The Land That Time Forgot (1975)

Director:

Kevin Connor

Writers:

Edgar Rice Burroughs (novel)
James Cawthorn (screenplay)

Release Date:

13 August 1975 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Tagline:

THE ADVENTURE YOU WILL NEVER FORGET!

Plot:

During World War I, a German U-boat sinks a British ship and takes the survivors on board. After it takes a wrong turn...

Plot Keywords:

German | Submarine | Dinosaur | Crevasse | Betrayal

Cast

Doug McClure	...	Bowen Tyler
John McEnery	...	Captain Von Schoenvorts
Susan Penhaligon	...	Lisa Clayton
Keith Barron	...	Bradley
Anthony Ainley	...	Dietz
Godfrey James	...	Borg
Bobby Parr	...	Ahm
Declan Mulholland	...	Olson
Colin Farrell	...	Whiteley
Ben Howard	...	Benson
Roy Holder	...	Plesser
Andrew McCulloch	...	Sinclair
Ron Pember	...	Jones
Grahame Mallard	...	Deusett
Andrew Lodge	...	Reuther

Also Known As:

Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot (UK) (complete title)

Runtime:

90 min | Japan:102 min

Country:

UK | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Netherlands:12 | Norway:16 (1976) | Australia:PG | Sweden:15 | UK:PG (video rating) (1987) | UK:U (original rating) | USA:PG | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

La Palma, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

Company:

Amicus Productions

Trivia:

Doug McClure replaced Stuart Whitman.

Quotes:

Whiteley: You know it could be more difficult to leave Caprona than it was to land. We'll have that current with us going out through the tunnel. Be very difficult to navigate.
Dietz: Captain Von Schoenvorts will take us through. I was with him when he took our U-33 down the Norwegian coast in winter, to sink a British cruiser. Storms and ice floes did not stop him.
Olson: He's not very good against lifeboats, though, is he?

Movie Connections:

Featured in Nightmare Theatre's Late Night Chill-o-Rama Horror Show Vol. 1 (1996) (V)

The Lost World Of Caprona

For those of us today who think of Edgar Rice Burroughs exclusively with the Tarzan books and the cottage industry from the film community that those books spawned, Mr. Burroughs did write all kinds of other stories of adventure, even venturing into the world of science fiction. The Land That Time Forgot was taken from one of his stories about a very mixed group of people who discover a lost world. A world inside the hollow of the earth populated with species of animal and man from each stage of evolution.

That theory was postulated by any number of folks, most eloquently during the first half of the 19th century by John Cleve Symmes whose cousin Anna Symmes married one of our presidents William Henry Harrison. Burroughs had quite a history to draw from in creating his lost world of Caprona and the strange collection of people who find it.

Doug McClure is an American taking passage on a British vessel that was carrying arms making it a target for U-Boat commander John McEnery. The boat is sunk by the U-Boat, but the survivors manage to board the U-Boat and take it over. Those things in World War I were quite small and so were the crews. Through a complicated series of events this U-Boat finds itself near the South Pole and sailing into a frozen harbor, they come out the other end on a lush green world and are attacked by an ancient sea going Plesiosaurus. That's the beginning of the adventure with our intrepid mixed crew meeting all kinds of ancient natural wonders.

There's one woman on board, Australian actress Susan Penhaligon and you would have thought with her the only female, a lot more of the stranded sailors would start having thoughts. Her thoughts are only however for Doug McClure.

By comparison to today, the special effects aren't really up to snuff. Then again DeMille films which were the last word in special effects in their day are also considered old hat. The Land That Time Forgot is an old fashioned adventure story, the kind that would get revived very shortly by the Indiana Jones films. This film is not as good as any of the Indiana Jones stuff, but still a nice afternoon's viewing.