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Before Luke Skywalker, there was Doug McClure... His John Dark-Kevin Connor fantasy adventures were a mainstay of Summer holiday movies in the days before Star Wars: they weren't masterpieces, they didn't boast state-of-the-art special effects, but they were exactly what an audience of kids wanted from a film back in the mid 70s.
At the Earth's Core is by far the most enjoyable of the bunch, catching just the right tone for the appropriately named Burroughs' pulp adventure about Victorian inventor Peter Cushing and the inevitable Doug McClure ending up in the underground world of Pelucidar and battling its evil telepathic fighting dinosaurs. This time the puppets are gone in favor of men in monster suits, which is a lot more fun if you're willing to suspend your disbelief, and if you're not there's always Caroline Munro's cleavage to look at. Aside from what may well be Peter Cushing's worst performance, an irritating but dottier rehash of his movie Dr Who ("You can't mesmerize me, I'm British!"), it's easily the best of the John Dark-Kevin Connor-Doug McClure fantasy adventures, surprisingly well directed and boasting an atmospheric use of color. Never especially good at exterior scenes, Alan Hume's photography gains immensely from the control a studio set gives him (the film was shot entirely on soundstages) to paint a luridly vivid world worthy of a pulp novel cover. Not high art but definitely great Saturday matinee fun.
Cinema Club's deleted original UK DVD boasts a decent but not outstanding widescreen print with UK theatrical trailer and stills gallery, but these have been dropped for StudioCanal'sa 2012 rerelease. The US DVD's only extra is the US trailer - which sells it as a horror film! - but the film has a very good widescreen transfer, although there is briefly a slight tramline in one scene at the end. The US DVD can also be found double-billed with War-Gods of the Deep/City Beneath the Sea.
