August 26, 2008
Another childhood mystery solved
Posted by pete at August 26, 2008 5:33 PMThe Wife is out of town, and She Who Shall Not Be Named has fallen victim to that plague of the Vonder Haar family called strep throat. She goes to bed pretty easily thanks to Mr. Motrin, so I've been enjoying rare unfettered access to the TV which, for some reason, I utilized by watching the laughable 1976 sci-fi "classic," At the Earth's Core.
For those mercifully unfamiliar, ATEC stars Doug McClure (you may know him from such films as Warlords of Atlantis and Satan's Triangle) and Peter Cushing as adventurers who discover the subterranean world of Pellucidar, inhabited by telepathic flying reptiles called Mahar, giant bipedal rhino-beasts, fire-breathing lizards, and cave folk. I saw it in the theater during its initial release with my dad, who vetoed the other genre offering, Godzilla vs. Megalon, because we were boycotting Japanese goods thanks to their whaling practices (seriously). I only had hazy memories of the movie, but luckily I'd off-handedly recorded it many months ago. Falling victim to the lack of higher brain function caused by tending a sick child for several days, I decided to watch it.
It's pretty bad, even by pre-Star Wars special effects standards. Guys in Suits play the Mahar and rhino dudes, McClure is as tumescent as ever, and the whole thing looks like it was shot on one of the Tom Baker era Doctor Who sets. Surely Dad must have regretted his choice of films?
Yeah. Did I mention the cave folk? And the fact that "Princess Dia" was played by none other than English pin-up queen Caroline Munro?
Your motives are clear to me now, old man. Though I...can't say I disapprove.
Fun fact: Munro played the buttoned-up reporter Adam Ant successfully "liberates" in the "Goody Two Shoes" video.
Great culture you have there, lady; you can make a metal spearhead, but you’re still working on ironing out the bugs in the ‘shirt’.
Oh, by the way: it’s based on a series of Burroughs novels that I like quite a bit. Tarzan sometimes visits Pellucidar.
HW: When you say “sometimes”, to what times are you referring other than the one time in “Tarzan at the Earth’s Core”? Am I missing something?
Thanks to modern CGI, it should be possible now to do good Burroughs movies of Pellucidar and Barsoom, and I would love that. You could also do a pretty awesome animated movie, especially if you took Whelan’s designs for the latter.
It’s not Burroughs canon, but the crossover between Tarzan and Pellucidar is extensive in the world of comics. See here:
Sign me up as waiting anxiously for word of contemporary ERB film adaptations using the latest CGI technology. Although I’m much more eager to scope out Barsoom on the big screen than I am Pellucidar. (Having said that, I’m resigned to the notion that if John Carter ever does process through a major studio, Barsoom will be moved to another solar system, since ‘everybody knows’ there’s no life on Mars. Goddam all the goddam soulless stupid… well, no point in getting worked up about something that hasn’t happened yet, I guess…)
It nearly seems inevitable that someone will take yet another hack at a TARZAN movie before moving on to anything else, though.
On a related but different subject, what you figure — twenty years until a cast and crew we’ve never heard of does a big screen BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER movie based on the TV series? Featuring, maybe, some young blonde chick who is 8 years old on the Disney Channel right now?
Nah, civilization will crash before that ever happens…
Aren’t you glad we saved all those whales?