the Saturday matinée feature. The sets and the visuals are reasonably impressive, and Connor keeps things moving along nicely (the movie hits the ground running), and building to an exciting and destructive finale.

"At the Earth's Core" does put a goofy smile on *this* viewers' face.

Seven out of 10.

Make no mistake, this is a very silly movie. Peter Cushing knew it; he gives one of his most over-the-top, ham it up performances.

Generally speaking, this movie has awful production values. Flying rubber pterodactyl creatures ruling the underworld. Piggish humanoid servants of said pterodactyls. A vapid, vacant-eyed Caroline Munro. An oh-so-macho leading man who, when you really look at him, doesn't look all that tough.

Still, At the Earth's Core has a charming innocence about it that gives it a bit of appeal. Best viewed by 10 year old boys on rainy Saturday afternoons, it's all in good fun.

This film begins with a wonderful piece of music and an excellently tense and edge-of-seat sequence in which Victorian scientists (played by Doug McClure and Peter Cushing) drill into the depths of the earth in their 'Iron Mole'. You truly believe you're going to see a great film to rival 'The Land That Time Forgot'. But then the two companions arrive in the underground world and encounter their first monster, which is quite obviously a man in an outfit which looks like a dinosaur with a parrot's face. From here it's downhill all the way as the intrepid scientists encounter ovens with tentacles on strings, fire-breathing critters with clearly visible flame-thrower nozzles and pterodactyl-people who, when they fall down, explode for no apparent reason. It's a shame the special-effects are so awful, as the storyline is quite interesting with some good situations and the music is excellently atmospheric. But what we have here is a good script let down by poor execution. All I can say in this film's favor is it's watchably bad. But I'd have been a lot happier if it was watchably good.

Hi! I'm Doug McClure. You may remember me from such other cheesy adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs works as, The Land that Time Forgot and The People that Time Forgot.

This movie is hysterical. Even allowing when it was made, the monsters are just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad! All rubber suited things with people inside. There's even a fire-breathing beastie, but don't look at it's mouth too close or you'll see the flame-thrower nozzle poking out. Couple that with Peter Cushing's wonderfully useless "old professor" routine and Doug's stoic hero performance and you'll laugh the whole way through. Carolyn Monroe plays Dougies love interest, though I did wonder where she got cosmetics from, living deep in the Earth. Perhaps the Avon lady calls there.

The flying monsters at the end are particularly silly. They have all the aerodynamic properties (and believability) of a concrete block. Just a bunch of fat blokes in rubber suits. All they do is sit on a ledge and hypnotise people. It's only when that fails, or it's feeding time, that they "swoop" down to attack. And when I say swoop, I mean someone prods the rubber thingy in the back and it swings down on a cable.

Total B-Movie delight. Watch it and be amused. Be very amused.

The main criticism of AT THE EARTH'S CORE is that it's cheap, the special effects are bad and so on and so forth. Yes, some of the special effects are painfully bad but what a lot of folks overlook about it is that it's actually quite fun, which is very important in my book.

In comparison, just look at the latest STAR WARS films: they have the latest, greatest special effects created by the latest technological advances which are capable in creating stunning visual effects as far reaching as the human imagination can imagine and yet, with all the razzle dazzle, those films were as exciting as a funeral. As Yoda would say, Fun they're not! In other words, who cares if the FX aren't the greatest when the spirit of the film is fast-paced, humorous and clearly set on the side of action. I love everything about AT THE EARTH'S CORE: the contrast between stodgy Victorian England VS the wild other-worldly, colorful setting of Pellucidar, the cast of characters, the concept of a lost underground world, the telepathic Pterodactyls, the human slaves rebelling, Jubal the ugly one (lol!), the inspired teaming of Peter Cushing (who's great!) and Doug McClure, the excellent music (it's really good), cinematography by the amazing Alan Hume and last but not least, Caroline Munro. She's effing sexy in this movie. One of the sexiest B-movie babes ever captured on screen.

Seriously, anyone who doesn't like this movie doesn't know what fun is. Gimme AT THE EARTH'S CORE over any turgid STAR WARS prequels any time! At least it has Caroline Munro, which no CGI fx can ever recreate.