EDITOR’S NOTE: Lost Continent was on the CBS Late Movie on April 28 and October 25, 1972 and November 22, 1973.
Produced, directed and written by Michael Carreras — based on Dennis Wheatley’s novel Uncharted Seas — this is a rare Hammer that’s an adventure movie and not horror. It taught me if you’re taking a tramp steamer, make sure they’re not carrying white phosphorous to sell. Also: Check out the weather, because if a hurricane is coming, it’s not a good idea to be on a boat. The stolen stuff blows up, the hurricane hits, the boat crashes.
This will bring you to an island with a shipwrecked Spanish galleon and an island ran by the child descendent of Sanish conquistadors. That kid gets stabbed at one point — by a cleric — and a priest with the plague and all of his monks burn inside a church as pipe organ music plays. There’s also a shark attack, a flare gun accident, killer seaweed, weird monsters, barbarians, leprosy, a giant hermit crab, a big scorpion and so many ideas that you’ll wonder if you’re still watching the same movie.
It has a theme song by The Peddlers, so it has that going for it. Hammer girls include Hildegard Knef (who would play the witch in Witchery), Suzanna Leigh (Lust for a Vampire) and Dana Gillespie (who dated Bowie when she was 14) — who plays a native girl named Sarah who uses balloons and snowshoes to walk through the deadly seaweed. Huh? Yeah!
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