"The Mole People is another of the budget conscious sci-fi/horror films turned out by Universal in the 1950s. It's the story of an archaeological expedition somewhere in Asia who discovers a lost civilization beneath the earth. Sounds promising but......The expedition headed by Dr. Roger Bentley (John Agar) discover a 5,000 year old tablet that suggests that a civilization may have existed in the mountain above. Together with Dr. Jud Bellamin (Hugh Beaumont), Professor Lafarge (Nestor Paiva who seemed to be in all of these pictures), Dr. Paul Stewart (Phil Chambers) and guide Nazar (Rodd Redwing), they climb the mountain to a plateau that has the ruins of a temple which suggests to them that there may be a lost city below.Dr. Stewart accidentally falls through a hole to his death below. The others try to find him by descending into the depths. Nazar is crushed by a landslide but the others continue on. They find the lost city they sought but are suddenly confronted by a pair of albino like soldiers. They bring them to a another city with an active population. This is where the ludicrousness of the story begins. The tiny city is basically run by High Priest Elinu (Alan Napier). They keep as slaves mole like people whom they are constantly whipping for some unknown reason.When Elinu orders the trio's execution, Dr. Bentley whips out his flashlight and scares them off. It seems these people have an adversity to light. Bentley, Bellamin and Lafarge are then considered as gods by the King. Then out of the blue comes a normal but gorgeous blond Adad (Cynthia Patrick) with whom Bentley becomes infatuated.Bentley and Bellamin gain the support of the mole people when they save three of them from death. So when Elinu does convince the king that the strangers be executed, the mole people intervene and.........................The best part of the movie is when the underground mole people reach from beneath the earth and pull their enemies down into the ground. This only adds to the mystery of why the slaves remain above ground only to be constantly under torture. From the advertising, one would expect the mole people to be the main villains in the story, instead they are portrayed as sympathetic creatures.John Agar to me, was always better in supporting roles. He wasn't a good enough actor to carry a picture on his own. Of course, appearing in films such as this didn't help either. Hugh Beaumont was about to embark on a five year run as Ward Cleaver in TVs "Leave it to Beaver".

The Mole People is introduced in a dull-as-ditchwater fashion by Dr. Frank C. Baxter, who gives a dry mini-lecture about the possible structure of the Earth, with particular reference to the 'hollow earth' theory. Basically, what this balding boffin is trying to say is that we have no idea what fantastic secrets might lie miles beneath our feet.The film starts proper in Asia, with a team of archaeologists, lead by Dr. Roger Bentley and Dr. Jud Bellamin (John Agar and Hugh Beaumont), discovering clues to a lost Sumerian civilisation that survived a terrible flood by building an ark, coming to rest on a mountaintop. Following a perilous climb up the peak in question, the men discover an ancient temple, and, when one of their number falls down a deep hole, they descend into the bowels of the Earth.Shortly after locating the man's lifeless body, the party experience a rock fall that claims another life and blocks the exit for the three remaining men (Bentley, Bellamin and Professor Etienne Lafarge, played by Nestor Paiva). With no option but to try and find another route, the scientists explore a tunnel that leads them to an underground city where they encounter two subterranean races: albino humans, who miraculously speak perfect English, and subservient mole-men, who don't (they just slobber and grunt).When the albinos sentence the trio of explorers to death, Lafarge makes a run for it but is killed by one of the monstrous mole-men. Fortunately for Bentley and Bellamin, they are able to use their torch to convince the light-sensitive albinos that they are messengers sent by the goddess Ishtar, after which they are treated like gods, given all the mushrooms they can eat and a sexy non-albino babe, Adad (Cynthia Patrick), to do their bidding. Unfortunately, when the albino guards find Lafarge's body and realise that the visitors are mortal, the good times quickly come to an end.As much fun as all of this sounds, The Mole People descends into mediocrity shortly after the archaeologists descend into the Earth, with albino high priest Elinu (Alan Napier) plotting to seize power from his king making for unremarkable viewing, and the heroes' quest to find a way back to the surface proving rather repetitive. Torpid direction from Virgil Vogel doesn't help matters much, although he does at least deliver a few impressive shots of the city (through the use of matte paintings). The mole people themselves are fun looking creatures, with creepy eyes and shovel-like hands equipped with huge (rubbery) claws, but they are given little to do for much of the time except cower and hide from their cruel masters. Gorgeous blonde Patrick provides some welcome eye-candy, but meets an abrupt ending, her demise apparently demanded by meddling studio execs who weren't comfortable with the film's implied interracial relationship.To summarise, The Mole People is mindlessly entertaining but unremarkable sci-fi/horror schlock. 5/10.

Trying to discover a long-lost civilization, a team of explorers in a remote mountain valley find a mythical culture of people living underground from a race of deformed humanoid creatures and are forced to help their society return to it's former graces.This here was quite a decent if rather flawed effort. This one really doesn't get started off on the right foot at all with the lecture from the professor supposedly giving off a rather banal and horribly inaccurate part of the possibly theories of human evolution that is intended to make the events here seem all the more logical which it isn't to begin with but just goes on for so long that there's some utterly terrible work to get it going past this stuttering starting point. Likewise, there's also the rather troubling effect of the film manages to turn the supposed creatures of the story into pathetic audience-identification figures in them being slaves to the society at the forefront of the film which in effect makes it seem more like a sci-fi effort rather than a true horror effort. Even more, the concept of them being slaves really hampers the fact that there's barely any time with them on-screen as this one spends far more time on not only the trip to the underground city but also getting them to believe that the newcomers are important to their culture that it really stumbles with how it treats the creatures. It never manages to explain why they made them slaves to begin with or how they're able to be controlled so easily here with the simple whipping accomplished that really makes no sense not only how they knew how to accomplish the feat but also in how they lived alongside them all this time as slaves without doing until now. This alone makes that storyline inherently predictable and quite easily seen coming a mile away with the set-up being so obvious as to how this gets to the eventual rebellion which in turn leads to a lot of rather pointless and bland scenes of them going around the civilization interrupting their methods trying to be heroes. That none of this leads to a lot of true horror is a major detriment to this one with the fact that it really piles on the lost-civilization sci-fi antics rather than horror is a huge part of what really holds this one back as despite how much there's potentially to fear from the creatures with this one. Though there's a few decent moments here, it's not all that often at all with the early scenes of them going through the underground tunnels after getting trapped and slowly becoming aware of what they've stumbled upon as well as the scenes of them getting captured by the guards of the city. These are quite action-packed as well as mildly chilling, providing the best parts of the film where it really lets the creatures have some semblance of threat while also getting in some nice horror elements. As well, there's the decent finale which showcases the eventual rebellion and overthrow of their government which is a lot of fun with the different battle scenes as the creatures get involved in a rather decent enough brawl that does end this on a nice action scene but it's too little too late to save this one.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

"The Mole People" isn't your usual '50s sci-fi flick. It has a slightly more intellectual side to it: a combination of the Hollow Earth Theory and a look at ancient civilizations. The plot is that a pair of archaeologists uncover an underground civilization consisting of descendants of the Sumerians. The ancient culture takes the archaeologists for gods after the archaeologists' flashlight hurts their eyes, since five millenniums underground have made them photosensitive.Yeah, it's pretty far-fetched. The title characters are the civilization's slaves: burrowing creatures with arachnid heads and webbed hands. Overall, the movie is pretty original, and very enjoyable.Starring John Agar (Shirley Temple's first husband), Hugh Beaumont (the dad on "Leave It to Beaver"), and Alan Napier (Alfred on the 1960s "Batman").By "Asia" at the beginning of the movie, I'm guessing that they meant either the Middle East or Central Asia.