At The Earth's Core!

At The Earth's Core is a delightful romp of pure science fantasy. The classic tale by Edgar Rice Burroughs is well told in this John Dark produced and Kevin Connor directed effort. It follow's the previous year's offering of ERB wonder called Land The End of Time. But where as the previous movie has sought to reap as much reality as it could from the fantastic elements, this one dives head into a rich lush artificiality.

This movie felt like a modern reinvention of one of the classic ground-breaking Melies movies, particularly The Trip to the Moon. The hooplah as David Innes and Dr. Abner Perry strike out into the depths of the planet. There's no fifteen minute waste of getting to know you, it's a blast from the get-go and soon enough they find themselves in Pellucidar, a land where it is always day and man is merely one of the intelligent species seeking to dominate the environment. The momentum doesn't cease and we meet Dia and other Pellucidarians when David and Abner captured and taken to the city of the Mahars, the flying reptiles who seek to control Pellucidar.

Every scene in this movie was shot on a stage giving the whole affair an heightened artificial feeling, one which works for the elevated manner of the storytelling. With monsters created using the Suit-mation techniques I didn't find a thing in this movie that couldn't be recreated or approximated on the stage. This is a movie that never lets forget it's a fiction and that's just fine.

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