Thursday, December 4, 2008

1951: Lost Continent and Lost New Yorkers


While looking through M Squad sites and episode lists I found an old favorite, Sidney Melton, as a guest actor. Sid, aka "Uncle Charlie Halper" from the Danny Thomas Show,
was also in this cult favorite. Amazing that of the stars (6 out of 8 if you count Hoyt, who came from Eastchester) in this "movie" were New Yorkers (bold):
The Lost Continent (1951) is a science fiction film, starring Cesar Romero and Chick Chandler. It was directed by Sam Newfield. This independent film was only shot in eleven days, on a low budget. The footage on the plateau where the dinosaurs lived was printed with green tinting.
Major Joe Nolan (Romero) is the head of a rescue mission to the South Pacific to retrieve an atomic rocket that vanished. Their plane crashes on a remote tropical island. They find a lone native girl (Acquanetta) who indicates something fell from the sky onto a forbidding plateau which dominates part of the island. The expeditioners reach the top despite numerous obstacles, and discover a lush jungle inhabited by dinosaurs. Some die during the climb, others are killed by the presumed-extinct animal life, but two return to the flatland with a critical component of the rocket, and escape, along with the island girl, as a dormant volcano erupts and destroys the island utterly, plateau, dinosaurs and all.
* The film contains rocket-takeoff footage from Rocketship X-M (1950).
* The film was mocked on a 1990 episode of the American TV program "Mystery Science Theater 3000".
* Cesar Romero (Major Joe Nolan)
* Hillary Brooke (Marla Stevens)
* Chick Chandler (Lieutenant Danny Wilson)
* John Hoyt (Michael Rostov)
* Sid Melton (Sergeant William Tatlow)
* Whit Bissell (Stanley Briggs)
* Hugh Beaumont (Robert Phillips)
* Murray Alper (Air Police Sergeant)

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