(Streamed via Otherworlds TV)
Julia (Carmen Molina) and her boyfriend are taking a tour of a cave when they sneak off for a little hanky-panky. They fall into a hole and her man is killed by a giant rubbery reptile. A professor (Jose Elias Moreno) then gathers together an expedition to find the monster responsible.
Directed by Alfredo B. (Santo vs. the Martian Invasion) Crevenna, this Mexican sci-fi horror flick suffers from a lot of padding. The opening narration is especially longwinded, there’s an inexplicable musical number that brings things to a screeching halt, the diamond smuggling subplot goes nowhere, and the slow-moving scenes of the expedition traipsing through the caverns are likely to bore you. The funniest form of padding comes during the hilarious scene where the professor preps his team for the journey by showing them footage from One Million B.C. and Unknown Island. Usually, these kinds of films try to incorporate shots from other movies into the action, so it was nice to see monster fights from other flicks being passed off as “research” material.
If you can get past the scenes of real animal cruelty and casual racism, you’ll be treated to some terrific rubbery monsters. There’s a cool cyclops, a giant bat monster (who has a hilarious flying scene), and a big ass fuzzy spider. The shots of the monsters’ eyes glowing in the dark are quite atmospheric and the monster attacks are even a little bloody. Another memorable sequence occurs when the expedition is attacked by bats while perilously dangling above a lava pit.
For a film filled with so much padding, it sure ends awful abruptly. I mean, appreciate it when a movie wraps things up before it wears out its welcome, but it’s still a little jarring. However, for all its faults, when the monsters are front and center, Adventure at the Center of the Earth is cheesy fun.
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