'At the Earth's Core' (1976)

This movie has been sat in my 'TBW Pile' ('To Be Watched' of course...), waiting for a night when I was really after something dumb but fun, something undemanding, something with Peter Cushing in it that wasn't 'Star Wars' or 'Doctor Who'. And last night was that night; work and moving furniture around left me in need of all of the above.

You've probably guessed by now that this isn't a first viewing for me, not by a long shot. When I was much younger, I went through at least a couple of summer holidays where this movie featured heavily on the old VCR and I enjoyed every outlandish minute of it (remember what I said about 'Hawk the Slayer' yesterday...?) I never read the book though, I've never been able to get into Burroughs' work but that's another story...

'At the Earth's Core', the movie, though? I can always get into that, mostly because it's utterly ridiculous...

When eccentric Victorian scientist Dr Abner Perry and his assistant develop a high powered drill they decide to test its capabilities in a remote Welsh Mountain. The drill proves too powerful and plunges the duo into a vast cavern at the earth’s core where evil prehistoric birds have enslaved a tribe of humans. Can the Doctor and his assistant help rescue the tribe and escape the evil clutches of their flying nemesis?

Just go back and read that blurb again. That really is the movie... Evil prehistoric birds that must be stopped and by none other than Peter Cushing and Doug McClure. If you haven't seen this movie already... you'd watch it, wouldn't you?

I'll be honest, 'At the Earth's Core' is very much the kind of movie that is best watched after a couple of beers late at night. We're talking men dressed up in rubber monster suits, over-enthusiastic squawking (bird monsters) and general bad acting (everyone else apart from Peter Cushing, he's brilliant). The dialogue is either muttered apologetically or bellowed in monster language which at least is accompanied by some expressive sign language so we have a rough idea of what the rat people are saying. And the set looks like it has been borrowed from 'Planet of the Daleks' (which is only three years older, strangely enough...) A great mixture of things that would put any sober person off watching 'At the Earth's Core' but give it a chance and you'll have fun with it too...

You see, it's like everyone involved looked at the script and thought, 'this is going to be awful but it's a job, lets just throw ourselves into it and have some fun for a change'. And that's exactly what happens, you can see everyone's enthusiasm on show here and that's what made the film work for me; that and some fairly decent action sequences (given McClure is very obviously fighting a guy in a rubber suit). And garish as it is, the landscape does add the right 'level of pulp' to proceedings.

Watching 'At the Earth's Core', I can't get my head round the fact that 'Star Wars' only came out a year later. Same pulp roots but two totally different films...

'At the Earth's Core' has it's place though. It's not a film that's aged well today (if it even did back then) but that's half the fun in watching it I think. It may not encourage me to finally give Burroughs' work another try but it is a movie I'll always come back to (probably while drunk, that was what was missing this time round...)

Here's the trailer,