Message #218157

[Mabinogen]

7. Atlantis, The Lost Continent (1961)

This dodgy fantasy adventure epic-on-a-shoestring from 1961 proposes the fanciful theory that the Atlanteans were a civilization “even more advanced scientifically than our own,” who got too big for their boots and received a vengeful whupping from Mother Nature.

Warlords of Atlantis takes the vulgar if imaginative approach of depicting the sunken civilization
Warlords of Atlantis takes the vulgar if imaginative approach of depicting the sunken civilization

A young Greek fisherman rescues an Atlantean princess from a shipwreck, but gets enslaved by her king for his troubles. He’s forced to join other slaves in harvesting mining crystals which absorb the sun’s energy, to power a devastating heat ray weapon. He finally escapes, just before Atlantis is decimated in an explosive finale of flying balsa wood. It’s a bit of a farce on the whole, and was infamous in its day for its brazen use of stock footage from other films, a la Roman adventure Quo Vadis.