Fantastic!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I know that I was introduced to this movie on MST3K but even so, I still judge movies as they are as movies. I rarely try to judge them on how the show portrays them. The show is funny, but it isn't the movie itself. Anyways, with that aside, I will talk more about the actual film itself. It was alright as a general whole and it makes more sense than a lot of sci-fi flicks that were made in that time period. There is a bit of a confusing and yet decent enough story line if you actually manage to get yourself to care for it at all. Although I do wonder what the whole thing on slavery on over 5,000 years was really even an idea to begin with coming along. The effects are the same generic stuff you would expect in a movie at the time although the mole people as the film calls them are actually not that bad in terms of looks. And the acting was decent... just decent though. Overall, a better entry in MST3K than most of the movies in their list, even if it isn't exactly a great movie as a whole. But I am just looking at it as is.

Trying to discover a long-lost civilization, a team of explorers in a remote mountain valley find a mythical culture of people living underground from a race of deformed humanoid creatures and are forced to help their society return to it's former graces.This here was quite a decent if rather flawed effort. This one really doesn't get started off on the right foot at all with the lecture from the professor supposedly giving off a rather banal and horribly inaccurate part of the possibly theories of human evolution that is intended to make the events here seem all the more logical which it isn't to begin with but just goes on for so long that there's some utterly terrible work to get it going past this stuttering starting point. Likewise, there's also the rather troubling effect of the film manages to turn the supposed creatures of the story into pathetic audience-identification figures in them being slaves to the society at the forefront of the film which in effect makes it seem more like a sci-fi effort rather than a true horror effort. Even more, the concept of them being slaves really hampers the fact that there's barely any time with them on-screen as this one spends far more time on not only the trip to the underground city but also getting them to believe that the newcomers are important to their culture that it really stumbles with how it treats the creatures. It never manages to explain why they made them slaves to begin with or how they're able to be controlled so easily here with the simple whipping accomplished that really makes no sense not only how they knew how to accomplish the feat but also in how they lived alongside them all this time as slaves without doing until now. This alone makes that storyline inherently predictable and quite easily seen coming a mile away with the set-up being so obvious as to how this gets to the eventual rebellion which in turn leads to a lot of rather pointless and bland scenes of them going around the civilization interrupting their methods trying to be heroes. That none of this leads to a lot of true horror is a major detriment to this one with the fact that it really piles on the lost-civilization sci-fi antics rather than horror is a huge part of what really holds this one back as despite how much there's potentially to fear from the creatures with this one. Though there's a few decent moments here, it's not all that often at all with the early scenes of them going through the underground tunnels after getting trapped and slowly becoming aware of what they've stumbled upon as well as the scenes of them getting captured by the guards of the city. These are quite action-packed as well as mildly chilling, providing the best parts of the film where it really lets the creatures have some semblance of threat while also getting in some nice horror elements. As well, there's the decent finale which showcases the eventual rebellion and overthrow of their government which is a lot of fun with the different battle scenes as the creatures get involved in a rather decent enough brawl that does end this on a nice action scene but it's too little too late to save this one.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

This isn't exactly a horror movie, more like an adventure movie actually, but nevertheless, it's a lot of fun! Sure, the prologue is pretty dumb and the first twenty minutes or so are typical of a 50- 60's-B-movie, but after that, it sure gets good! The king of the people living under the ground is amusingly played by Alan Napier and slightly outshines all the other not-so-good actors! The mole people look cool and it's nice to see a monster movie where you can feel sympathy for the monsters instead of being scared by them, as that was pretty unusual for old monster movies. The dialog is cheesy but kinda funny. The ending brings mixed feelings to me though and the majority of the acting is crummy, but when it's good, it's really good! Thumbs up for the mole people!

A party of archaeologists discovers the remnants of a mutant 5000 year old Sumerian civilization living beneath a glacier atop a mountain in Mesopotamia.The introduction from Frank Baxter is interesting for two reasons -- one, he is an English professor, and I do not really see how English fits in. But two, some of the theories he presents later cropped up as Nazi theories. I am not sure if any Nazis actually believed them, but the "hollow earth" idea is not unheard of, nor is the inside out earth.I like the whole concept of the Sumerians going underground, though I am a bit unclear how "mole people" developed. But in general, the concept is interesting and I liked the twist. This film should be more respected than it is. The writers clearly but some work into it, and the actors all took it seriously... even the lead, John Agar ("Tarantula").