IMDB facts: 1 hour and 20 minutes, rated 5.9/10 from 1417 raters.
A band of four orbit Mars and head for home but the Aussie on the controls is on the wrong side of the road and they fly into the future by more than five hundred years. That is high octane.
They land on a future Earth and set about recreating the society they left behind. They encounter the giant rubber spiders that the fraternity brothers lost.
There are no scenes in the movie like that portrayed here. Yes, another misleading lobby card.
After some trudging through Bronson Canyon they find the Mole people who are hospitable, and whose society is harmonious, self-sufficient, stable, and dying out for a lack of manly vigor. Note the bronzed Aussie above who cannot keep his shirt on. By the way, he liked time travel so much he did again a year later in ‘The Time Machine.’ Once they get the travel itch, it itches.
The only salvation for the Moles is sunshine. See, very Strine. The leader of the pack is Hugh Marlowe of the pleasing baritone who urges the Moles to go topside and live in the sun. Vitamin D will overcome their endemic anaemia, says Dr Hugh. Stories about skin cancer are Commie disinformation plot to sap the vitality of the Moles.
But topside real estate is owned by mutants because this is a post-apocalyptic society after an atomic war that ‘no one wanted and no one could stop’ intones the Mole historian. There are many more mutants than Moles though the Moles have two eyes and this allows them to have better dress sense with their cloth helmets fitting like a cloche on the men.
Note the headgear.
Mole damsels parade about in 1970’s mini-skirts designed by Alberto Vargas, always ahead of the times.
Al Vargas.
At the end Hugh has convinced the Moles to go out and fight the Mutants. Ah, war, glorious war. Among the last scenes is one of the pack instructing the now healthy young conscripts on locking and loading. Even the senior Moles, once top side, shed their headwear for sunburn.
In the Cold War context the Moles stand in for those Americans who pretend a normal life is possible and do not sweep under the bed every night for Commies and those soft Europeans who just want to live in peace after two world wars. Bah! What sissies!
In addition to their dress sense the Moles favour hard primary colours that show up best in Cinemascope. The top Mole is a kindly Ray Walston without the antenna, but there are others who mislike these strangers and plot against them. As usual, a scriptwriter is the cause of the strife and it is blamed on a woman.
One of the servants who cleans up after the men was born top side and she seems fetchingly normal, but nothing comes of this realisation. When a bazooka can be made, though how remains a mystery since the Moles have no metal, who needs words. Blast them! They blast them, and the survivors live for a while after, as humanity starts long term preparation for another Armageddon.
It may seem ironic today but none of that was intended at the time.
One oddity is that early on when the crew fails to respond to signals from Earth, we see the wife of one of them waiting with two children. She is worried and distressed. In the same room the press briefing comes to a close. And the journalists respect her privacy and let her leave the room unmolested. Fiction, indeed. Polite, considerate, tactful journos. In this respect the scriptwriter gets full marks for creative imagination.
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