The Worst Film Ever

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Admirable film.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

On its own, George Pal's "Atlantis, the Lost Continent" is your basic B movie: lousy acting but very fun to watch. Paul Frees's opening narration, however, provides some insight into all the exploration that had been going on for hundreds of years. It's well known that the Vikings had come to North America about 500 years before Columbus's voyages, but there's evidence of contact between peoples from Africa and peoples from the Americas, such as an Olmec statue that looks African. And then the movie has the talk about how the animals suspect impending doom and start fleeing, while humans ignore nature's warnings. We've seen how true that is.Another thing that caught my eye about the movie is the casting of Edward Platt, best known as the Chief on "Get Smart" (he also starred in "Rebel without a Cause" and "North by Northwest"). Funny how these things work out. Anyway, it's a pretty enjoyable movie.

I can't remember the last time I saw this film. Maybe when Bob Wilkins was still doing his thing on KTXL in Sacramento? I'm not sure, really. Regardless, it's not one of Pal's better works, but it entertains. I've given some very harsh reviews as of late to stuff that's more technically sound, and those films are far more sleek than Pal's whole hearted effort to bring the mythical ancient world to a then contemporary audience.And that's the thing I like about this movie. It's genuine. Oh sure, maybe there were some rate cards given to a test screen audience or two, but Pal made a solid film regardless. The acting is wooden but passable for the time, the costumes are actually okay, though some of the scene regarding peril of the characters seem somewhat stagey and perhaps erroneous. But for all that, the film has heart.Pal's movie starts off with some propositions for the audience's inner pseudo scientist, and builds on the premise that the lost continent of Atlantis must therefore have existed. We then embark on a drama regarding a young man born on the wrong side of the tracks falling for the uptown girl.The effects are what they are, primitive and unconvincing, but palpable all the same in a 1960s kind of way. Some stock footage from Quo Vadis is incorporated to populate the lost city, so we get a sense of the grandeur of Atlantis. It's a relatively moderately budgeted film, so makeup, props, sets and the rest fit within the scheme of things.Truth be told I've rarely seen this film. In fact I've heard and read about it more than I've actually seen it. But, thanks to the good people at Warner Home Video, I was able to purchase a DVD-R version of this film, and relived some of my earlier years all over again.The other truth about this film is that it's really only meant for a certain segment of the sci-fi audience from the 60's and 50's... maybe the 70's as well.It is vintage sci-fi, so try to view it in that light. Take it for what it is and enjoy it on its own level.

When I was an art critic I decided that it wasn't part of my job to warn people about the Thomas Kinkades of this world. The people who found Kinkade artistic were not going to be dissuaded by reading my criticism if they read art criticism at all. Likewise I'm not going to get into making a real movie critique of George Pal's ATLANTIS: THE LOST CONTINENT. It was made for a juvenile audience and indeed a majority of the favorable and even enthusiastic comments made on IMDb recall having first seen the film when about age 11. It is what it is and that's that. What I wanted to write about was the opening narration, the picture's set-up,which proposed a series of unexplained similarities between two continents which had never been in contact. Each and every example is wrong, not just a little wrong, and not just a lot wrong, but insanely each example of the similarities between continents is in fact the exact opposite. They are definitive examples, proof even, of the total and absolute lack of contact between continents before Columbus (the brief Viking experiment excepted). Meso-American and Egyptian pyramids were no constructed on the same principals, the Mayans lacked knowledge of the true arch. The Meso-Americans had no knowledge of metallurgy no matter how much they admired Gold. The Mayan calendar had no similarities with the Gregorian, the earlier Julian or the even earlier lunar calenders and their system of mathematics preceded the European system particularly in its use of zero by a couple of thousand years at least. The banana, native to the Malay peninsula but perfected in India did not grow in America but there were dozens of other things that America had that were unknown in the eastern hemisphere from corn, turkeys and chocolate to rubber and tobacco. This opening narration would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that a lot of ill-educated adults believe this stuff today. Just take a look on the Internet. I mean they could have been clever a come up with a slightly believable set of examples to entice the gullible, but this list is too silly even for a very silly, juvenile movie. I guess kids today wouldn't appreciate a movie like this today not because its so unbelievable but because the special effects are so crude. If you can sell adults today this comic book stuff the kids are sure to eat it up.

I remember seeing this when it was first released many years ago & when George Pal was a household name. I recently had a chance to see it again on TCM and considering the time that has elapsed, some of the special effects still look OK.Being much older I now realize the acting skills of some of the players leave a lot to be desired but all in all it is still an enjoyable film despite the "steals" from Quo Vadis & elsewhere.When I was a kid the final destruction scene gripped me and I never forgot the "laser" gun frying the bad egg on the steps and the smiling skeleton dropping down. Funny now how I now notice the saw line around the head & thinking how is it the bones survived the blast on that occasion but when Zaran was picking off the boats it was complete disintegration. One can't be too picky though he must have had real good eyesight to catch sight of the hero & damsel in the teeming crowds, smoke and flames.