Unknown World
| Unknown World | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Directed by | Terry O. Morse |
| Produced by |
Irving A. Block Jack Rabin Robert L. Lippert |
| Written by | Millard Kaufman |
| Starring |
Bruce Kellogg Marilyn Nash Jim Bannon Otto Waldis |
| Music by | Ernest Gold |
| Cinematography |
Henry Freulich Allen G. Siegler |
| Edited by | Terry O. Morse |
| Distributed by | Lippert Pictures Inc. |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
74 minutes |
| Language | English |
Unknown World (a.k.a. Night Without Stars) is a 1951 independently made, black-and-white science fiction adventure film from Lippert Pictures, produced by Irving A. Block, Jack Rabin, and Robert L. Lippert, directed by Terry O. Morse, that stars Bruce Kellogg, Marilyn Nash, Jim Bannon, and Otto Waldis.
Unknown World may have been loosely inspired by Jules Verne's novel Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) and At the Earth's Core (1914) by Edgar Rice Burroughs., as it concerns an expedition seeking liveable space beneath the earth in the event a nuclear war makes surface life impossible.
Dr. Jeremiah Morley (Victor Kilian) is concerned about an imminent nuclear war. He organizes an expedition of scientists and has them use an atomic-powered machine, the Cyclotram, capable of drilling through earth and stone, to find an underground environment where humanity could escape the coming holocaust.
The expedition (Jim Bannon, Marilyn Nash, Otto Waldis, Tom Handley and Dick Cogan) begins after government funding has fallen through and they are bailed out at the last minute by private funding from a newspaper heir (Bruce Kellogg), who insists on going with them as a lark. Romantic rivalry develops (between Bannon and Kellogg for Nash), and two lives are lost to the perils of the expedition.
In the end the scientists accomplish their goal and find an enormous underground expanse with a plentiful air supply, its own ocean, and phosphorescent light. However, all the lab rabbits brought with them give birth to dead offspring. Through autopsies, it is discovered that this underground world has somehow rendered the rabbits, and hence any other life form, sterile. Dr. Morley is deeply depressed by the news. When an underground volcano suddenly erupts, he fails to enter the Cyclotram and quickly perishes.
...
Wikipedia