The Lost Continent (1968)
- Andrew Smith
- 2 hours ago
- 10 min read
"A hell that living time forgot!"
Plot
A creaky tramp steamer carrying an assortment of shady passengers and a cargo hold full of illegal explosives heads straight into a dangerous storm. The crew mutinies and abandons ship when they find out what the cargo is and sea conditions begin to get treacherous. The storm eventually strands the ship and its remaining crew and passengers near a mysterious island, surrounded by weird-looking seaweed and populated by descendants of Spanish Conquistadores.
Review
Picture a pitch meeting for a second. It's the late 1960s. A writer walks in to speak to a producer and says “all right, I've got a vision. There’s a rusty old tramp steamer floating in the middle of nowhere. It's miserable. It's gritty. It’s bleak. The ship is also packed with illegal explosives. The crew mutinies. There's a hurricane, and then the sag clears. We see an island, but not just any island. This place is surrounded by carnivorous seaweed that traps ships. Living in that seaweed, are the descendants of Spanish conquistadors. Oh, and they're ruled by a child king. They worship a monster. And get this, they fight giant rubber scorpions and octopuses while wearing balloons on their feet.” Without blinking, I assume the studio executive then just wrote out a cheque for a million pounds and told the writer to go and make history because that is the actual film I’m reviewing here. It’s a film that just defies all logic, all genre, and frankly, all common sense. I’m talking about Hammer Film Productions' 1968 cult classic, The Lost Continent.
This is one of those movies that, you know, if you saw it on TV at two in the morning, you'd think you were hallucinating. This film is bonkers, frustratingly brilliant and a hidden gem. But it's, it's a gem with some very jagged edges. It sounds like a complete fever dream but the film sinks itself by trying to do way, way too much. It is the ultimate case study in ambition versus execution. But before I get to the balloon shoes, and believe me, I will get to the balloon shoes, I have to understand why on earth a film like this even gets the green light. When I think of Hammer, I don't think of high fantasy. I think of gothic horror: fog-filled cemeteries, old castles, Christopher Lee with blood dripping from his fangs. The Hammer House of Horror brand. For years, they were the absolute kings of Dracula, Frankenstein, the mummy - that was their identity. But by the mid-to-late 1960s, the landscape was changing. Audiences were getting a little tired of the same old gothic castle and needed something new to pivot towards. Thus Hammer started making these forays into fantasy worlds. It was kind of a desperate attempt to stay relevant. They first made She in 1965, based on the book by H. Rider Haggard, but it was a bit of a tepid adventure (though it gave Peter Cushing a break from staking vampires, which was probably nice for him). Then you may have heard of One Million Year B.C. but let's be honest, you don’t know the plot, you just know the poster. The iconic image of Raquel Welch in that awesome two-piece fur bikini. The film was a hit; not because of the script but just the sheer visual spectacle of Raquel Welch and the top notch stop motion dinosaurs by Ray Harryhausen. Hammer must have figured out that fantasy worked, dinosaurs worked, and, more importantly, bikinis worked. Another three fantasy films followed with weaker results than the two films mentioned and then we get to The Lost Continent. This was supposed to be a big one. It’s arguably the most ambitious of all their fantasy projects. They weren't just doing a caveman movie. They were trying to build a whole complex lost civilization.
But if you promise a lost continent with monsters and conquistadors, I want to see it. However, we have to wait an eternity to get there. And this is The Lost Continent's first major hurdle. We can call this part the slow burn to nowhere. The first third of the film doesn't even take place on an island, it takes place on the boat. A dirty, rusty, tramp steamer called the Corita. But it’s not a fun ride and the script really hammers this home, no pun intended. You have a hold full of illegal explosives, which adds some tension, but mostly you have an assortment of shady passengers just being absolutely miserable to each other with plenty of backstabbing and bitching. The script spends massive amounts of time developing all these characters' backstories, which is usually a good thing as you want deep character. Well you do if you care about characters, however everyone here is unlikable. They all have dark secrets, they're all rude, and frankly, we know this is a monster movie. We know half of them are going to be lunch for a giant crab in an hour. So why are we spending twenty minutes on their marital problems and dodgy histories?
Then the logic just breaks. There’s this plot hole that is so baffling I have to walk through it step by step. The crew discovers the illegal explosives. They realize the ship is basically a floating bomb. The crew mutinies. They abandon ship. Then the captain and the passengers realize the storm is getting worse and the explosives are unstable. They abandon ship too. They all cram into this tiny lifeboat to save themselves. Everyone is now off the death ship, drifting around in the open ocean. Then a little while later, they drift back towards the same ship they just abandoned. The very ship with the dangerous explosives they left and then they decide to get back on board. The characters risk their lives to escape a ship because it might explode, float around for a bit, see the exact same ship, and said, you know what, let's go back on board the explosive death trap. Why did we just spend fifteen minutes watching this little sideshow go around in a circle to arrive back at exactly the same point they were at before? It's a total waste of running time which could have given us more monster action or even for some exposition explaining literally anything that happens after this point in the film. It's a massive logic gap that just serves to pad the runtime. And it's so frustrating because it just delays getting to the titular lost continent.
So let's fast forward. We've endured the boredom, the bitching, and this inexplicable game of musical chairs with the lifeboats. But when finally get to the island it does pay off in a totally bonkers way. Visually, the production design here is great. Hammer put a lot of effort, and clearly a good chunk of the budget, into the setting. The Sargasso Sea is this eerie, silent graveyard of ships. It’s drenched in fog, surrounded by this deadly, carnivorous seaweed that traps any vessel that comes near. It's super atmospheric. seeing all these ships from different eras: galleons, steamers, frigates, all tangled up in this weed. It really sells the idea that this place has been collecting victims for centuries. It's a lost world in the truest sense. With an eerie vibe, we then meet the new neighbours: the conquistadors, or at least the descendants of them, who have been stuck there for hundreds of years, completely isolated from the rest of the world. They've become these religious fanatics and naturally want to sacrifice the passengers to the seaweed monsters they've grown to worship. Terrifying, in theory.
But then you look at their feet and their choice of footwear. To walk across the carnivorous seaweed without sinking, the conquistadors have developed a special kind of shoe: they’re mushroom-like inflatable shoes with a balloon harness attached to them. From a distance, in the fog, it kind of works. It looks like some weird multi-legged monster is approaching. But when the camera cuts to a close up, it's just a guy bobbing up and down with balloons and mushroom feet. It completely undercuts the menace. It's such a what is that moment. It's so bizarre that I’ll give the designer credit for pure uniqueness. You have never seen conquistadors in balloon shoes before. But it's that collision of ambition and reality again, isn't it? You need them to walk on water so just strap some balloons on them to stop them from sinking. Perfect! Put it on film!
And that 'meh, it's good enough' attitude extends to the monsters too, because the seaweed isn't the only threat. We have a giant crab, a giant octopus and what can best be summed up as a giant scorpion. To be blunt, the special effects are terrible. The monster models are utterly pathetic and ridiculous. We're talking about stiff, rubbery props that barely move. However, the saving grace is the cast and their reactions to everything. Despite the fact that they are fighting a rubber crab that probably looks like a pool toy, the cast treats it with Shakespearean seriousness. That is the secret sauce of British acting. British actors don't care if they're acting opposite a Muppet, they are going to give you drama (Michael Caine’s amazing performance in The Muppet Christmas Carol is down to him treating Kermit and the rest as actual people rather than props). The cast here battle bravely. They're screaming, they're sweating, they're selling the terror. If they'd winked at the camera, the whole film would fall apart. But because they play it dead straight, it becomes strangely compelling. The visual style also helps with this, particularly the colourisation. The creature designs and the lighting use these unique vibrant colours that help sell the illusion of an alien lost world. It's almost psychedelic. It distracts you just enough from the fact that the octopus isn't moving its tentacles properly.
As for the actors trying to sell this madness, there's no Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing. Hammer’s heavy hitters sit this one out. Instead, we have Eric Porter playing the captain. He was a very respected British character actor, a serious player, and portrays his character as brash, arrogant, and highly unscrupulous. He's the anchor, grounding all this absurdity in some kind of grit. Then we have the Hammer glamour, something you cannot have a Hammer film without and there are two actresses specifically. First, there's the beautiful Susanna Leigh, portraying a character that can be best summed up as a slutty daughter trope, telling you exactly what kind of exploitation vibe Hammer was aiming for. They wanted to titillate the audience just as much as scare them. And then there's Dana Gillespie, who plays an enslaved islander, with whom I have an architectural observation about. You could say that she sports arguably the most gravity-defying pair of breasts you'll ever see. Hammer really wasn't subtle in the 60s, were they? But this was part of their usual marketing strategy. Come for the monsters, stay for the gravity-defying physics. Longtime Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper makes a small cameo here which is a nice nod to the fans who had come to expect him briefly popping up as some innkeeper or other minor part.
The cast does a decent enough job. They aren't the problem. The problem is the script trying to cram a novel's worth of world building into the last forty minutes. We've got the balloon shoes, the rubber octopus, the screaming passengers, and the gravity-defying islanders. The most frustrating part is how this chaotic mess ends. After that slow burn to nowhere, you'd expect a massive epic finale. But the ending is incredibly rushed. They ran out of money, or time, or ideas. Once they reach the island, the pacing goes from zero to one hundred instantly. They fight the conquistadors, they dodge the monsters, and then boom, the problems are all sorted into a neat little package to wrap everything up for the credits. Just like that. The ship escapes, the island is left behind, and the survivors get away as if nothing happened. It’s a flimsy conclusion just patched together to resolve a bunch of random events. It leaves you breathless. though not in a good way. You're just sitting there thinking, wait, that's it. We spent an hour on the boat for that.
Final Verdict
Let's recap to conclude. We have terrible effects, a painfully slow start, a plot hole where people go back to a ticking time-bomb ship for no reason, a rushed ending, and conquistadors in balloon shoes. The Lost Continent is strangely compelling and frustratingly brilliant. It works because of the sheer number of wild ideas and is infinitely better than many of Hammer's more famous works simply due to its ambition and its weirdness. A film like She might be more competent, but it's boring. You forget it the next day; you’ll never forget the balloon shoes. The Lost Continent sinks itself by trying to do too much, but that failure is what's fascinating. It's a glorious mess. It's colourful, it's loud, and it's completely unhinged. It's the definition of a hidden gem. It's not a masterpiece of cinema. It's a masterpiece of entertainment. It captures a specific moment in time where a studio was terrified of losing its audience, so they threw everything they had at the screen.
I think it challenges our whole definition of quality. We live in a world of Rotten Tomatoes, scores, and curated lists of the best films of all time. We look for tight scripts, perfect acting, realistic CGI. We want perfection. But perfection can sometimes be sterile. Sometimes, the most memorable experiences are the flawed ones. The Lost Continent proves that imagination, even weird, misguided imagination, is incredibly valuable. It's about the willingness to just be weird. If you're a creative person or just someone who loves stories, don't be afraid of the balloon shoes. Don't be afraid to try the idea that might look ridiculous on paper. Because fifty years from now, someone might be talking about it with a big grin on their face. So that's the question I want to leave you with today. Does a movie or any creative project really need to be good to be great? Or is the willingness to be completely bonkers actually more valuable than just playing it safe? I'll take bonkers every time. So next time you're scrolling through streaming, looking for something to watch, maybe skip the Oscar winner. Find the one with the rubber monsters and the plot holes, you might just find a lost continent of your own. Bring your own balloon shoes though.
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The Lost Continent Director(s): Michael Carreras Writer(s): Michael Carreras (screenplay), Dennis Wheatley (novel "Uncharted Seas") Actor(s): Eric Porter, Hildegard Knef, Suzanna Leigh, Tony Beckley, Nigel Stock, Neil McCallum, Benito Carruthers, Jimmy Hanley Duration: 89 mins |  |
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