Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
Directed by Henry Levin

Film Review

If you can make some allowance for the dodgy science, and even dodgier Scottish accents, Journey to the Center of the Earth is a surprisingly entertaining sci-fi adventure movie, which stands up remarkably well fifty years after it was first seen.  The set design and special effects were exceptional when the film was made and still manage to impress in both their scale and inventiveness.  Particularly well realised are the sequences where the explorers are attacked by a herd of ravaging dimetrodons - quite an achievement for the days before they invented CGI.

Yes, the plot is about as ridiculous as it could be without looking as though Dan Brown wrote it on an off day, and Charles Brackett's alterations to Jules Verne's original novel do little to enhance the credibility of the story.  Needless to say, the science content is ropier than - er - a piece of rope.  Don't bother trying to work out how long it would actually take our intrepid heroes to make their journey from the Earth's surface to its core.  (The distance would be roughly one and half times the width of the United States, assuming they travelled vertically.)   Don't even think about how they could possibly have survived being blown back up to the surface via a volcanic eruption.   And didn't anyone on the production team know that gold is non-magnetic?   For those who like to have at least a trace of scientific veracity in their sci-fi, this probably is not the film to watch.  This is really just the Wizard of Oz remade with a pseudo-scientific garnish.

If the plot stretches credibility to breaking point, the characters in it manage to be even less believable and are just one hair's breadth away from being a Famous Five tribute act.  The pairing of popular crooner Pat Boone with James Mason is hard enough to accept (particularly as both are afflicted with a touch of the painfully dire Gaelic lilt).  But add a stroppy widow who sounds like Deborah Kerr and an Icelandic bodybuilder who can't speak English and insists on going everywhere with his duck (yes duck) and you begin to wonder just what kind of mind-altering drugs were being issued in the production office.

Unlike many big budget sci-fi films of this (or indeed any) era, Journey to the Center of the Earth does not take itself too seriously (which is probably just as well).  Between the tense action sequences, bogus science lectures and informative mushroom cookery lessons, the film finds time to take a few excursions into vaudeville territory.  The best example of the latter is the scene in which Mason (allegedly a world famous scientist and man of great intellect) and Boone (supposedly a future Nobel Prize winner) try to communicate with a duck (yes, a duck) in a wide variety of European languages.  You won't find anything like this in the over-hyped 2008 remake, more's the pity.

Film Synopsis

On the day the eminent Edinburgh geologist Professor Oliver Lindenbrook receives his knighthood, his favourite student Alex McEwen gives him a lump of volcanic rock as a present.  Lindenbrook is surprised to discover that the rock contains a plumb bob inscribed with a message from a long dead explorer, Arne Saknussem, indicating how to get to the centre of the Earth.   Realising this could be the scientific adventure of the century, the professor makes hasty preparations and takes Alec with him to Iceland, where he intends to make his descent via an extinct volcano.  A rival professor, Goetaborg, attempts to sabotage Lindenbrook's expedition but is himself killed by one of Saknussem's descendants, who plans to make the journey to the Earth's core himself.  Teaming up with Goetaborg's independent-minded widow, an Icelandic native named Hans and the latter's faithful duck (yes, duck), Lindenbrook and Alec begin their arduous journey, unaware of the many dangers (and prehistoric monsters) that lie ahead...