A Hammer adventure yarn mixing plodding characterisation with rousing action in a half-successful combination. This is best seen as a precursor to the later Amicus movies like THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, and shares many common similarities with those movies, from the diverse group of people on a vessel discovering an unknown world to the giant fake-looking monsters that inevitably dominate said world. The main fault is with the slow pacing and the fact that most of the action is consigned to the last thirty minutes instead of being evenly distributed throughout the film. It takes the ship a full hour to reach the uncharted seas and there's too much talk and not enough excitement before then, but this is only a minor flaw.Based on a story by Dennis Wheatley called Uncharted Seas, this is an unashamed B-movie lifted only by an above-average cast. The monsters are terrible and of a cheap-looking DR WHO standard but for me, this can only be a highlight (I have a soft spot for poor special effects, no matter how bad they may be!). Bizarrely, the film bypasses the child audience by including some graphic violence of a man getting strangled and his neck broken, plus people bleeding profusely when being attacked by the various dangers on their voyage. The crooning music which pops up occasionally merely complements the utterly bizarre and unpredictable atmosphere that this movie possesses! Eric Porter is the initially unlikable Captain Lansen who comes through in the end; it's a wonder what this high-class actor was doing in a movie of this calibre at this time! Ageing Hildegard Knef lends some foreign glamour, while the ample charms of Dana Gillespie are on show for the last twenty minutes. Suzanne Leigh (LUST FOR A VAMPIRE) is the irritating screaming heroine who sleeps with any man she can find, and Nigel Stock (famous for his role as Watson to Cushing's Holmes in the BBC series) her father who gets eaten by a cardboard shark! Many familiar British character actors fill out supporting roles, many of them having appeared in previous British horror like Neil McCallum and Victor Maddern. Norman Eshley, Michael Ripper (sporting a hideous scar), Donald Sumptor, Tony Beckley, and Jimmy Hanley round out the main cast. The budget was actually one of the biggest that Hammer had for a film, and it shows in the ship set and the convincing-looking backgrounds; especially impressive is the "ship's graveyard", a mournful scene that the opening credits play over.The action, when it comes, is actually very good and exciting. There's a battle between modern sailors and armoured Spanish soldiers (whose swords are still no match for guns!), a violent tropical storm, a mutiny, an attack by the sentient seaweed (which makes the same noise as a dozen movie monsters of the 1950s) which leaves the victims bleeding and scarred, a hilarious attack by a giant octopus with a glowing green eye (my personal favourite), a battle between a green-eyed giant crab and a giant scorpion (here the movie turns into surreal GODZILLA-like monster action, except not even as convincing - the giant crab has to be one of the worst and most unintentionally funny creatures that I've ever seen!) plus the expected (but impressive) explosive finale.A member of the Spanish Inquisition (complete with Ku Klux Klan hat!) is included in the interests of completeness, along with an obnoxious boy king and a blubbery monster in a pit that was ripped off in RETURN OF THE JEDI. The sheer wealth of funny monsters and well-staged action keeps THE LOST CONTINENT from becoming boring; in the end it comes off as a hugely entertaining and tacky B-movie romp to be seen by those who do not judge their films too harshly and take merit in the simple pleasures of the movies.

Suggestive Spoilers This is one of these movies you can remember watching on television one Friday night many years ago and thinking was a great movie . When you see it again after a period of a couple of decades you spend much of the running time on the rewatch thinking " How the heck did I find this enjoyable in any way ? " but then a couple of scenes appear and you can see why you found it enjoyable when you were young enough to have not developed overly critical abilities . In short the memory has cheated making you forget all the dire bits and bigging up the fun moments . Certainly THE LOST CONTINENT is a fun film but only intermittently To say there's something uneven with the screenplay is an understatement . The first half manages to combine contrivance , banality and boredom all together which is no small feat . If you've got a cargo of yellow oil drums that have " DANGER HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE MATERIAL DON'T GET IT WET UNDER ANY CIRUMSTANCES " warning signs splashed all over them you can just imagine this might some baring on some plot turn later on in the film , especially if the film spends five minutes explaining through its one dimensional ship's crew just how dangerous this stuff might be . Especially if a hurricane is coming . Just when you think it might be a disaster movie featuring shipwrecked survivors struggling to stay alive on a lifeboat the film mutates in to something entirely different so much so you'd be left thinking why this aspect wasn't developed earlier since the first half is entirely boring in comparison I'm not saying the second half is good from an artistic point out of view but it is thoroughly entertaining as long as manage to suspend disbelief which is very difficult when the film throws everything including the kitchen sink at the audience . There's enough plastic monsters and ideas here to fuel an entire season of DOCTOR WHO . Perhaps the most striking thing is some of the design work where people can walk on weed infested water because they're wearing giant balloons strapped to their backs . Don't bother to ask where these survivors of a 16th Century Spanish fleet managed to acquire them or what they've been eating for several Centuries because it's not that type of movieTo give the cast credit they do try and make the most of their painfully underwritten clichéd roles of woman with a secret past , hip black dude , slutty blonde bimbo , tough level headed sea captain etc . The stand out performance is probably by Tony Beckley best known for his flamboyant larger than life roles and is especially best known by this reviewer for his show stopping role as Harrison Chase in the DOCTOR WHO story The Seeds Of Doom and it's strange watching him as a macho square jawed hero come alcoholic piano player . Also worth pointing out is Dana Gillespie as Sarah though possibly not for her acting talent and when one of the characters mentioned " Sarah is playing her with her balloon things " all sorts of images flashed through my mind THE LOST CONTINENT is a very uneven film . As many people have said - and it's impossible not to notice it - it feels like two different films welded together by the same cast . . It's silly and entertaining but probably not as entertaining as you might have remembered it . That said it could very well do with a remake involving a more disciplined story structure while keeping the more horror and action based elements of the original

I remember seeing this flick many years back on TV; it kept my interest for the first hour and twenty minutes , right up to when the colossal creatures appeared. They were so laughable I was FORCED to tune out.After becoming a fan of Dana Gillespie (see her in "The People That Time Forgot" to learn WHY), and finding out she appeared in this pic, I ended up buying it on DVD. An open-minded second-look reveals a fine adventure yarn capped off by a very moody, surreal climax.Quite a few reviewers state that there is no lost continent in the picture; this is not true. When the cast are in the Sargasso sea area you can clearly see mountainous land in the background; in fact, a character even proclaims at one point, "Look -- land!" Some of the cast even end up walking on the "lost continent" which is where they run into the laughable monsters (giant crab, giant lobster, etc.).WHAT WORKS: There's lots of action and adventure; Eric Porter as Captain Lansen is strong; the human-eating seaweed is a plus; the surreal sets for the orangey Sargasso Sea of shipwrecks are fantastic; Dana Gillespie is incredibly beautiful; the balloon shoes & harnesses are creative; and the plot keeps your interest even though much of the writing is weak. The distinctive 60's theme song is also pretty cool.WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Except for Dana Gillespie (Sarah), the characters are all rather unlikable and the biggest flaw is that the creature F/X are horrible (did I mention that already?).FINAL ANALYSIS: "The Lost Continent" is not hailed as one of Hammer's masterpieces, but I think the main reason for this is the lousy crustacean monsters. The flick gets extra points for its high adventure and its undeniably mood. The film will certainly be enjoyable for those of us who are attracted to "lost continent"-type adventure flicks (just bear with the relatively short crustacean sequence). And Dana Gillespie doesn't hurt.The film runs 89 minutes.GRADE: C+ or B-

The lost continent is perhaps one of the most unusual movies I have ever seen. It begins with the captain giving a farewell speech, and the camera makes a dolly shot we see this bizarre people dress as Spanish conquistadors in a foggy atmosphere then we fade to the past introducing the characters each showing hardly no respect for one another even the ships crew don't trust the captain. We have a captain that is smuggling explosives, a doctor escaping from the past, a daughter that wants to see her father dead and a variety of characters that don't know what there in for. Through the film we see a dramatic change of the character but we never see the captain change. Going from deception to murderer, the movie takes a totally different turn. After the boat is in the middle of a tropical storm the captain and some of the crew escape in a small life boat then they confront sharks, hunger, and even them selves. Somehow they manage to find the cruise intact but they are trapped in a strange weed looking island, and then the fun really begins, giant monsters, killer weed, and Spanish conquistadors are the order of the lost continent. This film is not one of HAMMERS best but is sure one of the must bizarre and entertaining movies. In a Saturday night order a pizza and a couple of beers and you on for a good time.