“No, he thinks he will actually change. Physically.”

Drake’s rating: No rubber dinosaurs were harmed in the making of this film

Drake’s review: While Edgar Rice Burroughs is, and probably always will be, known first and foremost as the creator of Tarzan of the Apes, he had quite a lengthy writing career outside of his tales about Lord Greystoke. He wrote about adventures in ancient Rome, on distant Mars and Venus, and in the hollow earth’s savage land of Pellucidar. Because you can never go wrong with cavemen and dinosaurs. That’s just a scientific fact.

And since cavemen and dinosaurs are a guaranteed good time, Burroughs went to that well on more than one occasion. In fact, he had so many dinosaur tales to tell that he created a second lost land populated by all sorts of prehistoric men and beasts, and then wrote three stories set in that fictional island of Caprona that in time became a trilogy of short novels: The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, and Out of Time’s Abyss. And in the waning days of Amicus Productions, the film studio picked up the rights to two of the three novels because, again, cavemen and dinosaurs. You just can’t argue with science.

Then again…

The Land That Time Forgot starts off as a fairly rousing oceanic adventure as a passenger ship crossing the Atlantic during World War I is torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. But an Edgar Rice Burroughs hero isn’t going to let something so minor as a sunken ship slow him down, so Bowen Tyler (Doug McClure, who also starred in Amicus’s third ERB adaptation, At the Earth’s Core) regroups with the other survivors of the attack in a rowboat. Then, when the submarine surfaces, Tyler and the others make a surprise attack as the hatches open and successfully seize the vessel.

But taking the submarine and holding onto it are two different things, and there is some back and forth arguing over the U-boat’s ownership, usually at gunpoint, until Tyler makes his case by shooting a pair of torpedoes at a German supply ship that the submarine had planned on reconnoitering with. The German captain, Friedrich von Schoenvorts (John McEnery of The Duellists but voiced by German actor Anton Diffring) finally admits defeat and Tyler takes control of the submarine.

The only problem now is, with all the squabbling and sabotage, they are lost and have no idea just where in the South Atlantic they are. But continued sailing brings them in sight of an uncharted island, one that von Schoenvorts believes to be Caprona, a near-mythical land hinted at by explorers over a century before. Submerging the U-boat and piloting it through hazardous underwater terrain, Tyler and the rest are amazed to find a lush land when they surface in a lake inside the island. They’re even more amazed when, seconds after exiting the hatches, prehistoric sea creatures attack and kill one of the sailors.

Which is a pretty rude introduction to Caprona, all in all, but Tyler and the others are going to find out pretty quickly that there are no friendly neighborhoods on this island. Everything that walks is a potential threat, including the cavemen they encounter. But it seems as though there is some room for communication, as a caveman named Ahm (Bobby Parr, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) ends up with the group and communicates with them as best he can. And it is a limited conversation, but it’s enough for Tyler and the others to learn that there’s oil on the island, which might be extracted and refined by an enterprising crew in the hopes of refueling the submarine and sailing back to civilization.

The Land That Time Forgot is a fun adventure story, which is unfortunately let down by the decision to go with rubber puppet dinosaurs rather than stop-motion animation. Granted, stop-motion is both time consuming and tricky to pull off well, but the rubber dinosaurs are also problematic in that they just plain look like, well… rubber dinosaurs. It’s hard to fault the filmmakers for the decision, quite honestly, since the movie just may not have been affordable otherwise, but it’s still difficult to instill a feeling of real menace in something that bears more than a passing resemblance to a dog’s chew toy, especially in the ill-advised close-ups.

There’s also some plot drift here that exists mainly to give a pseudo-scientific answer to questions that the audience really wasn’t interested in asking anyway, which feels like a backhanded attempt to provide a coherent explanation for an island full of prehistoric creatures. As far as I’m concerned, no explanation is necessary, just bring on the cavemen and dinosaurs. Even the rubber dinosaurs!

Those flaws keep The Land That Time Forgot from being quite as good as it should be, but it’s still pretty entertaining if you’re in the right mood. That mood of course being that you want to watch Doug McClure brawl with cavemen and run from rubber dinosaurs.

Sure, it’s very specific. But if that’s the mood you’re in, this flick’s got you covered.

Intermission!

• Man, that is some heavy fog.
• Sinking his ship ain’t gonna stop Doug McClure.
• Torching the radio and messing with the compass. These German sailors are just being pests.
• Nothing like a sneak attack with torpedoes.
• Very nice background paintings here. Caprona looks pretty impressive.
• What’s for dinner? Dead dinosaur.
• Triceratops vs T-Rex, a classic battle played out innumerable times with plastic figures on my living room floor.
• No, not last week. When I was a kid!
• Although…
• Mud wrestling between two sailors. The ‘80s would refine this concept.
• They brought their spears to a rifle fight.
• That’s kind of a fat pterosaur.
• More mud fights, now with 100% more McClure!