To think at a moment like this I’ve no pad and pencil to record it all! Edinburgh geologist Oliver Lindenbroook (James Mason) and his assistant Alec McEwan (Pat Boone) set off on an expedition to the center of the earth. Following directions found in an inscription hidden in volcanic rock, the explorers travel to a volcano in Iceland to begin their journey. Along the way, a widow of a famous scientist Carla Goteberg (Arlene Dahl) and an Icelander Hans Belker (Peter Ronson) join their party. However, the treacherous terrain and prehistoric monsters are not their only concern when rival scientist Count Saknussemm (Thayer David) is on their trail… With Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch adapting Jules Verne, you know you’re in for a humdinger action adventure fantasy and so it proves, with Mason returning to the author a few years after giving us his anguished Captain Nemo. Even Pat Boone warbling My Heart’s in the Highlands can’t deter us from enjoying monsters, subterranean flora, romancing Scots, an underwater ocean, a rumbling volcano and being sucked into the magnetic vortex that is the core of Earth itself with Dahl going through a virtual orgasmatron at the climax. Quite fabulous. Directed by Henry Levin with a score by Bernard Herrmann.
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