The Lost Continent

1968

Action / Adventure

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 30% · 5 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 30% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 5.5/10 10 2464 2.5K

monster red hair alien life-form time hole shark sea monster

Plot summary

An eclectic group of characters set sail on Captain Lansen’s leaky cargo ship in an attempt to escape their various troubles. When a violent storm strikes, the ship is swept into the Sargasso Sea and the passengers find themselves trapped on an island populated by man-eating seaweed, giant crabs and Spanish conquistadors who believe it’s still the 16th century.

Director

Leslie Norman Photo
Leslie Norman

Top cast

Nigel Stock Photo
Nigel Stock as Dr. Webster
Michael Ripper Photo
Michael Ripper as Sea Lawyer
Alf Joint Photo
Alf Joint as Jason, a Crewman
Jimmy Hanley Photo
Jimmy Hanley as Patrick, the Bartender
720p.BluRay
891.38 MB
1280*688
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 37 min
Seeds 4

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Terrell-4 7 / 10

An Excellent Rainy Day Movie

One of my favorite rainy weekend movies, The Lost Continent also is one of the best ripe Hammer films of the Sixties.A freighter is blown off course and finds itself in a fog-shrouded part of the ocean where the seaweed enjoys flesh and mutated creatures with claws scamper about. It's a mild horror version of the Sargasso Sea and Bermuda Triangle. Eventually the surviving crew and passengers encounter humans who scitter around the seaweed with paddle-like shoes and balloons. The ship these people are from is a Spanish galleon several hundred years old, the crew of which survived and bred into the generations, evolving an Inquisition-like culture on board.It's really pretty good, thanks to the interesting ideas of seaweed that bites back and the evolved life on the Spanish ship, plus the skill of the two lead actors. And it has a great look. Eric Porter and Hildegard Knef were both heavyweights in the acting department. I'm not sure why they agreed to this film, but I assume the money was good. Porter is one of my favorite actors. He wasn't handsome enough to make a career as a movie leading man, but if anyone doubts his abilities to command watch him as Soames in the original BBC Forsyte Saga. Knef had a so-so career as a lead actress in a handful of American and British films, but returned to Germany for better stuff. She was sexy and self-confident.
Reviewed by chrismartonuk-1 6 / 10

The Guiltiest of Pleasures.

Michael Carreras often attempted to broaden Hammer's repertoire during his terms there and most of the company's artistic triumphs, and interesting misfires, can be laid at his feet. THE TWO FACES OF DR JEKYLL was a serious attempt to move the Gothics beyond the traditional limits expected of Hammer that failed due to the gap between intention and execution. Having pioneered SHE and ONE MILLIONS YEARS BC and put Hammer into the Summer family crowd pleaser market - and anticipating the modern Hollywood blockbuster - Carreras took advantage of hammer's relationship with Dennis Wheatley not to churn out another Black magic Chiller but a curious mish-mash of soap-opera, disaster movie, nautical adventure and sci-fantasy.Eric Porter was hotter than a murder weapon at the time with his portrayal of the tormented, cuckolded Soames Forsyth on the BBC (and had become something of a sex symbol in the process - despite, or because of, his rough treatment of his capricious wife, Irene) so Hammer thought it worth taking a chance on him as leading man material - as they had Peter Cushing - instead of Christopher Lee or a fading American star. Porter was a top drawer classical actor - I had the good fortune to see his Malvolio in TWELFTH NIGHT at Stratford - and he has a convincingly craggy sea-faring face and a natural authority, and ain't half-bad as a man of action at the climax. His captain could give Cushing's Baron Frankenstein a few lessons in monomania - he fails to tell his crew (including, inevitably, Michael Ripper) about the dangerous cargo of Phophor B they carry. Having been beaten to the punch by Benito Carruther's sleazy character to sleep with Hildegard Knef, he cares very little when the man is carried off by an octopus. I doubt whether Porter lingered too long over the film on his CV but he's a first-rate lead and although he made an excellent Moriarity in the Granada series, might have been an intriguing Holmes. The women characters are unusually complex for Hammer. Hildegard Knef looked every inch a MILF and conveys the weary melancholy of a beaten-down woman who's had to compromise herself in the name of survival. Suzanne Leigh is one of Hammer's finest and most underrated bitches - look at the smirk she gives her hated father Nigel Stock when Porter berates him - and opens her thighs for anything with a pulse including the Sparks, Benito, and on-the-wagon Harry. Sadly, both fade from centre-stage at the climax - but there is compensation in the form of Dana Gillespie. We've suffered enough childish double-entendres with those gas balloons she wears for now, but she is a striking beauty and, as Hammer weren't overly concerned with the thespian ability of their ladies, it seems strange she never made another one for them - Christopher Lee could have sunk his fangs into her certainly. I suspect she's dubbed, but she certainly takes Harry's mind off the booze.The plot structure is oddly similar to FROM DUSK TIL DAWN with the plot starting off as one genre and taking an unexpected detour in fantasy-land. Nonetheless, it remains a curio in Hammer's output (and an indication of what ZEPPELINS VS PTEROCATYLS might have looked like had it been made) and remains the guiltiest of pleasures.
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