'ATLANTIS THE LOST CONTINENT'.......OUR PAL, GEORGE......

Atlantis The Lost Continent (1961)    Producer-director George Pal, along with master stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, created the wide awake dreams that thrilled, awed and inspired our generation of Baby Boomers......

           .......many of whom grew up to create their own memorable sci-fi/fantasy films.........

             But unlike these modern purveyors of imaginative cinema, Pal and Harryhausen toiled in the B-movie ghetto set up by major studios.......and they struggled to perform their film miracles with the most minuscule of budgets......

                Pal delivered a huge hit for MGM with "The Time Machine" in 1960..........but on a cost-cutting crusade reserved for fantasy films,  the studio forced him to cobble together his next film with heaping borrows from the existing MGM library......

                "Atlantis The Lost Contintent" barely qualified as its own movie........huge chunks of it are re-cycled sequences from the studio's jumbo 1951 costume epic "Quo Vadis", as well as other hefty doses of stock footage.......

                 Bobbing along in this grab bag of stuff from other movies is Pal's story of a simple, Greek slab 'o beefcake (Anthony Hall) who rescues the Princess of Atlantis herself, (Joyce Taylor.....

                The imperious, bitchy Princess somehow convinces our semi-doltish  hero, besotted with her,  to return her to Atlantis, which, surprise, surprise ......suspiciously resembles the ancient Rome of....uh.....'Quo Vadis'......

                 Studmuffin the Greek promptly gets himself imprisoned and hurled into the Atlantean  version of a chain gang.........where the inmates get hypnotized and Dr. Moreau'd , transforming them into the most unconvincing animal guys ......(sporting cheapo Halloween masks on their heads....)

                  The Princess, only slightly less obnoxious then when she was a beached refugee, manages to spring the Greasy Greek from animal-izing, but he's still forced wrestle some bruiser in a pit that alternates from a pool to a walk-in barbecue......(cue the "Quo Vadis" cast of 1000s, making the movie look like its budget instantly jumped  from a $1.95 to 20 million......)

                     More melodrama ensues until it's time for the requisite Atlantis volcano to blow its top and send the lost kingdom glub-glubbing  down into the sea.......but not before the evil prime minister (the ever slimy, snarky John Dall of  Hitchcock's  "Rope") tries out his spankin' new super-dooper ray gun, shooting frickin' disintegration beams at the fleeing populace....

                      We don't mean to sound overly sarcastic in describing all this........in fact, as a 12 year old,  dedicated Saturday afternoon kiddie matinee attendee, we devoured every minute of it.....as joyfully as we crunched on Necco wafers and root beer barrel candies from the snack bar.....(think of them as Jurassic-era Skittles....)

                      It never occurred to us dumb naive kids that 40 per cent of 'Atlantis' was lifted from "Quo Vadis", which none of us ever saw or heard of anyway.  We thought the animal guys were creepy as hell and loved watching the evil prime minister grin with unbridled glee as he ray-gunned innocents while his kingdom crumbled to bits all around him.

                       And that was  the key to George Pal's magic.......no matter how meager his resources, no matter how impoverished his budgets, he remained the movies' most gifted, committed fantasist.....and Pal always put on an entertaining show for us kids who adored his flights of fancy.

                      Looking back on the film now, we still enjoyed the sum of it......the good, the bad and the cheesy........including the liberal use of perennial voice-over actor Paul Frees, who not only provides the opening narration but dubs in almost half the supporting cast - including Anthony Hall, yet another young South Philadelphia kid who somehow ended up in this movie instead of croaking out rock 'n roll songs on 'American Bandstand'....(the usual spot for South Philly heartthrobs like Fabian, James Darren and Bobby Rydell)

                       And we can't keep screaming about MGM, which then rewarded Pal with a lavish budget, an all-star cast and a Cinerama reserved seat presentation for his next production "The Wonderful World Of The Brothers Grimm"........which is why we'll go easy on the severe cost-cutting of "Atlantis" and fondly remember it with 3 stars (***)

                        Make sure you watch it with plenty of popcorn and whatever's as sweet and bad for your teeth as Necco wafers and root beer barrels.....