"No frontier was ever explored by just one expedition."
Professor Millard Wyman (John Carradine) built a diving bell. He sends a crew of four down into an unexplored part of the ocean for research purposes. The crew consists of two men Paul Whitmore (Allen Windsor) and Craig Randall (Robert Clarke) and two women Lauri Talbott (Sheila Noonan) and Dale Marshall (Phyllis Coates). Due to a technical problem the bell snaps its cable at 1700 feet and sinks. They believe the crew is lost.
Unknown by the surface team the crew survived and have left the bell. Instead of reaching the surface they come up in an underwater cave. They explore the cave and find a skeleton. Then they find a man named Matheny (George Skaff) who had been shipwrecked fourteen years earlier and has been living there ever since. He says air is provided by a volcano that reaches up to the surface. Things get dicey when the old letch keeps trying to rape the women and the volcano is beginning to rumble.
On the surface Wyman’s brother Jim has been building his own bell. They now want to use it to attempt a rescue/recovery operation.
The opening to the movie is supposed to be a documentary about what the ocean is like, complete with stock footage of a shark and octopus fight that has been used in every underwater movie ever made. I think even Ed Wood used it at one time. I know I’ve seen it in “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”.
“The Incredible Petrified World” is a 1959 science fiction movie produced and directed by Jerry Warren. The film was copyrighted in 1957 but not released until 1959.
At one point the movie was supposed to have a monster in it, however, it appears that it looked so ridiculous that the monster was scrapped. They do find a lizard, but nothing big or monstrous.
Perhaps I’ve watched too many bad movies. I didn’t find this one horrible. Not good, not interesting, just not horrible. There were a couple actors I recognized. One interesting lizard, although small, and more montages than you could shake a stick at.
My brother once said that he found “The Incredible Petrified World” to be neither incredible nor petrified. I think he nailed it.