At the Earth's Core (1976 film)

Mahars gather for a sacrifice in At the Earth's Core (1976 film)...

At the Earth's Core (1976), AKA Edgar Rice Burroughs' At the Earth's Core

Summary

"4,000 miles to the center of the Earth... to a world within a world!" A Victorian era scientist and his assistant take a test run in their Iron Mole drilling machine and end up in a strange underground labyrinth full of prehistoric monsters and cavemen, ruled over by a species of giant telepathic bird.

Details

• Release Date: 1976
• Country/Language: UK/US, English
• Genres/Technical: Adventure, Fantasy
• Setting: Pellucidar, Hollow Earth, Gaslight era
• Runtime: 1 hr 29 min
• Starring: Doug McClure, Peter Cushing, Caroline Munro
• Director: Kevin Connor
• Writer: Edgar Rice Burroughs (story), Milton Subotsky (screenplay)
• Producer/Production Co: American International Pictures (AIP), Amicus Productions, Burroughs Productions Inc.
• View Trailer: (link)
• TVTropes: (link)
• IMDB Page: (link)

Ratings

MPAA Ratings

• Rated: PG (Violence, mild Adult Content and Profanity)

Tentacle Ratings

A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:

• Ss___ (One and a Half Tentacles: Barely Lovecraftian; vaguely similar in tone)

The Hollow Earth setting full of amoral psychic monsters and remnants of ancient civilizations wouldn't be far out of place among the work of the "Lovecraft Circle".

Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.

Reviews

Review Links:

• Scott Ashlin at 1000 Misspent Hours, (link) - "The main advantage At the Earth's Core has... is lots of action... there's usually something going on in this movie, and that something is usually pretty exciting.... Sure, this is visibly a cheap movie, and a lot of the special effects look pretty threadbare.... And sure again, it’s probably about fifteen minutes too long, and insufficient attention was paid to some pretty important elements of the story. But experience has taught me to expect very little of a Burroughs movie, and whatever its faults, At the Earth’s Core really did deliver far more than I was prepared for."
• Roger Ebert, (link) - "...Doug and the Professor sneak around one strange man-eating vegetable, and there's another one - which is the original vegetable, photographed from a new angle. Meanwhile, the telepathic parrots wander by, opening and closing their beaks by spring action. It's along about here we begin to really zero in on Dia's bodice. Let somebody else break up the rocks and clean up after the parrots."

Synopsis (SPOILERS)

Dr. Abner Perry, a British Victorian period scientist, and his US financier David Innes make a test run of their "Iron" Mole drilling machine in a Welsh mountain, but end up in a strange underground labyrinth ruled by a species of giant telepathic flying reptiles, the Mahars, and full of prehistoric monsters and cavemen. They are captured by the Mahars, who keep primitive humans as their slaves through mind control. David falls for the beautiful slave girl Princess Dia but when she is chosen as a sacrificial victim in the Mahar city, David and Perry must rally the surviving human slaves to rebel and not only save her but also win their freedom.

Notes

Associated Mythos Elements

• fiction: Edgar Rice Burroughs' At the Earth's Core and other Pallucidar stories
• race: Mahars, intelligent, telepathic dinosaur-things
• race: "Sagoths" ("cave men", compare to Gnophkehs, Voormis, etc.)