WHAT WAITS BELOW (1984)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*

WHAT WAITS BELOW comes very close to being a mythic movie, but the script, co-written by cartoon-writer Christy (CONAN THE ADVENTURER) Marx, doesn't quite bring all the elements together into a pleasing whole.

After a brief sequence in Nicaragua to establish that the main hero "Wolf" Wolfson (Robert Powell) is a badass, said hero, who's also proficient in caving, is hired by the U.S. Army for a spelunking assignment in Central America. Once he gets there, Wolf has a "meet-cure" with sexy blonde Leslie (Lisa Blount), and learns that she belongs to a geological expedition in the same area. Wolf also finds out that the head of the army's detachment, Lt. Stevens (Timothy Bottoms), wants to evict all the civilian personnel-- mainly Gannon (Richard Johnson) and Freida (Anne Heywood) as well as Leslie. Wolf manages to talk the tight-butted lieutenant into letting the experience spelunkers find a perfect underground location for their project: a radio transmitter powerful enough to send signals through solid rock to a waiting submarine.

Despite the truce between the civilians and the military, a certain tension remains evident as the explorers descend into the nearby caverns. However, they not only find bioluminescence in the walls of certain caves, they discover a whole civilization of albinos, called "Lemurians" in the script, have implicitly one that's existed in isolation since primitive times, not unlike the premise of THE MOLE PEOPLE. These albinos, however, communicate in a garbled language that the confused humans cannot understand, and they also immediately attack the surface dwellers as trespassers-- which of course they are.

Though one of the soldiers dies at the fangs of an underground serpent, the armed military men have the advantage. But hardass Stevens insists on completing his mission with the transmitter. The script fails to make this intransigence convincing. I found it unlikely that any military officer, upon learning that his mission might impinge on the discovery of a new subspecies of huamnity, would not at least report to his superiors for further orders. But to make the shaky script work, Stevens has to be irrationally motivated to carry out orders that are merely experimental in nature.

Eventually most of the civilians are captured by the Lemurians. When Leslie stands in danger, Wolf challenges the Lemurian's toughest warrior to single combat and defeats him soundly. Gannon and Freida still get killed but Wolf escapes with Leslie. However, when Stevens activates his transmitter, it initially irritates the Lemurians' sensitive ears-- until they strike back with a sort of "sonic scream." With most of the soldiers dead, Wolf and Leslie are able to take steps to make sure no one trespasses on the lost civilization again. (Incidentally, since the Lemurians are the stars of this show, they, not viewpoint character Wolf, are the combative agents of the film.)

In addition to all the cosmological knowledge about the nature of the "inner Earth," BELOW had good potential for showing a "clash of cultures." But the budgetary limitations, poor characterization and listless direction all contribute to the film's poor reputation, even with viewers seeking films "so  bad they're good."