That was an excellent one.

hyped garbage

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Although based on a novel courtesy of "Tarzan" creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, there are plenty of echoes of Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues under the Sea" in this fantasy/adventure story. And since yours truly is a giant admirer of Verne's masterful oeuvre, as well as of imaginative and grotesque kitsch-tales, I tremendously enjoyed this typically 70s pastiche produced by the Amicus Studios (on quite a large budget for a change). The eventful and non-stop flamboyant screenplay is divided into two main chapters. At first, there's the slightly more realistic battle between the crew of a German U-boat and the handful of surviving British Navy soldiers they shipwrecked. There's also a neutral adventurer on board, Bowen Tyler, and he seems to more about submarines and attacking strategies than all the other military men combined. Eventually, the U-boat drifts off so far south that they end up between icebergs and unmapped territory without fuel or supplies. When they navigate into a narrow cave, they come out the other side in a subtropical world inhabited by all known species of dinosaurs that have been extinct for millions of years. The Germans and the Brits agree to a truce now, as they'll have to fight for survival together. There clearly aren't any scientists on board of this journey, because they torpedo various kinds of dinosaurs without too much remorse, and things even get more complicated when they discover there are savage tribes living on the island in various phases of evolution. There are a lot of appropriate terms to describe "The Land that Time Forgot", like silly or far-fetched or implausible, but boring certainly isn't one of them. The script is chock-full of twists and sub-plots, but it's always compelling. There are a handful of moments that deliver good suspense and there's also a surprisingly large amount of bloody carnage, including people getting devoured by giant creatures or killed off by the tribes' primitive weapons. The special effects and especially the creatures are professionally crafted, a lot better than during the previous wave of dinosaurs movies that included for instance "The Valley of Gwangi" and "When Dinosaurs ruled the Earth". The climax is terrific and far more nihilistic and harsh than I expected it to be. Good acting performances are an asset as well. Even though Doug McClure is the only reasonably famous name in the cast, there are several other adequate actors involved, notably John McEnery as the unreliable German sea captain and Anthony Ainley as the vicious Major Dietz.

"The Land That Time Forgot" is arguably the most underrated dinosaur action movie of the 1970s. Good B-movie fun for the kids (and adults) in the family that can't resist dinosaur fare.This Doug McClure vehicle about British sailors who capture a German U-Boat that sunk their ship, then get stranded on a prehistoric island (think King Kong's Skull Island), only to be picked off one-by-one by ravenous dinosaurs and cave men, has pretty high value special effects for a 1970s flick. It is an instant classic, like "Logan's Run," which also featured some of the top special effects the time could muster - until Star Wars changed the whole game. (Of course, I am excluding 1968's "2001" here, a Kubrick film so far ahead of its time that it stands in a special category of its own.)Caprona actually has a plot (unlike the Jurassic Park sequels, for instance), good actors in a fabulous ensemble cast, character development, and a great set-up (Germans and British who want to kill one another, instead have to band together to survive ravaging dinosaurs).The special effects of course are not up to modern CGI, but they are awesome in their palpable physicality: glider planes disguised as pterodactyls that pick up a real actor in their teeth by swooping down; ichthyosaurs that shoot out of the water next to the U-Boat to feed on human prey; prehistoric men that will bash your head in with an ax, but also make dearest friends and love the Edison phonograph music; tar pits bubbling and shooting natural gas flames. We must forgive a scene where two allosaurs (still standing upright and tails down as was the posing custom in 1970s paleontology) have strings attached. Puppetry still beats stop motion, but take the kids to "Dark Crystal" if you want to see it done really well.The band of men and women is eventually defeated by their own infighting. The simple moral is that Nature will get us if we don't work together and get over our differences. As the U- Boat goes down in flames, the viewer actually feels sorry for the doomed characters, and equally sorry for the lone couple that was left on shore to deal with the prehistoric mayhem.This film is good enough to deserve a remake, but also good enough that it doesn't really need one. One the other hand, many modern remakes were made from movies NOT good enough to need a remake, or even to have been made in the first place.

Not a bad movie, it is entertaining and decently done. Doug McClure plays the lead in this one and does an adequate job. He and his group end up cast away on an island. 'At first they believe it is a normal land. Guess what? It is a blast from the really far past. They encounter all kinds of prehistoric animals and even what I guess are suppose to be cavemen. The overall plot definitely has a Jules Verne bent, although it comes from the great Edgar Rice Burroughs. The special effects are not quite up to the era they were done in but they are not that bad. I don't know if pterodactyls could really swoop down on their prey, I guess no one really does, but hey it worked.

The Land That Time Forgot is directed by Kevin Connor and adapted to screenplay by Michael Moorcock & James Cawthorn from the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of the same name. It stars Doug McClure, Keith Barron, John McEnery, Susan Penhaligon, Anthony Ainley and Declan Mulholland. Music is by Douglas Gamley and cinematography by Alan Hume. It is the first of four feature films featuring the pairing of director Kevin Connor and actor Doug McClure. Story is set during World War I and sees an uneasy alliance formed between enemies on board a German U-Boat after it drifts for miles and lands in a lost world of dinosaurs and cavemen.Rationale goes out the window, as does any hope of quality thesping, in the sort of cheese laden creature feature that thrilled many a child back in the mid to late 1970's. Film was enough of a success that it spawned three more films of the same ilk; At the Earth's Core (1976), The People That Time Forgot (1977) and Warlords of Atlantis (1978). Of the four, this is the one that arguably has the most about it in terms of plotting and character development. Certainly it's the biggest budgeted of the four. In fact for the first third of the picture it's distinctly un-child friendly, as story focuses on characters from opposite sides of the war clashing on board the U-Boat after the torpedoing of the ship housing the allies. But once the boat reaches arctic climes and wades thru to the sunnier "other side", it's all prehistoric puppets, fisticuffs and square jawed heroics from McClure. Ultimately a fun boys own adventure without sensible trappings. Not as outrageously fun as At the Earth's Core, but a decent launching pad for the 70's creature feature niche created by Connor and McClure. 6.5/10