The Incredible Petrified World - (1959)
Directed by Jerry Warren
Written by John W. Steiner
Starring John Carradine, Robert Clarke & Phyllis Coates
We're in an oxygenated cave below the surface of the ocean. Two women bicker. "You just listen to me, Miss Innocent. There's nothing friendly between two females. There never was. There never will be," says Dale (Phyllis Coates) - always described in this film as a "lady reporter" instead of just "reporter". It seems that being a female reporter is so bizarre and incongruous that the film needs to add to the description to concede that, as incredible as it is, the film realises it and is aware of the fact. Yes, this is the kind of movie when a female character will be reduced to hysterics and have the need to have it slapped out of her. She's talking to Lauri (Sheila Noonan) in this scene, as the two sit in a cave, useless to everybody just by the very fact they're women, as the men go and explore. When Lauri tells her that she's sorry she feels that way, Dale feels the need to add, "You don't need help - neither do I. Not as long as we have two men around us." Coates played Lois Lane in the
Adventures of Superman television series, along with the feature,
Superman and the Mole-Men - strangely enough as a "lady reporter".
This is Jerry Warren's
The Incredible Petrified World, a film that was barely released after spending years gathering dust on a shelf. Anyone familiar with Warren will know what to expect. He was never much of a storyteller, instead having a more blunt way of looking at cinema. Just get as much stock footage, scenes from foreign films, and original material as you can, dub it to at least try and explain what's going on, edit it together, and release it. Sewn together in much the same way Frankenstein's monster was, his science-fiction and horror films have had something of a revival in recent times. The zero cost of public domain films means they proliferate like garden pests. As far as his movie-making philosophy goes, Warren was in 'auteur' mode for this, his second directorial effort. His later efforts would be lazier and more incompetent - preferring to swipe footage from
Superman and the Mole-Men (somewhat coincidentally, although he did have a personal relationship with Coates) in an ill-fitting attempt to pad one feature out.
The Incredible Petrified World's big selling point was star John Carradine, and to be fair to Warren he actually features here, with footage shot for this film. Carradine would appear in other Jerry Warren films, which is perhaps the most bizarre fact we'll come across related to all of this. 'The Voice' was certainly prolific, and I could well imagine most of the film's budget making it's way into Carradine's pocket for one or two days worth of shooting. It's simple economics - someone of that stature placates nervous movie-going people. The fact that Carradine is in the film must mean it at least offers something, right? A star's name is worth all the sets, camera-hire, make-up and sound put together. It speaks volumes however, that in spite of all this Warren couldn't see fit to actually release this film after everything was finally done. Instead
Petrified World snuck in with Warren's
Teenage Zombies on a double-bill years later. You'd be hard pressed to find any contemporary reviews - it nearly doesn't exist at all.
The plot is full of potential. An expedition exploring the ocean deep in a diving bell - further and deeper than any before it - encounters calamity when the cable lowering it suddenly breaks. Considered 'lost at sea', the four members of this exploratory dive must survive long enough in hope of eventual rescue. I could imagine the lights getting lower, oxygen getting scarcer and frightening dents and bangs as the pressure outside starts to crush the elaborate diving bell they were lowered down in. Instead of this, the plot of
The Incredible Petrified World goes in a very strange direction. After the break in the cable, the diving bell hits what our explorers think is an uncharted sea shelf - one where the pressure outside is perfectly fine for diving, and light still plentiful. As the two men explore outside, they discover an elaborate series of caves that provide fresh water, abundant sea-food and excellent oxygen. It's these caves that provide the bulk of the film's setting - Colossal Cave in Arizona providing an excellently cheap location for filming what we thought was going to be a deep-sea epic.
Petrified World is an addition to the ever-expanding genre we know as the "Unexpected Cave Movie".
Fans of Warren's specific style of filmmaking can see the genesis of his later work.
Petrified World's scant 67 minute running time is padded out with around 10 minutes of stock footage - 6 of which include the credits over a heaving sea and what many people think of as the best part of the whole movie : a battle between shark and octopus as a narrator informs us that for all we know, the ocean deep might actually be teeming with squid. It's a mystery. Anything might be down there. A honey-comb, oxygen-rich series of caves even. When our four explorers have walked around Colossal Cave for a length of time that really tests our patience, they're confronted with, of all things, a lizard. Mismatching stock footage of some bored lizard at a zoo tells us that this is what has caused the characters to stop and point. It bothers them, but doesn't really make much of an impression. It's moments like this that actually make
The Incredible Petrified World enjoyable for a moment. But those moments are brief and buried under an ocean of exposition and scenes of people walking around in caves. Despite all of it's flaws, the film goes out of it's way to try and explain away plot-holes and inconsistencies. The reason there's light (very bright light) is due to the phosphorous glow of the rocks. The reason they're lost is due to the iron messing with their compass. The reason there is air is due to volcanic vents. But Warren overestimated just how much we'd care - and these discussions are dull interludes on the way to nowhere.
If the aforementioned lizard is one of the monsters we're promised in this film, then the next monster is our character's true nemesis. This 'main monster' is distinctly human - and provides the film with a 'the-real-monsters-are-us' theme which I'm fairly sure was unintended. He is described as 'Ingol - the Old Man in the Cave'. Ingol (sporting a fake beard - fake beards being something all of our technology and advancement is yet to get right, and to this day they're easily spotted) is another lost person. He's been wandering around these caves for over a decade, has a home replete with sea-shell hanging decorations and has also, disturbingly, killed his companion some time ago for no really good reason. Ingol has sex on his mind when our intrepid explorers stumble across him (who wouldn't?), and decides Dale is pretty much as good as he's going to get. When he suggests to Dale that they just kill the others and get it on, Dale is somewhat reluctant to go down that path, but she has to wait for the men, and a fortunate volcanic eruption, to come and help her out - even though Ingol tries to sweet-talk her by telling her he might just have to kill her and take the second-best lady if she's going to be so disagreeable.
At times the scenes inside the caves are grossly over-lit or under-lit, not that this was going to make or break the entire film. The scenes involving John Carradine, as Professor Millard Wyman, are the most competent, and involve at least a scant sense of drama. It's Millard that pretty much gives them all up for dead when the cable breaks - but despite this he's willing to fly around the world getting another expedition on the way - especially after being informed that there are things swimming around down there. This is all as confusing to them as it is for us. Considering that our explorers are in water shallow enough to allow excellent daylight vision, you'd kind of wonder why they don't just swim upwards instead of messing around with caves. You can't really nitpick
The Incredible Petrified World though - you just go with it. There is no sense of time or location. It feels like our four intrepid expllorers are down there for hours, but it must be many days, if not weeks. They can't swim up, because they can't, and that's all.
Rounding off a look at a motion picture like this is the bevy of rumours that are most likely not to be true - the favourite of which seems to involve Phyllis Coates being an ex-girlfriend of Jerry Warren - who never ended up getting paid for her work. It's said that she agreed to star in it only on the condition the film not be shown in California. The film was indeed shown in California, and Coates was reportedly shown the door at Columbia for having the nerve to appear in such a shoddy movie. I'm not convinced though. It seems to me that
Petrified World had such a small release as to pass by unnoticed - but it's just inside the realms of possibility that the suits at Columbia took note of every movie released in every drive-in and who was involved in them. Another rumour involves the film's cinematographer being a regular 'big picture' director of photography who hid his involvement. Victor Fisher does have other credits - so take that with a pinch of salt. Finally, there is the story of a monster costume so shoddy that even Warren refused to use it for the film.
Jerry Warren would go on to make the "lawsuit headache" film
The Wild World of Batwoman in 1966, definitely the film he will be most fondly remembered for.
Batwoman is so strange and indecipherable you'd have to seriously consider the fact that there was something fundamentally wrong with Jerry to begin with.
The Incredible Petrified World makes more sense, in a relative way, but is a film that can't seriously be recommended to anyone other than the incurably curious.