Warlords Of Atlantis (1978) Tempting as it may be, I could never bring myself to to mock this movie.......
How could anyone do that? It has the cutest monsters ever seen since "Sesame Street"......
And nobody knew cute monsters like the producers of this movie, the guys who concocted "The Land That Time Forgot", "People That Time Forgot", "At The Earth's Core" and "Arabian Adventure"
Under obvious budget constraints, these movies favored using puppets for their beastie menagerie.......and since the films were designed for kids anyway, using these cartoon-like creations gave each movie an extra aura of sweet innocence.......
Cookie Monster would have felt right at home in this one.......a turn-of-the-century thing which sends diving bell explorers into an undersea kingdom ruled by imperious aliens who crash-landed into the ocean,,,,,,,
The aliens' prime minion: a big ass rubber octopus who pops up to tentacle-scoop almost the entire cast of a high adventure boat and prop 'em down into Atlantis-world.......(Ed Wood Jr. would have shrieked for joy at the sight of this thing......a bigger and better version of the creature he'd regularly hurl at this actors......)
Once ensconced in this aqua-park, our group of plucky adventurers fend off even more giant rubber monsters as well as those snooty, white-robed aliens.........including, no kidding, one time MGM musical star Cyd Charisse........
You gotta love the casting in these movies........Mickey Rooney even turns up their "Arabian Adventure"........if these producers had only kept going with their agenda......who knows, we might have seen Debbie Reynolds, Gene Kelly and Donald 'O Conner wrestling with jumbo mechanical squids......(I can dream, can't I?).........
Lots and lots of escapes, fights and laser-beam depth charges follow.......capped off by a grand final appearance by Big Octopus.......who surfaces one more time to open up another can 'o tentacle whupass on that poor expeditionary boat......
For all its cheese and old-fashioned goofball puppetry, I wouldn't want this movie any other way than what is is.......wonderful, harmless, Saturday Matinee fun...... and refreshingly free of the bloat, hype, and snark of today's 200 million dollar fantasies. .....
and such cute monsters.......you'll want to hug 'em hard......3 stars (***)
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