| Edgar Rice Burroughs
wrote tales other than about that vine-swinging guy that ended up as movies. Alas,
none of them were memorable and at least one in particular was...
By DON MANKOWSKI "As I looked I began to appreciate the reason
for the strangeness of the landscape that had haunted me from the first with an illusive
suggestion of the bizarre and unnatural – there was no horizon! As far as the
eye could reach out the sea continued and upon its bosom floated tiny islands, those in
the distance reduced to mere specks; but ever beyond them was the sea, until the
impression became quite real that one was looking up at the most distant point that
the eyes could fathom – the distance was lost in the distance..." Back before television, we only had radio for home entertainment, so said my grandparents, and upon occasion, they’d insist that it was better. Back before the paperbacks and the comic books, they only had the pulps. These were rudely produced magazines. Their goal was to provide reading matter to the masses, lots of it, so they had to do it on the cheap. They used the lowest grade of paper available: rough, scratchy stuff with slivers of wood in it, and they didn’t bother to trim the edges of the pages. Exposure to sunlight and heat (or to moonlight and room temperature, for that matter) made a pulp mag yellow and give off those fumes which many find nostalgic, even if probably toxic.
They were often big and thick: imagine the New York Times quartered with a rather dull axe and stapled back together all doubled up, that was a pulp mag. Well, they had more fun stuff than the Times, but you get the idea. They were strictly here today, gone tomorrow. As their components were literally undergoing a slow burn all the while, few of them survive the decades in any form at all. Such magazines--whether western, war, romance, aviation, adventure, mystery, crime, fantasy, science fiction--required writers who could turn out good stuff, of course, but it was often more important that they turn it out fast and cheap. Some hardworking hacks actually wrote, under various nom de pulps, entire magazines each and every week! (The closest thing today must be those "gothic romances" and their fanatic following. I can’t believe that those really have authors. They’re either computer generated or they procreate when left unsupervised for extended periods.)
You don’t expect to get great literature on that kind of a timetable. Yet, against all the odds, there emerged a few authors that endured, whose work survived their pulp origins and who live on in more permanent media. One of the best was Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), who could always and frequently be counted on for a ripping good story that didn’t strain the brain nor presume to literary heights. "Entertainment," said Burroughs, "is fiction’s purpose." And so Burroughs gave us Tarzan, arguably the most popular fictional character ever. And he varied his repertoire with interplanetary science fiction (of the old style, of course), westerns, historical fiction and contemporary yarns. Although some short stories were printed complete in an issue, it was more typical for a longer story to be serialized, that is, divided up and run over several issues. Most of Burroughs’ stories appeared in five, six, or seven weekly installments. The best of the pulp writers had the stuff to sustain your interest until the next exciting episode hit the stands. And the best of the best could turn out a sequel if you liked the first effort.
While his immortal creation, Tarzan, has had a long and storied career on the screen, film producers have given short shrift to Burroughs’ other, more imaginative work. In last month's issue of HORROR-WOOD, I explained that Amicus Films’ 1975 release The Land That Time Forgot was indeed the first true non-Tarzan Burroughs adaptation since the silent era. For young audiences, it was an "okay" thriller and adventure yarn; for those who had read and loved Burroughs, a nagging disappointment. In 1976, Amicus filmed At The Earth’s Core, yet another Burroughs adaptation, again produced by John Dark and directed by Kevin Connor. It’s about an expedition to the proverbial whole new world, Pellucidar. "In the first place please bear in mind that I do not expect you to believe this story." That’s Ed Burroughs’ opening line, a clever one at that: his credibility has nowhere to go but up.
Explored by Burroughs in six novels and a few shorter stories between 1914 and 1942, Pellucidar is another world on the inside shell of a hollow earth. I say "another," because this particular earth-model had been conjectured in fantastic writing for many years. It would continue to be exploited, even though the impossibility of such an Earth model was demonstrated centuries beforehand: it can be shown mathematically (via calculus) that there can be no gravity inside an orbiting hollow sphere. But why let that little fact get in the way of a good story? A tiny (relatively speaking) star at the exact center of the Earth illuminates Pellucidar, although said "sun" has about thrice the apparent size of Sol. As the Inner World’s land masses roughly correspond to the outer world’s seas and vice versa, it is about three-quarters’ land. Thus we have the wonderful paradox of a larger world within a smaller one, and with a "bigger" sun in its sky! In Pellucidar, the horizon – if we can call it that – appears to curve upward, until the view is lost in the misty distance. Presumably, someone with a telescope (equipped with a sun-occulting filter) could see through to the opposite side. Except that there are no telescopes: it’s a younger world. Indeed, the Inner World’s evolution and technology seem to be comparable to the outer world’s Cenozoic Era, but with numerous carryovers from their Mesozoic around for fun. This, of course, allows the author to trot out all the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and mammoths he requires, as well as (if those weren’t enough) numerous monsters of his own imagination.
The Inner World has a north polar opening, a portal to the outside, so that historical (and pre-historical) access to it remains a possibility. We will in due course meet Pellucidarians with creepy ancestral dreams of the outer world...and of the sight of two suns at the transit! A homing sense has evolved in the natives, who of course lack any night sky by which to navigate. Someone transported here from the outer world would think that time had frozen at high noon, the sun remaining at zenith for all time, for all of Pellicidar enjoys perpetual sunlight. Almost all. The sun of Pellucidar has a tiny satellite--a world within a world -- that orbits it once per earth-day. This "Pendant World" remains over the same spot on the surface (about a mile above the surface) forever, creating The Land of Awful Shadow, a circular region of eternal night. I’m not at all sure that celestial mechanics would permit this, but it’s a hell of a concept. The inhabitants of Pellucidar don’t consider time frozen, because for them there is no time. The natives have no concept of time, other that of their biological clocks. They eat when they are hungry, sleep when they tire, and presumably do all the other things that one has to when appropriate. Burroughs is meticulous in avoiding the use of words such as "night" or "hours," or any conventional expressions of time. We get statements such as "after three sleeps..."
More paradoxes arise. A Burroughs hero might experience several drawn-out adventures, but upon returning find that no one had noted his absence! From their point of view, he hadn’t been missing long enough to make an impression. Thus does Burroughs introduce, in grand fashion (if absurdly), the concept of subjective time. The opening titles of the film At The Earth's Core play over what appear to be volcanic lava flows, but which turn out to be a metallurgical process in a factory. Some impressive piece of machinery is being cast here: an incredible corkscrew vehicle designed for drilling through the earth’s crust. These framing sequences on earth’s surface have a nice period feel, circa 1890. The mammoth drill-ship nicely suggests the Victorian high science of Verne’s Nautilus or Wells’ time machine. A musical theme (credited to Mike Vickers) helps here. It’s just slightly seafaring, but jaunty, with a pig-headed vigor. It says: we’re goin’ somewhere, because it’s there.
Says the financier and builder, David Innes (Doug McClure), resplendent in derby and striped sport coat, "We’ve been on top of the Earth long enough." After a cigar-chomping pause, he continues "it’s about time we found out what’s beneath." If you haven’t guessed, he’s an athlete, a man of simple virtue and similar intellect. He credits his geology professor, Dr. Abner Perry (Peter Cushing) with the brainwork behind the device. Perry, decked out in braces, topper and umbrella, vetoes a champagne celebration of the roll out, as they’re going to be driving after all, at seventy-eight feet per minute. Although we might expect a change into fighting gear, these men will shortly blast off (blast in?) in their Sunday-go-to-meetin’ duds. After all, they’re Victorians. (Although all of the Burroughs fans I used to know pronounced the man’s name as "Einz," the movie opts for the two-syllable "Inniz.") Unfortunately, that quaint, charming, buffoonish opening is about all that I can recommend about the picture.
Innes and Perry lose control of their craft during its test run, and it goes on drilling, out of control. It’s a frightening journey through hot and cold strata, with a limited supply of oxygen. When they emerge from the ground, they have no idea where on Earth they might be--probably because they aren’t on it any more! Perry’s compass is useless. There’s a purple sky and a cluttered alien landscape of ancient plants and big mushrooms, through which a bipedal, sixteen-foot, beaked monster chases them. Eventually, they’re captured by the "Sagoths," a strange race of humanoid creatures with electronically warbled voices and castoff costumes from some production of The Mikado. The Sagoths already have in tow a number of indigenous human captives, and Perry suggests that the captives seem oddly superior intellectually to the captors. The movie script will ignore much of what made Burroughs’ Inner World so interesting. Pellucidar is just a "giant cave," in which prehistoric people and prehistoric beasts contend for survival. Although there is no night, no inner sun is mentioned; the world’s light is from glowing magma some twenty miles (Perry’s estimate) above.
Amicus’ earlier Burroughs-inspired vehicle, The Land That Time Forgot (1975) started out very well but crashed abruptly once the first unconvincing monster appeared. Apparently, no lesson was learned. The special effects consist of stuntmen in costumes and mechanical puppets, big ones. Rather than traditional dinosaurs and familiar stone-age beasts, the designers craft some bizarre monsters of the imagination. It’s not a bad idea, but the execution falls short. Try as one might to identify with the characters, once you realize that they’re staring down at a mechanical mock-up or up at a bad matte job, they’re suddenly just actors, and confused ones at that. The nadir, probably, is a squat, fire-breathing lizard-frog introduced near the end of the flick. Perry fires a couple of little arrows into its neck, and it falls from its cliff and explodes. The film has a lot of explosions, if you’re into that. Then there’s the problem of language. Once confined with the natives, Perry decides that introductions are in order, and our men hit upon the gorgeous woman conveniently chained just ahead of them. Perry babbles, and Innes takes over: DAVID (indicating self): David.
Got the idea? After "Ghak" and "Doc" get to introduce themselves with one (1) syllable apiece, Innes abruptly asks "Dia, who’s that man up in front that keeps looking at me?" And she replies, "He is Hooja the Sly One, do not trust him." Wham! The natives speak untranslated, modern English, and nobody is surprised in the least. It’s rather like: MAUREEN O’SULLIVAN: Tarzan. Jane. Or, it’s rather like: KARLOFF: Wine, good! Fire, bad! Whale, good! Tod Browning, overrated! Oh! To think that anybody would compare Dracula with our picture...
I’m sorry, but I can’t excuse that. Any thoughtful screenplay would have used gibberish, then gibberish plus subtitles, then imply that our men learned the language and only then drop the pretense and have everybody talk American. Burroughs never committed this particular gaffe, but here it’s foisted upon him. (He did tend to give each of his worlds one, universal language, to minimize the need for further explanation: but outsiders did have to learn that one tongue.) Properly handled, it would have only added two or three minutes (with a couple of dissolves) to the movie. But scriptwriter Milton Subotsky must have felt that it would have been more than their intended audience required or could handle. The movie scenario is a condensation of the book’s with numerous side-adventures reasonably eliminated. The major plot element carried over involves a wrong turn taken by evolution: the ruling species in Pellucidar are the "Mahars," winged reptiles who have telepathic powers that they use to control the humans, upon which they occasionally feed. The ape-like Sagoths are soldiers to the Mahars. Perry describes a Mahar as "a Rhamphorynchus of the mid Jurassic," only bigger. The Rhamphorynchus was a tiny, scrappy pterosaur. The Mahars are portrayed by actors in stout, stiff suits and mechanical heads, and look like nothing that could ever fly. At least not without wires, which is all too clearly how they accomplish it.
The Mahars are exclusively female, and depend upon an exotic chemical to fertilize their eggs. Said brew is stored in an egg-shaped vessel warmed by lava flows meticulously tended by the slaves. Paleontologists now believe that the pterosaurs – who were not dinosaurs in the strict sense – were somewhat more intelligent than we have hitherto credited them. But that’s speaking relatively: they were bird-brains at best. Nobody thinks they were mental marvels on a superhuman scale, but let’s score a prescient point for Mister Burroughs here. David Innes assumes the role of Spartacus, or perhaps Lawrence of Arabia, and his Anglo-Saxon courage unites the humans. The Mahars are routed with arrows, their "cosmic egg" destroyed, and the Inner World’s people assume their proper place in the hierarchy (not to mention the food chain).
Doug McClure (you may remember him from such films as …well, The Land That Time Forgot) is suitably heroic as David Innes. Where he lacks gravitas, he provides a certain density. I regret to report that the usually brilliant Mr. Cushing offers one of his worst performances here. He plays Perry as a befuddled, annoying geek, all too often babbling in an affected voice. (He may be attempting an accent; as to what kind, I have no idea.) You’ll have to imagine Professor Van Helsing after being kicked in the head by a horse. Cushing has played so many crafty, charming eccentrics and even more wise, paternalistic figures that we cannot simply forgive him this miscalculation. He’s well known to carefully research his characters, and Burroughs did give Abner Perry a couple of dimensions. I suspect that the producers didn’t grant him the time, told him to simply do the absent-minded professor bit. A pity: he might well have saved the film.
Burroughs’ character Dian the Beautiful has been rendered "Dia" here; but she’s still, as played by Caroline Munro, beautiful. She has perfect hair and eye makeup (not that she needs it), even after days on a long slave march. This doesn’t bother me: the women always looked just great to my mind’s eye as I read the books. Dia will turn out to be a princess: just about all of Burroughs’ heroines do, you’ll get used to it. In At The Earth’s Core, Amicus gave us once again, a corking adventure yarn, and one that could have easily been set somewhere else — or under some less important person’s by-line! Burroughs concluded his novel with a definite sequel hook, a veritable tackle box of ‘em in fact. Despite the fact that he was to write six more books of Pellucidar, Amicus studios never attempted a sequel. Indeed, why bother? The Inner World itself has to be of interest to sustain the series, and the first film botched that concept irreparably. The movie’s Pellucidar just wasn’t a vast new world, but a claustrophobic chamber right out of Dante’s inferno (Saturday-morning version), and who wants to return there?
For the interested, here are the titles in Burroughs chronicles of the Inner World, with year of first publication: 1. At the Earth’s Core (1914) That’s right, Tarzan himself gets involved. In fact, the early pages of The Moon Maid (1922) and of Pirates of Venus (1932) tie together much of the Burroughs "universe." Begin reading ERB somewhere, and it’ll all come around. Much as I’d love to discuss each volume (well, most of them) with you here, someone will have to justify it by filming one or the other of them. (Don Mankowski has never been inside the Earth. He is presently a software engineer in Merritt Island, Florida. He’s published several recent pieces in Cult Movies magazine. You can contact him at by clicking here.) Thanks, Don! Even if At The Earth's Core fails to impress, one can at least experience Cushing's poor performance, Monroe's primitive beauty, and McClure's sappy oafishness. Something for everyone! Article copyright © Don Mankowski |
