Battle Beneath the Earth (1968)

hyped garbage

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It'll never be on my "favorites" list, but Battle Beneath the Earth is not a half bad way to waste away an hour and a half or so. The movie is beyond silly, but that's what makes it fun and entertaining. The plot involves a Chinese General named Chan Lu (Martin Benson) who has a plan to destroy the United States from below. Using his boring machine, he and his renegade army have dug several large tunnels below the North American continent that they plan to use to launch a nuclear attack. Armed with his own borer, Cmdr. Jonathan Shaw (Kerwin Mathews) leads an American expeditionary force to investigate and stop General Lu in his tracks.Everything about this movie is utterly ridiculous. The plot, acting, and special effects are all ridiculous. The movie seems to have been made on a budget less than what a grande Starbucks might cost. I swear I saw our heroes go past the same stack of crates about a half a dozen times in their escape from the tunnels. And whose idea was it to use so many non-Asians in all the primary Chinese roles? These people look about as Asian as I do (which is not at all). Finally, the whole thing is shot in a style reminiscent of the 60s Batman television show with overly bright primary colors, poor and fake looking props, and weak staging in the action sequences. Still, it's all these factors that make the movie a blast. It might not work for everyone, but I enjoyed Battle Beneath the Earth. A 6/10 seems about right.

You've just saved the world and are close to ground zero with a hot Eurasian woman, what do you do? Think of sex, oh yeah Baby!!!!!! I equate this with a Fantastic Four episode where the Thing, in their first encounter with the Sub Mariner, carries an A bomb into a sea monsters mouth to kill it, that's classic! The only reason this garners such a low rating on IMDb is because it's audience is so limited. So you have a bunch of offended leftist getting mad that the Chi-Communists don't win, LOL! Even that is explained that it's not really the Chi-Comm's doing it so I don't know why they should rate this so low for it's genre. I don't think this film is shown on TCM USA or is available on video in America, but it is shown with frequent regularity on TCM Europe and I have seen it now multiple times because it's a highly entertaining and addictive guilty pleasure to watch. It's A bombs under America with guns and heroics and America wins and it has some great campy moments! If that's what you are looking for this is a definite 9 of 10. Even as rated as a movie with the whole Sci Fi genre its a solid 7, think about it and compare it to all the boring dogs of sci fi flicks you saw from the 50's to even today, this one is solid and has held it's 7 rating well. It's a definite 8 of 10 when you combine that it's in color and it's campy and the actors look like they are taking it all in stride and don't suck like an American International flick. Plus the Navy leads the whole shooting match, I love that part (with some Marine muscle). Not to spoil it too much but I love the part where the renegade General realizes his doom, that was a nice touch I thought. Of course it's soooo easy to destroy this pictures credibility but one thing really jumped out at me, they are running cars in a tunnel, doesn't everyone die of asphyxiation? LOL. OK it's got a smattering (more then enough, but could have wished for more) of hot women of the Asian persuasion, guns, bullets A bombs, military things, sci fi gadgets all the key ingredients you need for a good campy sci fi flick from the early to mid 60's, throw in MGM's higher class touch and it's a classic. 8/10 on the sci fi action scale. You know you've seen much worse and I'm sure better, but there are not that many better than there are a whole lot worse. See it with an open mind!

I knew this movie was going to be silly but I tried to watch it as objectively as possible. In the beginning this still went well but as the movie progressed the story lost more and more credibility, which was not only due to the poor silly story but also due to the poor film-making in general.The story is not just only silly in terms of its premise but it's also filled with some implausibilities and giant plot holes. Like for instance, why don't the Americans launch a full scale attack after they discovered the Chinese rouge army, that plans to explode nuclear bombs on (or under) American soil? Instead they send about a dozen man, of which some aren't even used to combat situations. And why do the Chinese transport a couple of nuclear bombs without even an escort? The more you start thinking about this movie and its story, the sillier it gets. Perhaps you should try to watch this movie without thinking too much. It's the kind of story material normally used in a simple "Thunderbirds" episode, in which they have to save the world in 20 minutes time.The story is original and in its core it had potential. However the way everything is brought to the screen is far from impressive or credible. I mean when they basically use giant flashlights for laser-beams, it's hard to take this movie serious. Also throughout the movie they occasionally use multiple sequences multiple times, in some cases even three times the same shot! Due to money or time problems? Anyway, it doesn't do the movie much good.And why aren't the Chinese main villains being portrayed by Chinese, or even just Asians for that matter. Instead they are now being portrayed by British actors, with make-up, which works far from convincing to say the least. But also the rest of the actors aren't much good. Hard to say if that's entirely their fault, since the characters that they have to play are also far from well developed or even interesting enough to follow.Guess in a way it's one of those movies that is so bad that it becomes good. The movie still does has its entertaining moments but yet the way the movie is made as a whole makes sure that you can't help to laugh and cringe at this movie.4/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

I remember watching this film a few times as a kid growing up in the cold war fadeout of the late 70's and early 80's. This is a cheesy B movie sci-fi flick with a very unique idea. A renegade Chinese general decides to tunnel all the way across the Pacific Ocean with laser boring cars so that he can attack us from underneath with nuclear weapons.This idea is executed about as well as you can expect from a campy B movie sci-fi. But, the idea and fast paced plot are adequate enough to keep the most ADD movie watcher interested. Now, I haven't seen this movie in a few years and was actually looking to rent or buy a DVD copy of it. But, unfortunately it's not available in this format yet.If you want to see it, you'll have to watch it on VHS.It's a bit hokey, but enjoyable.I'd like to see it remade and updated with a proper budget and better script and plot.