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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Thursday, January 15, 2015

The Incredible Petrified World (1957)

Starring John Carradine, Robert Clarke, Phyllis Coates, Allen Windsor, Sheila Noonan
Directed by Jerry Warren
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

The maiden voyage of a diving bell ends in tragedy as the chain breaks, stranding its four passengers on the ocean floor, but they're able to make their way into an underground series of caverns.

One of the films of the notorious Jerry Warren, this picture's actually not too bad, despite the director's reputation for making haphazard films, often recutting foreign pictures and adding endless-seeming narration to explain the plots.  This effort's an original adventure as far as I know, although Warren cuts in plenty of stock footage, but held my interest despite its obvious flaws.  Although the film's not a highlight of any of its actors' careers, Coates fares worst, saddled with a witchy character whose fits of anger and jealousy don't seem to make any sense.

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