Aside from the odd movie featuring iconic prehistoric swimwear, Hammer’s fantasy output isn’t as generally well regarded as their horror stuff, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t hidden treasures buried within the lesser known areas located on the studio’s expansive map. One of these scattered titles is the utterly mental The Lost Continent, an epically outlandish adventure that adapted Dennis Wheatley’s Uncharted Seas and gave it a robust insemination of unfettered crazy that gives it the tone of a particularly aggressive fever dream.
I regret to say, I’m somewhat unfamiliar with Wheatley’s works on the whole (shame on me), but if his source novel contains even a fraction of the amount of unhinged that Michael Carreras brings to this trippy tale of killer seaweed, time displaced conquistadors and a selection of the shiftiest lead characters you’re ever likely to get in a fantasy flick. Batten down the hatches folks, we’re in for a hell of a ride…
A battered tramp steamer named the Corita, leaves Freetown in Sierra Leone on it’s way to Caracas absolutely stuffed with more lies, intrigue and drama than your average season of Big Brother which even spreads all the way up to the desperate Captain Lansen who is trying to boost his profits by stuffing his hold with a delivery of white phosphorus, an explosive notorious for its violent reaction with water. However, as combustible as Lansen’s illegal cargo is, that’s nothing compared to the simmering nature of the passengers, who all have shadowy enough pasts to warrant them all gaining passage on a tramp steamer rather than taking more public means of transport. Be it boozy con man Harry Tyler; the disgraced Dr. Webster and his bitter daughter, Unity; bearer bond owning trophy wife Eva Peters; or side-eye flicking lawyer, Ricaldi, all of them have questionable pasts that require them to travel under the radar.
However, once the rest of the crew discover about Lansen’s supremely dodgy (and potentially lethal) dealings and the fact he’s blithely ignored upcoming hurricane warnings, they whip up a mutiny, quick smart and before you know it, the ship’s population has schismed right down the middle which sees half the crew sod off back to Freetown in a lifeboat; the ship’s hull rupturing which gets the phosphorus containers alarmingly wet and the Corita’s power fail. But as bad as that all is, the worse is still yet to come as a mysterious mist sees the ship and its remaining passengers drift into a network of sentient, flesh-eating seaweed that not only is home to giant, cycloptic octopi; rubbery faced crab monsters; donkey-sized, hissing scorpions; but also contains numerous, rotting Spanish galleons that still contain raiding conquistadors still fighting to survive.
From the very second it begins, The Lost Continent strives to make its mark by being the most batshit it can be in the shortest time possible by first trying to have you process a flash forward that involves a burial at sea attended by people from noticably different time periods and then lambasts you with its confusingly groovy, loungecore opening theme by The Peddlers, which sounds less like the opening to a swashbuckling fantasy film and more like something Austin Powers would shag to. From then on in, it’s anybody’s game as the script takes fascinating pains to keep you firmly on the off-foot by cheerfully breaking any and all rules for a fantasy romp. Usually you’d clutter your fantasy cast with a mixture of heroes-in-waiting and obvious fish bait filler much like those fantasy movies Doug McClure banged out for Amicus in the 70’s, but The Lost Continent has no patience whatsoever for niceties like that. No, each member of the passenger list each feels like they’ve escaped from their own separate episode of Roald Dahl’s Tales Of The Unexpected and are hot-footing it to South America before the ironic karma of an episodic or twist claims them. However, while stuffing your novel full of ne’re-do-wells means you’ve got a ton of drama to play with, ballsily doing the same in a fantasy movie just leaves you somewhat confused at who to root for as no one really is redeemed, even after washing up at the Terry Gilliam-esque hellscape that makes up the back-end of the story. After Unity’s overbearing father is served up as shark food, she celebrates his death by instantly becoming an arched-eyebrow man-eater; Harry Tyler, on the other hand goes from a booze soaked loser to attempting to clamber on the wagon at a time when alcohol would surely be a suitable coping mechanism and Eva Peter’s weirdly sprawling back story involving her trying to buy back her son with bearer bonds after her affair with South American ruler went to poop.
However, none of these dangling threads are brought to a satisfying conclusion thanks to their arrival at the titular lost continent (which actually isn’t even a continent at all, but just a tangled network of killer weed) that takes their drama and the proceeds like someone took the cast of Below Decks and force fed them LSD in order to get them tripping balls to up the viewing figures.
The world the movie creates is strange beyond belief, with the mild melting image of natives to this oddball life negotiating the killer sea weed with the comically ungainly method of strapping helium balloons strapped to their shoulders to keep them aloft while they walk across the plant life with sizable, inflatable shoes. The whole shebang is as mad as a brush and things are made even more peculiar with the episodic onslaught of giant, wobbly-faced crustations that whittles down the cast thanks to their grasping claws or slobbery mandibles and attacks from displaced barbarians who take orders from members of the Spanish Inquisition who worship a child-king who they insist is the word of God.
However, no matter how curiously whacko the movie gets, it’s often stalled by the fact that its budget and effects is ludicrously incapable of adequately pulling off the madcap visuals dreamed up by the fevered psyches of both Wheatly and Carreras. A prehistoric, killer octopus barely looks like it could hold together in a bath, let alone the ocean and the sight of people wading along in their balloon/shoe combos stir up way more laughs than wonder.
However, while the movie seemingly solely trades on how fucking gonzo it really is (it could possibly be the weirdest movie Hammer made by a comfortable margin), it’s enough to keep you watching with an expression of disbelief etched on your incomprehending face. Is it shit? Kind of, yeah – but it’s such crazy shit it’s impossible to look away as it treats its funky worlds with a gleeful sense of illogical horror (behold a screaming Unity drenched in bright green octopus gore) to remain stubbornly unique.
Flawed? Hell yes, but for all its issues, The Lost Continent benefits from as loss of common sense.
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