The Lost Continent, directed by Michael Carreras, has to be one of the most bizarre yet watchable films Hammer ever produced. Based on the novel 'Uncharted Seas' by Dennis Wheatley (which a character is seen reading early on in the flick), there really is something for everyone here - from 'torture pits' to 'jaw-snapping molluscs' to 'helpless beauties' as the equally excellent poster proclaims.
In brief, a steamship on its way from Freetown to Caracas gets stranded in a vast sea covered in aggressive, triffid-esque seaweed. The misfit group of passengers and crew members subsequently end up at war with the human inhabitants of this strange world as well as encountering a number of monstrous sea creatures.
From the awesomely gloomy freakiness of the title song by über-'60s beat combo The Peddlers to the lingering shots of a model of the stagnant sea, studded with wrecked vessels from various eras, The Lost Continent feels like a strange dream. The foggy funeral scenes which bookend the film are also a great touch - the captain's voiceover (quoted above) echoed my own 'what-the-devil-is-going-on-here?' thinking, as conquistadors, priests and fur-jerkined caveman types shared the screen with guys in suits and girls in '60s attire.
The film quickly changes pace after the prologue, with a typical 'conflicting personalities in an enclosed space' set-up swiftly established. Although the drama of these scenes was just about enough to maintain my interest, a whole movie in this vein would have been tiresome. In some ways though, the run of the mill plot and characters of the first part work extremely well in emphasising the insanity of what comes later.
Once the ship becomes trapped in the aforementioned man-eating seaweed, The Lost Continent quickly descends the slippery slope from tense drama to kitsch sci-fi adventure. From a boy-King called 'El Supremo' to Star Wars-precursing monster pits to the laughable balloon and big shoe combos the characters use to walk across the water, it seems like Carreras decided to chuck everything at the film and see what worked (apologies to Dennis Wheatley if all that stuff was straight out of the source novel).
Brilliantly, this approach actually works and, like all the best Hammer films, it all ends with a good, old-fashioned, massive fire.
