| Battle Beneath the Earth | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Montgomery Tully |
| Written by | Charles F. Vetter |
| Produced by |
|
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Kenneth Talbot |
| Edited by | Sidney Stone |
| Music by | Ken Jones |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 91 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £156,307 [1] |
Battle Beneath the Earth is a 1967 British sci-fi thriller film directed by Montgomery Tully and starring Kerwin Mathews. It was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Scientist Arnold Kramer believes that rogue elements of the communist Chinese Army headed by fanatic General Chan Lu are using advanced burrowing machines in an effort to conquer the U.S. by placing atomic bombs under major cities. In the opening, Las Vegas police are called for a report that Dr. Kramer is prone on a sidewalk telling people he hears movement underneath.
The bombs are in tunnels dug from China through the Hawaiian islands to the United States. In the expected war 100 million people are forecast to die. Kramer is committed to an asylum, but when he is visited by U.S. Navy Commander Jonathan Shaw, what he tells him lines up with observations Shaw has made himself. Shaw gets Kramer released and produces enough evidence to convince his superiors that the story is truel, and he is ordered to lead troops underground to defeat the red army and defuse the bombs.
The U.S. Army detonates nuclear bombs in the tunnel in Hawaii. The detonations are reported to have stopped all activity in the tunnels.
The film features a fast-paced "crime-jazz" / jazz-noir musical score by Ken Jones.
The film released to DVD by Warner Home Video on 29 July 2008. [2]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Schoolboy comic-strip capers, involving subterranean constructions, hydroponic farms ("enforced growth under solaric light" the Chinese scientist explains), laser beams, nuclear bombs and sinister Oriental villains. Nothing is quite so fanciful, though, as the finale, in which hero and heroine, with only ten minutes to run to safety after setting off an atom bomb, emerge in a volcano and stand looking at the glare of the nuclear explosion with not even a blink of their unshielded eyes. Delightfully nonsensical, the film is at least a variation on the usual SF themes, and very properly everyone acts with deadpan solemnity." [3]
Kine Weekly wrote: "Schoolboy adventure material, this will pass with all but stuffy audiences. Reliable half of a double programme." [4]
The film has been described as "deliriously paranoid". [5]
Keye Luke was a Chinese-American film and television actor, technical advisor and artist and a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild.
It Came from Beneath the Sea is a 1955 American science fiction monster horror film from Columbia Pictures, produced by Sam Katzman and Charles Schneer, directed by Robert Gordon, that stars Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, and Donald Curtis. The screenplay by George Worthing Yates was designed to showcase the stop motion animation special effects of Ray Harryhausen.
Meteor is a 1979 American science fiction disaster film directed by Ronald Neame and starring Sean Connery and Natalie Wood. The film's premise, which follows a group of scientists struggling with Cold War politics after an asteroid is detected to be on a collision course with Earth, was inspired by a 1967 MIT report, Project Icarus. The screenplay was written by Oscar winner Edmund H. North and Stanley Mann.
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Kerwin Mathews was an American actor best known for playing the titular heroes in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960) and Jack the Giant Killer (1962).
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On the Beach is a 1959 American post-apocalyptic science fiction drama film from United Artists starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins. Produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, it is based on Nevil Shute's 1957 novel On the Beach depicting the aftermath of a nuclear war. Unlike the novel, no one is assigned blame for starting the war, which attributes global annihilation to fear compounded by accident or misjudgment.
Battle of the Worlds is a 1961 Italian science fiction film directed by Anthony Dawson. The film stars Claude Rains, Bill Carter, and Maya Brent.
Charles Hirsch Schneer was an American film producer, best known for working with Ray Harryhausen, the specialist known for his work in stop motion model animation.
The Terrornauts is a 1967 British science fiction film directed by Montgomery Tully and starring Simon Oates and Zena Marshall. It was produced by Amicus Productions and based on the 1960 novel The Wailing Asteroid by Murray Leinster, adapted for screen by John Brunner. Space scientists foil an alien invasion of Earth.
A salted bomb is a nuclear weapon designed to function as a radiological weapon by producing larger quantities of radioactive fallout than unsalted nuclear arms. This fallout can render a large area uninhabitable. The term is derived both from the means of their manufacture, which involves the incorporation of additional elements to a standard atomic weapon, and from the expression "to salt the earth", meaning to render an area uninhabitable for generations. The idea originated with Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard, in February 1950. His intent was not to propose that such a weapon be built, but to show that nuclear weapon technology would soon reach the point where it could end human life on Earth.
Giacomo Rossi Stuart was an Italian film actor often credited as Jack Stuart or Giacomo Rossi-Stuart. He appeared in more than 80 films between 1953 and 1989.
The Last Blitzkrieg is a 1959 American war film directed Arthur Dreifuss and filmed at Veluwe and the Cinetone Studios in Amsterdam for a Columbia Pictures release.
The Walls of Hell, also known as Intramuros is a 1964 Philippine-American film directed by Eddie Romero and Gerardo de Leon and starring Jock Mahoney. The film was made back-to-back with Moro Witch Doctor (1964). It was produced by Hemisphere Pictures.
… most notably the deliriously paranoid science-fiction film Battle Beneath the Earth (1967) in which the Chinese attempt to invade America by burrowing under the ocean.
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