Atlantis: The Lost Continent
Atlantis: The Lost Continent (1961) Rewatch: ✅
Okay, so I haven’t actually watched this since I was a kid and I haven’t been a kid for a very long time now but it still counts.
Adding this one to the (thankfully incredibly small) list of films that just left me mystified as to what anyone was thinking with it. I’ve watched all manner of mythical swords and sandals kinda stuff over the years and whilst you could say they certainly vary in quality, it would take George Pal to get one made that’s so weirdly, and needlessly, full of incomprehensibly bad vibes.
There’s a lot to like about the scavenging for footage from other films, props and sets and whatever else anyone can lay their hands on to make it all seem like the film is working on a bigger budget than it is. And it’s 1961! It’s not like this is exactly unusual behaviour at the time! For the most part, it kinda works. Sure, if you’ve never seen Quo Vadis you might find yourself wondering why the crowd shots are a little bit more ostentatious and expensive looking than the man in the moistening pit shots that they punctuate but again, it’s 1961. Jarringly different looking parts of a film is far from out there.
And, in fairness, that is the sort of stuff I love. I love it when films borrow effects shots, sandwich in stock footage, dub entirely different films with new lines, all that patchwork stuff can be great fun and, you know, it would be fun here were it not for the script being a weirdo conservative crime scene of words in a row and that somebody, somewhere in production, has given the direction that in order to convince people that you’re definitely and absolutely not from America, an actor should speak very very slowly and in a condescending tone. In a film full of people pretending to be Greek or Atlantean… that means a lot of the film is spent with people delivering lines like they’re talking down to a toddler and even a toddler is looking at them wondering why they’re talking like that.
It’s really distracting and it made the whole thing way, way more of a chore to get through than it ever needed to be. Sometimes I found myself wondering if it was even playing back at the correct speed, alas it was as was evidenced towards the end of the film where some people have given up trying to do accents and just read the lines like normal people, leading to some really obviously contrasting performances.
On its own, it could all be worse. It’s bad but I’ve watched the eighties Allan Quatermain film and all manner of cannibal exploitation films and stuff, I’ve seen worse. It was the weirdy sex pest stuff that the film concentrates on that did me in first. The first third of the film can be summed up as “a randy fisherman finds a princess in the sea then harasses her constantly and refuses to take her to her home forcing them to stay with them instead, when she does finally convince them to take her home he declares that if he doesn’t get her home in 24 hours she has to marry him against her will” and this is someone’s idea of a love story. It’s properly ick. They do indeed fall in love after this because of course they do.
There’s some god stuff later on that just goes on to really confirm what a conservative thread runs throughout the film and the fall of Atlantis is largely down to science gone mad, perhaps if they tried less science, more singular god and used women as property then everything would have worked out but they didn’t, did they, and now look what they’ve gone and done. It makes a straight to video “have you considered our lord and saviour” nineties film seem progressive.
Man, I desperately wanted to be able to concentrate on the cool fish submarine, the bizarre Neptune appearance and all the rest of it but the damn thing couldn’t go five minutes without pulling some nonsense. It’s the kind of bad I struggle with, it’s not silly, naive or just flat out slapdash, it’s not even trying to be edgy or shocking. It’s just someone is fine with all this and expects you to be fine with it too. Like when Sylvester Stallone does another of his weird ass right wing wank fantasies or whatever the fuck the entirety of Harry Brown is even supposed to be.
That’s not a dealbreaker for most people, I’m sure. I’m also sure there’s plenty of people who can just watch it for the cool fish submarine and big blue trident man and let it wash over them and you know what? Sometimes I wish that was me because life would be so much easier if my brain let me do that. Alas, by the end of this, I really fancied me some rubber monsters, flying saucers and a few ray guns to cleanse myself. Anything but this damn film, really.