Two sweethearts steal away from a tour of a cavern to have a smooch. They end up falling through a hole to a chamber below. The young man is killed by a strange creature. A foot print is found near the body. Scientists say that the creature that made it was large and strong. It walked upright and had claws. Nothing in the zoological records matched it. The woman doesn’t remember anything about what happened. Under hypnosis and sodium pentothal the doctors still cannot penetrate her fear.
Professor Diaz (Jose Elias Moreno) decides that the only way to find out what she saw is to organize an expedition and explore the lower unknown regions of the cave. He assembles his team. Professor Laura Ponce (Columba Dominguez) a geologist, Doctor Pena (Carolos Cortes) a medical doctor, Mr. Jamie Rocha (David Reynoso) an expert hunter and case explorer, Hilda Ramirez (Kitty de Hoyos) Diaz’s assistant, Dr. Manuel Rios (Javier Solis), and Diaz’s servant and cook who is only noted as “a black guy”. Along with them are a few guides.
Professor Ponce finds diamonds. She tells Doctor Pena but doesn’t want to tell anyone else because the caves are government property and she doesn’t want to share. Rocha overhears their conversation and wants in on the action. Ponce is attacked by a Cyclops type creature. The others come running. Dr. Ponce is alright but Dr. Pena is injured. Not severely but he has to chill for awhile. Several men chase after it. It manages to kill one of the guides before it disappears, but not before it’s wounded. The team decides to continue on with the expedition. They trace the creature by following its blood trail.
Following the creature they find, in the vast underground cave system, armadillos, snakes, mice, real bats, rubber bats, a giant spider creature, a giant bat creature, a river of lava and an ancient city. As the members of the expedition begin to dwindle one by one the team must decide how many deaths are enough.
“Adventure at the Center of the Earth” AKA “Aventura al centro de la tierra” was released in 1965 and was directed by Alfredo B. Crevenna. It is a Mexican horror film.
At first the expedition is trying to find the creature because it is unknown. When Professor Diaz realizes that the creature may have intelligence he believes it could be the missing link. I have trouble believing a bat creature or even the Cyclops creature could be the missing link to humans no matter how intelligent it is. I also fail to see why the professor believes that only a missing link could develop intelligence. Lots of other creatures are intelligent and they are not all missing links.
The movie actually has two giant intelligent creatures, the Cyclops and the bat creature and like most monster movies they all want to steal a woman. The Cyclops and the Bat creature are guys in suits. The giant spider is a puppet. They are all really bad. Naturally I loved them. All the other monsters were either stock footage from nature films or from other monster movies except for some of the small rubber bats. There were a lot of monsters in this film.
The music is fabulous and I’m sure it’s stock music but whoever picked it out did a good job. At one point there is a movie within a movie. It contains some giant lizard footage from “One Million BC” 1940, “Unknown Island” 1948, “The Lost Continent” 1951 and various other dinosaur movies. One of the creatures used is the Uk monster from “Ship of Monsters” 1960.
“Adventure at the Center of the Earth” is just a fun idiotic monster film with bad editing and some of my favorite stock footage. For the most part, it is an enjoyable silly movie chock full of monsters and animals that people have phobias about.
There are a couple things to note. Who doesn’t love seeing those poor iguanas and baby alligators from “One Million BC” wrestle to the death again? I’m being snarky. It’s too late for those guys they died in 1940. In this movie they had their own torture scene. You take a pile of snakes, throw on some gasoline and set them on fire. The snakes did nothing but be in the wrong picture. We may not be the missing link, but we are the weakest link.