Almost a fun movie, but the special effects, which included a guy in a really ill-designed dinosaur suit, take away the being-there aspect quite a bit. The set itself is beautiful and, were this in color, may not have been as effective; but the matte paintings and whole diorama effect is foreboding and filled with danger in black and white. Bill Warren, in his Keep Watching the Skies!, lambasted this one pretty good. Not one of Universal's best from the 1950s, but they all couldn't be winners like Creature From the Black Lagoon. There was a real fascination, at least where cinema was concerned, with ancient or alien landscapes, ancient or alien cultures, and dinosaurs, when it came to jungle and horror movies of the 50s and 60s. And often there was always a man-eating plant stuffed in there, somewhere. You won't see newspapers running Antarctica Geography Quizzes for a movie anymore, either.
Comic Reader version: Download The Land Unknown
Loved this film seeing it for the first time in 1957 despite the hokey Tyrannosaurus costume. In a bit of irony the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburg had exactly the same Godzilla-like pose for decades. The use of CinemaScope in the film was a nice bonus.