Unknown World
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| Unknown World | |
|---|---|
 Unknown World theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Terry O. Morse |
| Produced by | Irving A. Block Jack Rabin Robert L. Lippert |
| Written by | Millard Kaufman |
| Starring | Bruce Kellogg Marilyn Nash Jim Bannon Otto Waldis |
| Music by | Ernest Gold |
| Cinematography | Henry Freulich Allen G. Siegler |
| Editing by | Terry O. Morse |
| Distributed by | Lippert Pictures Inc. |
| Release date(s) | 1951-10-26 |
| Running time | 74 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Unknown World is a 1951 independent, science fiction, adventure film, directed by Terry O. Morse and starring Bruce Kellogg, Marilyn Nash, Jim Bannon and Otto Waldis. Although it may to have been inspired by Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), the film was not based on the novel, nor "At the Earth's Core" by Edgar Rice Burroughs, which it just as much resembles.
The film was also known as Night Without Stars[citation needed] and To the Center of the Earth[citation needed].
[edit] Plot
Dr. Jeremiah Morley (Victor Kilian) is concerned about an imminent nuclear war. He organizes an expedition of scientists and has them use an atomic-powered machine, capable of drilling through earth and stone, known as the Cyclotram, to find an underground environment where people could escape from nuclear obliteration. The expedition, consisting of Jim Bannon, Marilyn Nash, Otto Waldis, Tom Handley and Dick Cogan begins, after government funding has fallen through and they are bailed out at the last minute with private financing from a newspaper heir Bruce Kellogg, who insists on going with them as a lark. Romantic rivalry develops between Bannon and Kellogg for Nash, and two lives are lost to perils of the expedition, but in the end, the scientists accomplish their goal and find an enormous expanse with plentiful air, its own ocean and phosphorous light. However, the lab rabbits they have brought with them give birth to dead rabbits. Ms Nash discovers through an autopsy that the underground world has rendered the rabbits, and hence any other life form sterile. Dr Morley is depressed by the news and when an underground volcano erupts he doesn't enter the cyclotram and perishes. The survivors enter the underground sea and find themselves rising up to the surface of the upper world in the ocean, fortunately near a tropical island.
Many of the plot elements seem to have been reused in The Core.
[edit] Locations
- Parts of Unknown World were filmed in Carlsbad Caverns, and at Bronson Caves, Nichols Canyon, and Pismo Beach.
