How many in favor

Next up on the list of movies that I recorded off of TCM because it had an interesting synopsis is 5 Against the House. Recently, I finally got around to watching it; as always, that means you're getting a review of it written here and scheduled for some time in the future after I've written this.

A group of Korean War veteran friends, who are now studying law at a law school in the midwest thanks to the GI Bill, have decided to take a trip out to Nevada for a weekend or so -- the exact amount of time isn't quite made clear and I'd guess it's an end-of-summer trip before the next semester begins -- to do a bit of gambling. They have a bit of fun although, since they're at a casino, one of them, Ronnie (Kerwin Matthews), runs out of money and needs to cash a check at the cashier's. Unfortunately, they approach the cashier just at the same time somebody else is trying robbing it, getting Ronnie and his friends Roy (Alvy Moore), Al (Guy Madison), and Brick (Brian Keith) in a bit of hot water before they can prove they weren't involved with the robbers.

However, this gives Ronnie an idiotic idea. He starts coming up with an idea for the "perfect crime", a way to rob the casino nobody at the casino thinks is possible because they have such good security. And, like Walter Pidgeon at the start of Man Hunt, he's going to go back to Reno just so he can show everybody the proof of concept. However, the plan that he comes up with is not one that he can carry out by himself. He'd need some accomplices, and you can just guess who those accomplices are going to be.

At this point, we start learning a bit more about the group of friends. Ronnie comes from a well-to-do family of the sort that expect their son to go to law school. So in any case he wouldn't need the sort of money that comes from holding up a casino. Al, for his part, has been pursuing a woman while in law school. That woman, Kay (Kim Novak), is a nightclub singer, which seems like rather an odd person for a law student to be chasing after, but there you are. Al is definitely the one person who wouldn't want to take part in such a charade, especially after he finally convinces Kay to marry him.

But then there's Brick. Brick saved Al's life over in Korea, which is part of why Al is such good friends with Brick and trying to help him through law school although he's not really suited for it. Worse, Brick's experiences in Korea left him with a nasty case of PTSD for which he spent some time in an Army hospital after getting back from Korea. Al thinks that perhaps Brick could benefit from going back into the hospital and getting more psychiatric treatment, but Brick wants none of that. If anthing, he's become the movie trope of the sociopathic criminal. So when he learns of Ronnie's idea, he takes to it. Worse, he plans to go through with the plot for real and not just Ronnie's idea of proof of concept. And he'll use force to get Al and Kay to take part in the heist as well. So it's a very tense group of friends who make their way to Reno to try to rob a casino....

The idea behind 5 Against the House is quite good, but again, it's another of those movies where it's fairly easy to see why it's not so well remembered today. In addition to a cast of B actors and one A actress, the movie suffers a bit from having a pretty far-fetched plot in that it's not the sort of thing that could possibly work in real life. The cast does a good job with the material and certainly makes it worth watching even if the whole ides sems unrealistic.

Captain Sindbad

Pedro Armendáriz was one of the people honored in TCM's Summer Under the Stars back in August 2025, which gave me the chance to record several movies I hadn't seen before. One of those movies is coming up on TCM again, so as is always the case I watched it in order to be able to do a post on it in conjunction with the upcoming airing. That movie is Captain Sindbad, which TCM is showing tomorrow (Jan. 4) at 8:30 AM.

As you might guess from a movie about Sinbad the Sailor (although in this case the spelling is indeed "Sindbad", the setting is an Arabian Nights version of the medieval Arab Muslim world, in this case a fictitious kingdom called Baristan. The nominal king has a daughter, Princess Jana (Heidi Brühl) who is in love with Sindbad (Guy Williams, a few years before starring on Lost in Space). However, while Sindbad has been away on his voyages, Baristan has been taken over by evil El Karim (Pedro Armendáriz). With that in mind, Jana goes to the magician Galgo (Abraham Sofaer), who is busy trying to come up with spells to control the weather.

Unfortunately, Galgo is under the control of El Karim, who has a magic ring that he can use to force Galgo to do his bidding. So Galgo isn't going to be able to lie to El Karim about Jana's visit. Or, at least, he can try to lie, but El Karim will be able to make him tell the truth. In an attempt to get Jana to safety, Galgo turns her into a firebird to go fly off to see Sindbad, but Karim's men intrude on Galgo and, finding out what's going on, attack Sindbad themselves.

Sindbad and his men survive, and return to Baristan to find out what's happened. Sindbad needs to find a way to see El Karim without Karim knowing who he is, eventually settling on the idea of petty thievery since the trial will have to be held in the presence of Karim. Karim is no dummy, however, and figure out quite quickly who this is, imposing a death sentence. In the ensuing mayhem, Sindbad and Karim get into a sword fight that results in Sindbad's stabbing Karim in the chest. Except that nothing else bad happens to Karim. This is because Karim has some sort of magic power in the form of a special spare heart that's beating at the top of a tower quite some ways away and guarded by all sorts of horrors that one can only dream of. Destroy this heart, and you'll destroy Karim. (At least in a traditional heist movie, the heisters usually have detailed knowledge of the place they're going to heist and the security systems.)

Sindbad and his men set off for that tower, although they're up against a deadline in that Karim has told Jana that either she marry him or else she'll be put to death. She chooses death, but gets a stay of execution when Karim figures out that Sindbad is at the tower and Karim has to leave for the tower to stop Sindbad. Thanks to Galgo's magic, Karim can get there in time for the finale.

Captain Sindbad is another of those movies that would probably seem like a grand adventure to young boys. For anybody else, however, it's fairly easy to see that the movie is cheap (an international co-production by the King Brothers filmed in Germany and distributed by MGM in the States) and a mishmash of ideas. That doesn't mean it's a terrible movie; it's more mediocre if you're one of those people who's not in the target demographic. But if you can suspend disbelief and think back to your childhood days, you might find Captain Sindbad entertaining.

Ship Ahoy

Red Skelton was TCM's Star of the Month in April 2025, which means I'm getting to the point where the movies TCM ran as part of that salute are about to start expiring from the DVR. So to get around to finally watching them before they expire, I watched Ship Ahoy.

Ship Ahoy was made early enough in Skelton's career that he's not quite the star here, although he's technically the male lead. The star is tap-dancer Eleanor Powell. She plays Tallulah WInters, who is a dancer with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra (Dorsey and most of the rest of the orchestra play themselves). After a performance in New York, Dorsey reminds his troupe that they have to be on time for the ship that's about to set sail for San Juan, Puerto Rico, where they're booked for a series of performances. Meanwhile, showing up backstage is Skip Owens (Bert Lahr), who has the hots for Tallulah's friend and singer Fran Evans (Virginia O'Brien), although she doesn't show any interest in Skip. Not that Virginia O'Brien ever showed any interest with her face.

Before Tallulah can leave the theater, she's waylaid by a couple of agents, who take her to an office where they tell her they have a national security job for her. Apparently the government has developed a magnetic mine which they need to get to Puerto Rico. But they can't use any of their regular agents to deliver the mine since there's that war on and enemy agents are sure to be following the regular agents. So could Tallulah hide it somewhere in her luggage and transport it?

Unfortunately, what Tallulah doesn't know is that these aren't US government agents transporting the mine, but agents working for the Axis powers. This is revealed almost as soon as Tallulah leaves, so it's not as if I'm revealing much here. The agents got the idea for this from a comic book written by Merton Kibble (that's Red Skelton). So the scene immediately cuts to Merton's apartment, where we learn that Skip Owens is also Merton's personal assistant. Merton is an inveterate hypochondriac, and asks Skip to call his doctor because Merton is afraid he's about to panic or something from having to try to write three comics at the same time. Skip uses this call as an excuse to tell a little white lie, or a fairly big one: Merton should take some rest, which means a sea cruise (even though Merton gets seasick). This is really a ruse for Skip to show up on the same boat as Fran.

Now, if you've seen any movie like this, the rest of the bare bones of the plot shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Merton and Tallulah run into each other, and fall in love, although they're going to fall back out of love before all the misunderstandings are resolved in the final reel. Merton is also going to be instrumental in foiling that fiendish enemy plot, albeit not without facing down some personal danger. That foiling the plot is going to involve a fair bit of comedy. And with the presence of Eleanor Powell and Tommy Dorsey, there's going to be dancing and singing involved too. Frank Sinatra was still with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra at the time, so he gets to perform a musical number very early in his career.

Ship Ahoy is the sort of movie that Hollywood was putting out during World War II: patriotic, but also fairly light-hearted to help the audiences on the home front escape from what was going on out in the real world. Skelton is funny enough here while people who aren't his biggest fans will find he's not overused since he's in a supporting role. Powell shows she was an excellent tap dancer, including a notable scene where she tap dances out a message in Morse code. As for the story? Well, once again, don't pay too much attention to it.

The Mild West

Since I've got a post up on the new TCM Star of the Month, I figured it would be a good thing to complement it with a post on one of the many shorts that's sitting on my DVR. This time, that short is The Mild West.

This one starts off in the Hollywood version of an Old West saloon, run by Lulu (Janet Reade). Lulu is also a singer, belting out a couple of numbers. Meanwhile, various western movie tropes, or at least tropes for saloons in western movies, show up, including a running joke about how you're not supposed to shoot the piano player. Eventually Lulu's rival Baby Doll (Olive Borden) enters, as does Gentleman Joe. Joe starts playing poker against the house, and wins enough to break the bank. Lulu tries to win the money back, but fails to the point that Joe gets the business, and Lulu. Joe can see the future, announcing that he's bought up all the land in anticipation of the days of automobiles and talking pictures.

Fast forward to the present day, or 1933 when the short was made. Lulu and Joe are obviously much older, and seem to be happy in their dotage. That is, until Baby Doll shows up. She went east and became some sort of success in New York. More than that, she looks like she hasn't aged a day, something she attributes to plastic surgery. She also claims she's going to win Joe from Lulu, which it seems she's spent her whole like thinking about. Sure enough, Joe runs off with her.

So Lulu follows him to New York with the intention to get beauty and plastic surgery treatments of her own to try to rival Baby Doll. And wouldn't you know, but the beauty place she goes to is staffed by the sort of women who break into a Busby Berkeley dance. Lulu gets the plastic surgery, and it works in more ways than one.

The Mild West is an odd little short. People who aren't fans of either 1930s music or movies. probably aren't going to care for this one. I'm not the biggest fan of the music of that era, and the songs are forgettable. But the plot and execution are just offbeat enough that there's something interesting about watching this one.

TCM Star of the Month January 2026: Jean Arthur

Jean Arthur with Cary Grant and others in Only Angels Have Wings (Jan. 15, 10:15 PM)

We're into a new month, and somewhat surprisingly, that means we've already got our new Star of the Month on TCM. For January 2026, that star is Jean Arthur. Her movies will be on TCM on Thursdays in prime time in January, and that means all five Thursdays, including tonight despite it being a holiday.

There doesn't really seem to be any particularly strong grouping of what movies are showing on what night, with the exception that January 29 is the closest to westerns, starting with Arthur's final film Shane at 8:00 PM on January 29. The final two films that night, The Silver Horde (Jan. 30, 2:30 AM), followed by Danger Lights (Jan. 30, 4:00 AM), are both set in the sort of remote location that might be reminiscent of a sub-class of pioneer westerns, but they're both contemporary and not quite westerns.

James Stewart and Jean Arthur in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Jan. 1, 10:15 PM)

Tonight is several films from the second half of the 1930s, but not by genre, as the night kicks off with the comedy Mr. Deeds Goes to Town at 8:00 PM to be followed by the decided non-comedy Mr. Smith Goes to Washington at 10:15 PM. The second night also has several 1930s movies of various dramas. Public Hero No. 1 (Jan. 9, 3:00 AM) is worth mentioning for its take on John Dillinger not long after he died. I had this one on my DVR but didn't get around to watching it before it expired, and also watched it quite a few years ago, but according to the blog I haven't done a full-length post on it yet. So maybe this go-round I'll finally rewatch it and do a post.

January 22 brings several movies from the 1940s, but there are a couple on January 15 as well mixed in with stuff that predates some of the offerings on the first two nights. If You Could Only Cook (Jan. 16, 12:30 AM), for example, is a fun little comic mystery with Herbert Marshall that predates most of what's on tonight.

In any case, all of the Jean Arthur stuff is worth a watch and I'm glad to see her get the Star of the Month treatment again.

Shadow of the Thin Man

TCM has certain marathons they like to do in conjunction with New Year's, either New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. One of those marathons is to run all six of the Thin Man movies in succession. This time, that marathon is on the morning and afternoon of January 1, together with two more William Powell/Myrna Loy movies that are not Thin Man movies. Seeing this, and seeing one of the movies in the series showing up not too long ago, I recorded that movie: Shadow of the Thin Man, so that I could do a post for the upcoming airing. That airing is tomorrow (Jan. 1) at 2:45 PM.

Shadow of the Thin Man is the fourth film in the series, so after Nick Charles (William Powell) get Nora (Myrna Loy) pregnant which, if memory serves, happened at the end of the second film. The kid, Nicky (Dickie Hall), is now three our four years old, and living in San Francisco with is parents in the sort of house that I wonder how the heck a retired police detective could afford. (If memory serves, the excuse is that Nora comes from money.) Nick takes little Nicky to the park and instead of reading a fairy tale reads from the Racing Form. It's a sign that Nick is still into betting on the ponies. He's also still into drinking, as we'll see later in the film although it's exactly a big plot point.

The Charles family is planning on going to the racetrack, but on the way they get passed by a phalanx of police motorcycles accompanying somebody. That somebody turns out to be a police ambulance, as there's been a murder at the racetrack. Not only that, but the murder victim is one of the jockeys. As you might guess, police lieutenant Abrams (Sam Levene) would like Nick to help, but Nick is reluctant. Also as you might guess, Nick eventually does get involved, and everybody winds up being a suspect -- well, not quite everybody as Nora and little Nicky certainly aren't suspects.

The murder of a jockey is presumed to be because of corruption in horse racing, some sort of corruption that the jockey might have been about to reveal or some other such shenanigans. Link Stephens is behind the west coast syndicate, and one of his underlings, Whitey Barrow (Alan Baxter). Working for Stephens and not realizing what he's really doing is secretary Molly (Donna Reed). She's engaged to crusading reporter Paul Clark (Barry Nelson), and when part of the investigation involves a record book and a possible list of some sort, Molly gives Paul her key to the office so he can do some surreptitious investigation. However, he's caught out, and the person who catches him gets murdered by an unseen third party. Paul is understandably the prime suspect in this murder even though we know he's innocent of the killing.

There are other suspects, such as Claire (Stella Adler), the sugar baby who is being blackmailed, and a third killing along the way. As for who's doing the killing and why, Nick brings all the suspects to Lt. Abrams' office for the finale, where he reveals who the killer is. Or, should we say, the killer outs himself as is a trope in these movies.

Shadow of the Thin Man is entertaining enough. It's not quite as good as the original Thin Man movie, but audiences of the day probably didn't care since they didn't have access to the previous movies the way we do today. For them, the continuing antics of Nick, Nora, and Asta were worth the price of admission while the mystery is, if not beside the point, almost a bit of a macguffin. That said, the mystery is, like a Murder, She Wrote episode, adequate, with the rest of the movie providing sufficient entertainment.

TCM End-of-year 2025 briefs

I probably should have mentioned the passing of actress Brigitte Bardot earlier, and possibly even in a post of its own, although I don't think I've got that many photos from movies of hers I've done on the blog. FXM had run Dear Brigitte recently, but it doesn't seem to be on the schedule any time soon. I haven't seen any news of a programming tribute on TCM, although nothing for February has been released as far as I know.

Speaking of future programming, it looks like the FXM Retro block is still going, and now is the time that some movies are being brought back out of the vault. Not that I haven't already done posts on them, but they're still back on FXM after a while. The early 1980s Eyewitness, subject of a March 2021 post, will be on FXM on Friday. Nine to Five is on FXM on Jan. 3, and the original The Day The Earth Stood Still shows up on the early hours of Monday, Jan. 5 at 4:25 AM.

TCM's lineup for tonight seems to be movies set around New Year's Eve. At least, I think so, since I haven't seen Bridget Jones' Diary (8:00 PM). This morning and afternoon is Marx Brothers movies. So no That's Entertainment! series for once. I've mentioned The Thin Man in the past showing up on New Year's Eve, but that's actually the subject for another post.

It looks like my posting output this year is a bit lower than in years past. Oddly enough, that's probably because I'm well ahead in scheduled posts, around three weeks' worth. When I'm thinking more about what I'm going to post in the future, it's easier to overlook doing things like the briefs posts or mentioning someone who died. Oh, and I still have to write up a post on the January 2026 TCM Star of the Month, but that's going to be later today and scheduled.

Deep in My Heart

Tonight is the final night of Merle Oberon's turn as TCM's Star of the Month. One of her movies that I haven't blogged about before, but had on my DVR, is Deep in My Heart, which airs overnight tonight at 12:45 AM (which is technically December 31 in the Eastern time zone but still December 30 in more westerly time zones). So, with that in mind, I held off on watching the movie and putting up a review until I could do it in conjunction with tonight's TCM showing.

Deep in My Heart starts off with the MGM orchestra performing an overture. This is actually a medley of songs composed by Sigmund Romberg, who is the subject of the movie. After the overture and opening credits, we're introduced to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where a young Sigmund (José Ferrer) works as a waiter at a Viennese-style café owned by Anna Mueller (Helen Traubel), composing Strauss-style music for the band to play. A musical agent shows up and likes Romberg's ability, but notes that this is a type of music that's old fashioned: if Romberg wants to make it as a composer, he's going to have to write music that's more with the times.

Romberg does do this, coming up with a formulaic song called "Leg of Mutton", which brings him to the attention of J.J. Shubert (Walter Pidgeon), an impresario who together with his brother was about to open what is the Shubert Theater on Broadway that still stands to this day. Shubert is putting on a show with star Gaby Deslys (Tamara Toumanova) and would like Romberg to write a song for her. This leads to part of the dramatic tension of the movie, such as that is, in that Romberg has artistic principles while Shubert and a bunch of other people all know better than Romberg what would be commercially successful. Indeed, there's a scene late in the movie where an adolescent girl says she likes one of the songs, but decries the show as a whole as opera.

Back to the meeting with Shubert, and Romberg's song is enough of a hit that he gets to keep working with Shubert and makes a lot of money. Unfortunately, he spends even more money than he earns, which ultimately results in his declaring bankruptcy and being forced to go back to Shubert to work on the sort of material that Shubert knows will be a commercial hit and make Romberg a tidy sum of money. Along the way, Romberg meets another actress, Dorothy Donnelly (Merle Oberon), who is a bit of a champion of Romberg's and who has some pretentions to higher art of her own. While on a tour of Europe just after the Great War, she comes across a play called Old Heidelberg that she snapped up the rights to, to work on a translation with lyrics that could be set to music. She wants Romberg to write the music, and the result is the successful operetta The Student Prince.

To fill out the plot, there's a romantic angle involving how Romberg meets his wife Lillian (Doe Avedon) in the Adirondack resort town of Saranac Lake while trying to work on songs for a musical where he faces a very tight deadline. (In fact, this was Romberg's second wife; his first wife isn't mentioned and IMDb doesn't even list her.) But a lot of the movie is just an excuse to bring in MGM's stars to do musical numbers of Romberg's songs.

Not that this is a bad thing, of course; people who like the Freed Unit musicals that MGM was putting out in this era are probably going to love Deep in My Heart even if it is a slightly different type of music. For me, the one big problem with the movie is the sense that, the way things play out, Sigmund Romberg comes across as the sort of person whose life wasn't quite interesting enough to be the subject of a Hollywood biopic. The actors all do quite well with the material they're given, and the stars performing the musical numbers -- including Gene Kelly with his brother Frank; Rosemary Clooney; Cyd Charisse and her husband Tony Martin in different numbers; Ann Miller; and more -- are more than competent at what they're asked to do. But the music may not be to everyone's taste, and the dramatic scenes in getting to the musical numbers are slow.

Still, for anyone who wants a bit of musical history or who wants to see an MGM musical that isn't as well remembered, Deep in My Heart is a movie of a high technical standard.

Saratoga

It's fairly well-known that actress Jean Harlow died tragically young while she was in production for the 1937 movie Saratoga. Her fans demanded that MGM finish the movie so that they could see the last footage of her, and MGM relented and used a body double and voice actress to film the remaining scenes. For whatever reason, I had never actually seen Saratoga, so the last time it showed up on TCM I made the point to record it so that I could finally strike it off the list of films I hadn't seen.

Saratoga Springs, back in the 1930s and still today was known as a resort town that spent the month of August hosting a horse-racing meet that catered to the wealthy set. So, as you might guess, the movie deals with that horse set. Grandpa Clayton (Lionel Barrymore) owns Brookvale, a stud farm breeding racing horses. Or should I say owned, because he's fallen into debt and the bank is about to take everything from him. It doesn't help that his son Frank (Jonathan Hale) has incurred heavy gambling debts to professional gambler Duke Bradley (Clark Gable). But Duke likes Gramps as well as Frank's daughter Carol (Jean Harlow) and helps them keep the farm, or at least keep being able to run it, even if they're no longer going to own it -- Duke has the deed.

Carol, for her part has gone over to Europe to become cultured, where she meets a fellow American who's apparently been trying to gain some class too, Wall Street investment banker Hartley Madison (Walter Pidgeon). The two get engaged, although Carol is adamant that she's not going to use Hartley's money to buy back the deed to the farm from Duke.

Carol studies the horse-racing racket in an attempt to win back the money she'll need to buy the deed legitimately. This necessitates her spending a lot of time at racetracks all along the east coast, so she keeps meeting Duke and his gambling friends, Jesse (Frank Morgan) and Fritzi (Una Merkel). Fritzi realizes Duke is in love with Carol, and the more Carol keeps running into Duke, the less she dislikes him, to the point where you know the two are going to wind up together in the final reel even though Carol is still engaged to Hartley.

All of this is leading up to the eventual climax at Saratoga. Huntley has bought a horse after inadvertently outbidding Duke at a horse auction. Huntley wagers that this horse will be able to beat one that Duke is backing at the big race in Saratoga. Duke, for his part, has other ideas, and Carol still has divided loyalties....

It's hard to escape the poignancy of knowing that Jean Harlow died before Saratoga was completed while watching it. Not only that, but she was already terminally ill. Still, despite her health she does the best she can with the material and gives a reasonably good performance. The only thing is, the material isn't the greatest, not that this is the fault of anybody in the cast. They're all professional, while Hattie McDaniel as a maid gets to sing a verse as the whole train car does a song, and shows what a good performer she could have been if she had been given a real chance.

I also couldn't help but wonder what might have become of Harlow's career had she not died young. Sadly, I have the feeling that, as with several other big actresses of the 1930s, notably Joan Blondell or Kay Francis, World War II would have put a serious crimp in her career. She had talent, but the sort of roles that were good for her at MGM would have gone by the wayside once the more serious atmosphere the war engendered took hold.

The Land that Time Forgot

In the spring of 2025, TCM ran a spotlight of movies based on pulp literature. Edgar Rice Burroughs is best known for Tarzan in that vein, but he wrote any number of non-Tarzan books. One adaptation that TCM ran as part of the spotlight was The Land that Time Forgot.

The movie starts off with a different way of getting to the flashback: on a cliff on what looks like it could be the island of northern Scotland but isn't, somebody throws a bottle off the cliff into the sea. Eventually that bottle makes it to land some ways away, and a British sailor finds it, and that there's a message in the bottle. Reading the message leads us to the main action of the movie....

Head back to World War I. American Bowen Tyler (Doug McClure) is a passenger on a British ship, along with Lisa Clayton (Susan Penhaligon). This being the middle of the war, it's not surprising that there are German U-boats in the area, and that eventually one of them torpedoes the British ship. There are a couple of British Navy survivors along with the Americans, and they're piced up by the U-boat cpatain, Friedrich von Schoenvorts (John McEnery). Since some of the men are British officers, it's not surprising that con Schoenvorts makes the prisoners of war. It's also not surprising that the British and Tyler want to fight back against the Germans and try to take over control of the U-boat.

However, in a series of fights for control of the U-boat, the radio and compass get broken, so the people don't know quite where they're going, even though you'd think with a sextant and working watch they'd have some reasonably close idea of their latitude and longitude. Lost and nearly out of fuel, they suddenly spot a land mass that shouldn't be there, or maybe it's just a giant iceberg. Their working theory is that this is the mythical island of Caprona that was supposedly sighted by the first set of Antarctic explorers in the explorations of 150 years earlier. And there seems to be an undersea passage through the ice, how convenient.

So they go through the passage with the hope of putting in to work on repairs to the U-boat or some such. But their jaunt is rudely interrupted by creatures that look like dinosaurs. And then, later, they're attacked by hominids, but hominids of a fairly primitive species. On the bright side, the prohibited land of fire that the one hominid who sort of befriends them, being of a different tribe from the one attacking them, leads them to, is actually oil! Perhaps the 20th century humans can figure out a way to use that oil to get out of their predicament if they work together. But they're in a race against time. After all, there are hominids on the island who are more than willing to attack them, while at the same time if the underground oil catches fire it could cause catastrophic problems.

In reading the reviews for The Land that Time Forgot, I see a running theme of a lot of people who first saw the movie as young boys, loved it then, and then watched it again as an adult and can see that the movie definitely has the flaws you can imagine a lower-budget movie based on a pulp novel would have. I'd mostly agree with that assessment, although I'd add that the movie is also full of the sort of plot hole you really have to overlook considering that these are fantasy movies at heart. Taking that into account, The Land that Time Forgot is a fun enough movie, although certainly not great by any measure. Sit back on a rainy day, especially if you have a young son to watch it with.