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After a totally unnecessary (but almost hilarious) introduction by one
professor Frank Baxter, we are taken to Asia (nothing more specific than
that), where a group of archeologists try to find traces of a lost tribe
of Sumerians, but ultimately find themselves being trapped in some caves
beneath a Sumerian temple high in the mountains and decimated to just
three, Doctors Bentley (John Agar), Bellamin (Hugh Beaumont) and Lafarge
(Nestor Paiva). The three of them find a city under the earth, still
populated by Sumerians, who have enslaved a subhuman yet intelligent race
of mole people. At first, the Sumerians think little of the three
newcomers, try to run them down and even kill Lafarge - but then they are
startled by Bentley's flashlight, think it's the light of Ishtar (their
goddess) and thus Bentley and Bellamin have to be emmissaries of Ishtar.
Now the two of them are treated as guests of honour, and they are even
given a slave of their own, lovely Adad (Cynthia Patrick), who promptly
falls in love with Bentley. However, all is not good since the local high
priest (Alan Napier) sees the emmissaries as a threat to his power,
guesses (correctly) that they are not emmissaries of the goddess and wants
them exposed - which he only succeeds in when he retrieves the corpse of
Lafarge and shows it to the king (Arthur D.Gilmour) - after all, how can
divine emmissaries die? Bentley and Bellamin are soon apprehended and
prepared to be sacrificed in the Fire of Ishtar, but Adad calls
upon the mole people, whom Bentley and Bellamin have made friends with, to
rise up against their masters and save Bentley and Bellamin. The uprising
is a success and almost all of the Sumerians are slaughtered, yet Bentley
and Bellamin are still thrown into the Fire of Ishtar - yet what
was supposed to be the means of their demise is actually their route of
escape, since the Fire of Ishtar is nothing more than a whole in
the ceiling leading right up to the surface where sunlight comes in, which
is much too strong for the underground Sumerians, and thus they burn, but
doesn't affect surface dwellers like our two heroes in the least. And
neither does it affect Adad, who was apparently born with a birth defect,
and who now follows Bentley to the upper world - but is for some reason
killed by an earthquake when she has almost made it. Your
typical 1950's science fiction trash: The plot is so naive it's at times
hilarious, the underlying science is laughable, but laughable in a good
way, the budget is too low for the film's scale, which results in quite a
few less than perfect effects, the cast is less than top notch, and the
whole thing is more than a bit stupid - yet charmingly so. Simply put, The
Mole People is not a good film, but one that you might want to see
anyhow if you're into 50's drive-in trash, or are just looking for a
nostalgic good laugh.
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