You won't be disappointed!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Magnified stock footage of lizards fighting, a tall man in a rubber suit (where you can almost see the zipper), and a cute marmoset which ends up as an h'orderve for a mammal eating plant give this entertaining but overall silly variation of "Land of the Lost" a memorable camp quotient. Unfortunately filmed in black and white (much of it overly foggy and difficult to make out what's going on in the background), this adventure is perhaps not as well known as other similar time travel movies or films set in lost continents because it isn't as technically superb as the many others in that genre. As a film historian and fan of this genre, I was surprised that I had never even heard of this, but found it fun overall in spite of obvious flaws. If there is a world out there on our huge planet, I hope it is never discovered or revealed to the public if it has been. What we don't need is a real life Jurassic Park, as the last films of that modern series have proven.The story surrounds an expedition to the south pole where commander Jock Mahoney takes a helicopter filled with scientists and reporter Shirley Patterson and finds more than he bargained for. As we witness the cracks and crevices of the sharp snowy mountain ranges, it becomes obvious that the world beyond our reach is one not meant for human visitors, and neither is the way below sea level lost world they find themselves stranded in where the dense fog keeps out the Antarctic snow and has that world stuck in one long gone from the rest of our planet. Unable to see what's going on around her, Patterson is unaware of the vegetation branches nearly pulling her in to a fate worse than death itself, but is spared (for now) that agonizing ending. Only when they find the cute little monkey to be do they get to see the power of ancient nature, and it's very disturbing to watch this cuddly little creature pulled into the abyss of a painful ending.When the lizards first appear, I began to wonder if this was stock footage used in other similar films, and when the T-Rex comes on, I had to chuckle by its lack of realism. A swimming dinosaur with huge teeth is scared off by the sound of a mysterious horn, and when Patterson is suddenly abducted, it is apparent that they are not alone. She ends up in the cave dwelling of the stranded Henry Brandon whose haircut does not resemble anyone who has been out of society for 10 years. Obviously, he wants a mate, and the only way he will help the others out is if she stays behind. Among the other crew is William Reynolds who calls for help but isn't about to stick around to try to rescue Patterson from Brandon if he can get out alive. This leads to fights between members of the expedition over rescuing Patterson, as well as trying to get Patterson away from Brandon or later on, going out of their way to try to get him to come back to civilization with them.Suspenseful but not scary, this is a popcorn movie that might satisfy for one viewing but in comparison with others falls short of becoming a classic. It's obvious that this was rushed out for the teenage boy matinee crowd and possibly for drive-in showings, but doesn't really hold up 60 years later due to weak special effects, phony looking sets and the rubber dinosaur suits that expose their seams and don't even direct the person inside the suit to walk with commanding fear like a T-Rex would. I would say in spite of his modern hairstyle, Brandon comes off the best in the acting department, and in the conclusion, the theme of surviving without leaving carnage behind does have an impact on how the crew members and their leader deal with the cave-man like Brandon. It's also interesting to see how the dinosaur deals with the sharp pains it gets as it is sliced open by the revolving blades of the helicopter.

The idea of a tropical place in Antarctica where dinosaurs are still alive goes back to Burroughs' novel "The Land That Time Forgot" (1918). Therefore, 'The Land Unknown' certainly hasn't got a new story, and also the low budget shows in cheap studio sets and ridiculous dinosaurs. It's hard not to laugh when you watch the T Rex slowly waddling closer to, uh, 'attack'.But surprisingly, despite many problems this is still a remarkably good B movie. There is good widescreen photography, a believable tension between the human characters, and good performances by some of the actors, especially Shawn Smith as Maggie and Henry Brandon as Doctor Hunter. Maggie shows courage as the first woman on an Antarctic expedition - at least as long as the local vegetables don't bite. Hunter is a survivor of a previous expedition who spent years all alone. Brandon portrays this character as a man who has forgotten much of civilized behavior and turned into a caveman. His troubles to get along peacefully with other human beings are convincing. The script would have deserved filming in color and better special effects. There was potential for a monster movie classic, but it sadly ended up with too little production value. Even if not fully succeeding, 'The Land Unknown' is still an interesting contribution to the genre.

Jock Mahoney gets to show plenty of shaved he-man chest in this tale of castaways in a volcanic crater teaming with prehistoric plants and creatures. Their chopper goes down in a storm, and from that point they must find a way to get out of the place while fighting various elephant-sized reptiles, including a pleseosaur, pterosaurs and a rather silly looking T-Rex. There's also a rather large komodo dragon slithering around. They also grapple with a half-crazed human who has been living there for 10 years after his plane went down. Loosely based on the discovery of a tropical-like piece of land in the Antarctic, the movie is fast-paced and well-acted. The sets (many of them miniatures) are absolutely amazing, and I defy anyone to do any better using today's visuals. Of course, the creatures today would be CGI. The scriptwriters throw in a little talk about evolution when the castaways come across a small mammal that eventually will evolve into a monkey and then us. I can imagine how well this went over in the Deep South, if any adults were paying attention. Imagine your kid comes home from a Saturday afternoon showing and asks you if we're descended from monkeys. Anyhow, except for the silly looking T-Rex (man in rubber suit) and a rather slow-moving pleseosaur (a puppet), plus a typical 1950s actress thrown into the mix for unneeded sex appeal, the film is a lot of fun and still looks good today. It was shot in CinemaScope, which is great for the amazing jungle sets. Speaking of jungles, as some of you know, Mahoney would go on to play Tarzan in some of the best Tarzan movies ever made. And his Tarzan films were some of the first to be shot on authentic locations, including one that as Tarzan swinging into action in India!

Today, a little over a week from the day I saw "The Land Unknown" for the first time, I am still wrapped in the binding chains of utter disappointment. I had read and heard a lot about this film and even seen the trailers for it and I knew right from the start that it was a B-dinosaur picture. Well, I personally LOVE B-dinosaur pictures. Especially when the special effects are cheesy at best. There's a certain level of charm and humor to films like this that I, for some reason, find appealing. But still, even to the kingdom of the fans, there are entries of schlock that come across as disappointing.The plot is pure formula—just what I expected. We have news of a discovery in the Antarctic Circle and a government expedition to be sent in to explore the area. We have verbose scientists, macho tough guys, and pessimistic mechanics along with a lone female companion (what a surprise) to explore the area. They come in by helicopter and are forced to land in a warm, tropical jungle in the middle of the ice that is populated by…gee, guess what…dinosaurs! Yeah, it's all formula, but under the right kind of treatment, "The Land Unknown" might have turned out to be a passable entry for the right fans. Maybe I'm just not the ideal fan and maybe I've become too sophisticated over the years, but this was a mediocre endeavor at best.It was not the dinosaurs I didn't like. I loved the dinosaurs. They were just what I was expecting—and frankly hoping—for them to be: cheesy. The tyrannosaurus rex in this B-movie is one of the most notoriously bad man-in-a-rubber-suit cases ever put on film. The costume for the dinosaur is so stiff and so erect and the head so massively out of proportion and with that silly looking grin on its face and so strange when in comparison to those itty bitty little legs, that you can't resist laughing at it. There were at most, ten seconds of passable appearance from the T-rex. The pterodactyl that attacks the helicopter early in the film is an even worse effect: it looks like cardboard and is completely immobile. Along with a corny-looking elasmosaurus, there are the slurpasaurs: the graphically enlarged lizards. All fun, but not even they cannot save the film.But what I didn't like was the plot-movers: the humans in the foreground. Instead of focusing on these laugh-raising dinosaurs, the camera stays too long on the badly-acted characters running about in the jungle set. No, I was not expecting them to be Oscar-caliber characters with Oscar-caliber performances. Of course that's not what I was expecting. But even for a B-grade dinosaur picture, the characters are flat out dull and boring. The dialogue they are given is simply put abhorrent and there's not an interesting moment at all from them. We have the typical love subplot and it fails as well. Again, if we cut away from them just a little more often, this might have been forgivable. But we don't and it's not. And what shocked me most was how calm these characters were given their situation. In most B-movies, the B-grade actors attempt a corny look of shock or awe when they see the fake monsters. It brings a grin to the viewer's face. But here there's none and we don't grin. In fact, we lower our jaws when the characters look at the approaching tyrannosaurus rex or open-mouthed giant lizards with the utmost serenity. No emotion. No attempted emotion. They look far too serious. We imagine we probably look a lot like them as we watch this simply put dully-crafted "gem." And thus, it's boring.So ultimately, "The Land Unknown" just results, at least for me, as being a less-than-average B-monster flick with very few moments of guilty pleasure entertainment, which is what any person would venture into the film for in the first place.What was the problem for me? Was it too cheesy? Or not cheesy enough? I'm still not sure.