B-Movie Inspirations: At the Earth’s Core (1976)

Actor Doug McClure and director Kevin Connor worked together in the 70s for some of my favorite B-Movies as a kid – The Land That Time Forgot (1974), At the Earth’s Core (1976), and The People That Time Forgot (1977) and Warlords of Atlantis (1978). A decided to re-watch At the Earth’s Core on TubiTV to see if there was anything inspiring about it.

At the Earth’s Core stars Doug McClure, the great Peter Cushing and the stunning Caroline Munro, based on the 1914 fantasy novel At the Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first book of his Pellucidar series. It is actually pretty true to the story (or at least to the summary I read). There are more than a few Hollow Earth RPGs out there, so I didn’t really want to go down that road. But I did want to look at the movie to see what I can draw from it.

Dr. Abner Perry (Cushing), an over-the-top cartoon-like British Victorian scientist, and his American financier David Innes (McClure) are aboard their invention – the Iron Mole – for a test run in some mountains. The craft is very much a stereotypical drilling machine seen in many of these types of movies. They waste no time and start drilling into the mountain side. Before long, they realize they can not navigate the way they hoped and the craft is drilling out of control. They eventually surface in the world of Pellucidar.

If you know anything about this story or the world of Pellucidar, you know it is a world of multiple tribes of primitive humans, ruled by Mahars (flying pterosaurs with power of mind control). and their simian servants, the Sagoths. In classic Burroughs fashion, he builds a fascinating world with multiple subjugated factions that need to be united to fight the evil rules. The Mahar look like Pterodactyls with parrot-like beaks, with strong mind control and telepathic powers.

The first creature they run into is what is documented to be a Psittacosaurus – on film it looked like a Tyrannosaurus Parakeet. It just stomped around and tried to eat the main characters. Unlike the other movie in this vein – Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) – that used real lizards on green screen to depict the monsters, this focused on men in suits and other practical effects. This got a little cringy with the flying monsters, however.

Soon after they encounter the oversize parrot, they are captured by the Sagoths add them to the collection of other human slaves. We meet some of the other natives, which are a mixture of various people, all who are subservient to the Mahars. The remaining story is very typical – hero meets enslaved people, man meets power enslavers and how savage they are, man fights in a arena with a big monster, man escapes and teams up with the natives to bring down their enslavers.

What I like the most about this movie is its attempts at all the creatures. I have a soft spot for this whole series of movies because of the practical effects surrounding the creatures. Additionally, at it’s heart, it is a story of a hero bring disparate peoples together to defeat tyranny. I have always loved Flash Gordon for that. The Burroughs’ world in this series of stories is a lot like the world of Flash Gordon ( or vice versa because I suppose Flash Gordon came afterwards.) I find both stories very inspiring for my RPGs as well as other stuff I write

Along the way to the Mahar’s lair, the slaves all tied to a long chain, they encounter what Wikipedia identifies as two bi-pedal versions of a Megacerops. One grabs the front slave and the two fight over their new food, all the while, the slaves are being yanked by the chain. In order to save the slaves, the Sagoths have to cut the chain. For practical effects, I was impressed with this scene. It’s also an interesting encounter in that it shows that the Sagoths value their slaves.

Megacerops are a horned creature that likes to charge and in this case (because obviously they had to put actors in the suits) they are bipedal. Distant relative to the rhinoceros, I like that Burroughs pulled from lesser known eras of dinos and mammals.

Another interesting creature was the arena fight, which Wiki says was a Inostrancevia. This fight goes on a little too long and it’s a little goofy because the practical effects are slow clumsy, but it was nostalgically cool all the same.

Other notable creatures are the man eating plant (with tentacles!!) and the fire breathing Mastodonsaurus. Innes fights with a native named Ra but some how the fight wander into the man eating plant and Innes saves the guy that was just trying to stab him with a big knife. Not sure I would have done the same. Also, I am not sure what the motivation was to make the mastodonsaurus breath fire other than the cool factor but whatever.

David and friends rally the oppressed tribes of the land, helping them construct weapons like bows and arrows. Their combined revolt manages to kill the Mahars and free the enslaved people of Pellucidar. After a short celebration, the mole is repaired and the two heroes return to the surface.

Overall, the story is a trope that has been used over and over again, the world building is of course fantastic. There are multiple hollow earth RPGs out there, so that’s not what I want to focus. The same kind of setting can be explored elsewhere. Flash Gordon or John Carter on Mars are just examples. Burroughs was a brilliant world builder and there is a lot of lessons from him an RPG GM can draw from.