UNKNOWN WORLD (1951)
[aka To The Center Of The Earth]
"My colleagues and I believe that humanity can escape
annihilation - can find a temporary haven, a promise of hope that, come what may, life can
be sustained deep within the Earth itself"
Director: Terrell O. Morse
Starring: Victor Kilian, Marilyn Nash, Bruce Kellogg, Otto Waldis, Jim Bannon, Tom
Handley, Dick Cogan, George Baxter
Screenplay: Millard Katifinan
Synopsis: Dr Jeremiah Morley (Victor Kilian), believing that the destruction of
the world by the atomic bomb is inevitable, founds the Society To Save Civilization,
hoping to find a way of preserving the remnants of humanity. His team includes Dr Max
Bauer (Otto Waldis), a geophysicist; Dr James Paxton (Tom Handley), a metallurgical
engineer; Dr George Coleman (Dick Cogan), an expert on soil conservation; Dr Joan Lindsey
(Marilyn Nash), a doctor and biologist; and Andrew Ostergaard (Em Bannon), an ex-Marines
explosives expert. The team believes that mankind can be saved by retreating beneath the
surface of the Earth, and designs a "cyclotram" capable of drilling down into
subterranean caverns. However, they are unable to secure funding for the project.
Millionaire Wright Thompson (Bruce Kellogg) offers to fund the construction of the
cyclotram on the condition that he can join the expedition; Morley reluctantly agrees. The
team begins its journey by entering an inactive volcano. Their early progress is good, but
disaster strikes when Paxton and Coleman are killed by toxic gases, and then Thompson
accidentally contaminates the water supply. After a desperate search, the team locates
more water. Drilling through a wall, they find themselves in an underground lake in a huge
cavern. Morley believes that the cavern could support a population, but the others are
depressed and vote to go further. While exploring, Thompson almost falls to his death;
Ostergaard is killed while rescuing him. The others go on, and suddenly find themselves in
an underground world with light, an ocean and land. But can it sustain life?
Comments: This is a depressing little Cold War fable. The message the film
conveys, intentionally or otherwise, is that there is no escape from atomic annihilation,
so you might as well just sit there and take it. Besides, if the price of continued
existence is having to spend it in the company of Jeremiah Morley, I think I'll pass.
Rarely has humanity's future prospects looked so dismal as when they're in the hands of Dr
Morley. I'm sure he's got our best interests at heart, but he's not really someone you'd
want to spend time with in a confined space. Nevertheless, he manages to round up the
usual team of "experts" for his expedition. Anyone familiar with science fiction
films of the fifties and sixties has seen this crew before, including the inevitable
woman, Dr Joan Lindsey. In case any of us are foolish enough to thing she's there to
contribute something other than "romantic interest' the script is quick to disabuse
us. She's not given her title upon introduction, despite the fact that she's both a medico
and a biochemist (what we in the trade call a "Doctor Doctor"), and while she's
won an award for her research, it was conferred by the Confederation of Women
Scientists. She's also described as "an ardent feminist', which is fifties-speak
meaning that by the end of the film she'll have discovered her mistake and chucked science
for baby-making. Together, Dr Morley, Dr Lindsey and their colleagues are the
"Society To Save Civilization"; unfortunately, civilization doesn't want to pay
for its salvation. The expedition is funded by idle millionaire Wright Thompson, played by
Bruce Kellogg, who learnt how to gesture with his pipe at acting school and very little
else. Thompson is a jerk, and his ungrateful companions aren't backwards in telling him
so. Even Dr Lindsey makes bitchy remarks about him in her voice-over diary, briefly
raising hopes that what you just know is going to happen isn't going to happen.
When Thompson first starts making overtures, she brushes him off. And why not? After all,
the man-to-woman ratio on this expedition is 6:1 (pretty much the reverse of Dr
Strangelove's plan for humanity). But by the end, the two of them are in lurv. Thompson
isn't any less of a jerk at this point, it's just that Dr Lindsey's options have narrowed
somewhat due to the script's ruthlessness in disposing of its minor characters. Evidently,
the "Society To Save Civilization" can't even save itself. Only four of the crew
make it to the apparent utopia that mysteriously exists at the centre of our planet, where
they go along cheerfully enough until Dr Lindsey's rabbits have a dead litter. This one
experiment with rabbits is sufficient to decide the fate of the entire human race.
(Thorough bunch, aren't they? Oh, and by the way, fellas: "death in utero"
and "sterility" aren't the same thing.) Convinced that mankind has no future,
Gloomy Gus Morley commits suicide, but Dr Lindsey, Dr Batier and Wright Thompson all
decide that they've spent their lives running away from reality, that mankind isn't going
to destroy itself after all, and that they're going back to try again. I'm sure all of
this is meant to be inspiring and life-affirming, but it would be a bit more convincing if
(a) they hadn't just discovered their new world couldn't sustain life anyway; and (b) they
weren't going to get drowned by a tidal wave if they stayed where they were. Thinking that
they're about to die, the three of them indulge in a heavily philosophical conversation,
during which Dr Lindsey gets to utter what might be the single most incontrovertible
statement in the history of film (see "Immortal
Dialogue"). But it all works out, of course: the cyclotram surfaces near a pretty
little island, complete with beaches and swaying palms, allowing this gloomy film to end
on an upbeat note and proving that its makers had neither imagination nor a sense of
humour, because if they had, that island would have been Bikini Atoll....
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