Atlantis, The Lost Continent (1961)

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" day.

Atlantis, the Lost Continent (George Pal, 1961) After making one of his best films—1960's The Time Machine—fantasist/director Pal made one of his worst. Pal had been interested in making a fantasy film about Atlantis since he'd read a 1949 stage-play by Sir Gerald Hargreaves. but, timing is everything in the film business; Hargreaves' play may have exceeded its shelf-life and, due to an impending writer's strike, Pal ended up with a script that was half-baked.

It wasn't entirely his fault—he did the best with what was given to him, within the confines of a miniscule budget, forcing him to raid M-G-M's vaults for decor, props and film (a lot of which was culled from Quo Vadis? but also The Prodigal, The Naked Jungle, and...Kismet? Forbidden Planet?) and a mandate from M-G-M to take his long-in-gestation project and making something that would appeal to the same market as the Steve Reeves "Hercules" films and The Last Days of Pompeii. The bar was set so low that only a desperate director (with a large bank account and/or home equity loan) could clear the bar without breaking his back in the cinematic equivalent of a snake-belly limbo contest.

The film begins with the ultimate opening crawl—a narration with graphics of some five minutes in length* (and intoned—one would not use the term "spoken" for this—by Man of a Thousand Voices, Paul Frees, and he gets his own credit as "Narrator") explaining the reason why scholars might think there was a "Missing Link" of a civilization that would explain similarities in culture between the Euro-Afric-Asian expanse and the Americas. The facts are piled on interminably, not allowing time for anyone to say "Holy Pangea! it's due to continental drift caused by shifting plate tectonics!" But, then, if you were saying that (risking an incoming avalanche of popcorn), you probably wouldn't be buying the appearance of giant crystal-ray weapons and a cameo by Poseidon. The anthropological lesson is a show-stopper right from the "Leo" logo. It doesn't get much better.

Demetrios (Sal Ponti, credited as "Anthony Hall") and his father (Wolfe Barzell) are fishing off the Greek coast when they catch something quite unexpected—a beautiful girl, who is soon revealed (mostly by her haughty manner) to be Princess Antillia (Joyce Taylor) of Atlantis. Demetrios is intrigued enough by her loveliness that he resists the urge to throw her back, but does seek to return her to her home—once she bestows permission—whether to meet the parents, or to expand his horizons, or to see if there are any more like her but without being so stuck-up is hard to determine.

Demetrios and Antillia take the fishing ship to the Mediterranean and past the Pillars of Hercules to the open ocean, where, due to the work of Poseidon becomes a difficult slog. They are saved by a reptilian-looking submarine, which provides them passage all the way to Atlantis, where Princess Antillia is welcomed back with much fanfare, and Demetrios (being a foreigner) is rewarded by being arrested and thrown into the slave camps, where he must work in Atlantis' active volcano trying to dig out power crystals that absorb the heat of the sun. Atlantis sounds like a lousy vacation spot, and like any border town I've ever visited.

Demetrios will get no help from Antillia's Dad, Atlantis' King Cronus (Edgar Stehli)—he's being advised by the villainous Zaren (John Dall) who is using the dubious talents of Sonoy the Astrologer (Frank DeKova) to influence the gullible King. Zaren's plot is to use those crystal's, which have provided light and heat to the citizens, and to weaponize it into a ray weapon, with which he intends to (dare I say it?) rule the world. Sure thing, rather than have their power needs provided for, any intelligent citizenry will forego them to satisfy the megalomaniacal desires of their leaders. I'd say that was sarcasm, if I didn't see it happen in front of my own eyes lately! Of COURSE, they're gonna let the bastard Zaren have his death machine. They'll even PAY for it, too. (Oh, they'll pay, alright, but I'm getting ahead of myself)

At some point, Demetrios is taken from the volcano to be turned into a beast-like human-animal hybrid—some kind of splicing is involved here, but whether it's DNA or the plot for "Island of Dr. Moreau" to beef up the movie is up in the air—but is given the chance to escape the fate by a battle with an ogre, which he wins handily, and is thus allowed to become a citizen of Atlantis. Worst Naturalization Policy ever! But, it does allow Demetrios to wander around in places a slave wouldn't be allowed in order to drive the plot forward. That's enough for him to notice that all the wildlife is voting itself off the island, a sign to High Priest Azar (Ed Platt) that Disaster is coming to the island, and explains to him about the Power Crystal Ray that Zaren is constructing. Platt's ability to keep a straight face no matter what silly thing he's asked to do (famously utililised in TV's "Get Smart") does him well in this role, as it convinces Demetrios to cozy up to Zaren in an attempt to sabotage the weapon.

You'd think that Zaren would be paranoid enough to suspect that a former slave who'd been thrown into the mines after rescuing a Princess might not have the villain's best interests in mind...but, ya know, a little flattery has shown to be very effective in impressing the most monomaniacal of leaders. Loyalty is their kryptonite. And, wouldn't you know, when Zaren starts his little Expansion plans by demonstrating the ray-beam, it coincides with the volcano dominating Atlantis erupting, earthquakes rumbling, and models of buildings falling like so many Lego constructions.

Back to the splicing: so many shots of disasters from other movies get threaded together with stock-footage of natural lava flows that, if you're to believe this movie, Atlantis didn't so much sink as get mashed up. One should not be looking at their watch while an entire civilization is decimated, but Atlantis, the Lost Continent made me callous. By the end, I didn't care about the characters, the continent, or what movie they re-used the footage from. That last one just doesn't sound like me.

I did care about George Pal, though. He would rebound from this, making the story sequences of The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and the quite delightful The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, as well as producing a few other films before his death in 1980. He was a master at stretching the imagination and—as evidenced here—a budget. And his work has been influential among the current crop of directors of the fantastic. 

But, this one? It should probably stay sunk.

* I decided to "asterisk" the narration so it wouldn't stop the review from proceeding:

"When Columbus discovered America, a series of mysteries arose to confound the scholars of Europe. Here are two continents, completely isolated from each other, yet they simultaneously developed similar cultures. For example, the Mayans measured time on the same principle as the Gregorian calendar of Europe. They used the same signs of the zodiac, the same decimal and mathematical system. They valued silver and gold, using both for jewelry and barter. Another mystery was the banana plant, a native of Asia that cannot be grown from seed, yet Columbus found it thriving in the New World. Elephants at that time did not exist in the Americas, yet their likenesses were cleaved on the walls of prehistoric caves in Peru. The pyramids in Mexico and in Egypt were built on identical architectural principles. Then there was the striking resemblance of a witch of Spain, and the witch depicted in the New World. But the most significant of all, Mayan and Aztec legends shared with Greek and Hebrew and Assyrian literature an account of a terrible deluge, a deluge many believe had destroyed the link, the mother empire, that had spread her civilization to both sides of the Atlantic. The Greek scholar Plato recorded this theory first, over two thousand years ago. There was once another continent: Atlantis: The Lost Continent."

Atlantis is not credited with the phrase "Location. Location. Location."