AVENTURA AL CENTRO DE LA TIERRA (1965)
aka Adventure at the Center of the Earth
Article 2232 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-26-2007
Posting Date: 9-22-2007
Directed by Alfredo B. Cravenna
Featuring Kitty de Hoyos, Javier Solis, Columba Dominguez

Adventurers go down into the earth to face monsters.

Once again, I find myself watching a Mexican movie without the benefit of dubbing or subtitles, so the plot subtleties are lost on me. However, since this movie gives us plenty of monsters on the loose, there’s still some fun to be had here. In fact, it looks like our adventurers prepared for the journey by prehistoric monster footage; they watch a film featuring as much dinosaur stock footage as they could get their hands on, including Ignatz and Rumsford engaged in their battle from ONE MILLION B.C ., as well as the slow-moving dinos from UNKNOWN ISLAND . There’s also some primitive stop-motion dinos and puppet ones; after all, dinosaurs come in all shapes and sizes. Underground they face off against a big cyclops lizard and a fanged bat creature, who is not entirely unsympathetic. It’s a lot of fun, though it’s another movie that looks like real animals were hurt in the making of it; at one point, they set fire to a pit of snakes, and it doesn’t look like special effects. However, the cardboard bats that terrorize a man crossing a rope over a lava pit definitely do look like special effects, if not particularly special ones. All in all, it was fairly entertaining.