Badmovies.org Forum

Ok, ok, I know this film fullfils the need for cheese, but when I saw it when it was new, I loved it.  All I want is a copy of it.  Can anyone help?

Uh, I hate to a)admit that I've actually watched this entire movie and b)quibble with the reviewer, but the US does use ELF transmitters (Extremely Low Frequency) to communicate with subs and these radio waves can penetrate water and rock (that's whay they use it). It *is* amazingly slow, tho', because the radio waves are measured in meters! So, the premise of transmitting through rock is valid.
 I think that's about the only valid thing, however.

Rick, you're correct to my full knowledge on the waves being able to contact nuclear subs deep under the ocean.  This signal is only an alert, letting the sub know it must ascend to receive the true message.  As for penetrating rock, I know of some theories, but no hard data - if you can give me a reference please let me know.  In deference to your objection I am changing the wording in my review to be more precise.  The two ELF stations in the US employ antennas which are miles long and ENORMOUS amounts of energy to send that little beep deep into the oceans, the idea of a portable console doing the same is certainly funny.  Agreed?

It seems there's a DVD of this film. I saw it on Ebay but never heard about it on amazon or any other site. Any answer?????????

For ••Years•• I've been trying to find out the
name of this movie, and before 2 days ago presumed
it only existed in my head! I found it by crawling
through the various genres in the Time Out movie
guide (as well as looking for movies including the
words 'mountain' or 'underground'), and I found it
under Phantom Caverns. According to Time Out
guide, What Waits Below is supposedly takes place
in a Spanish mountainside where they are
installing a radio transmitter, when
archaeologists (!!) 'discover a malign presence
deep within the caverns'. Oh well.

 Do you know where i can get hold of this movie in
video format? (no way is it coming out in
dvd!)....I l

Oh, thank you.  Your review left me LOL numerous times! For some reason, I continue to list this movie on my page of credits.  I must be a masochist.  But y'know, I wrote the script with such great hopes.  How was I to know it would be one of the most doomed productions of all time?  The stories I could tell.  Like the morning my burly Australian husband threated to punch the teeth of the associate producer down his throat.  And how they nearly killed their entire cast and crew with carbon monoxide poisoning by shooting deep inside caves using generators without piping out the exhaust.

When they had the screening of the finished movie, I slunk out as soon as it was over, hoping nobody would remember I had a part in creating it.

Oh, about the title: "Raiders of the Lost Ark" had just come out and was the biggest hit of the century, hence Sandy Howard wanted a look-alike name.  That's where he came up with The Secret of the Phantom Caverns. I still have t-shirts with that name on it. I refuse to be blamed for either title.  Or the finished script, for that matter, which was being rewritten on the set daily without my input.

At least it can be enshrined in the hallowed ranks of bad movies.  That's better than being forgotten.  I think.

Christy Marx
www.moonfire.to

cbenzinski, your Time Out guide wasn't paying attention.  The action (such as it is,) is set in Belize, which, last time I checked, is in our own hemisphere.  And fenris, would you have been equally derisive of a movie that claimed in 1984 there existed the technology to make a plane the size of the B-2 invisible to radar?  The government doesn't tell us everything, and since the "hard data" is still classified, no one else will give you a reference, either (unless you pay them lots of money.)  I mean, what's so funny about a portable console? It's just a device to motivate the plot, and as such it's at least as plausible as using the Ark of the Covenant as a secret weapon to wipe out the Gestapo. If you're looking for factual data, stick to the Discovery Channel. There are plenty of things to criticize about WWB, but quibbles of this sort don't make for satisfying criticism.

I just want to know why did robert powell accepted to play in this film! does anybody knows the answer? he's a good actor, he can do better and he made many good films, it was a little funny to me finding this movie on this "bad movies" page. Anyway, relax, this is not the worst film on history just take a look to mission impossible 2 it's quite worst.

Name a good film Robert Powell has been in recently

Hmm...name a good Robert Powell movie...lemme see...There's Jesus of Nazareth, Shaka Zulu, The Four Feathers, Mahler...
Go to the internet movie database and check it out. I haven't seen this movie, but I have seen a lot of Robert Powell movies and he's very underused- he's an incredible actor.

My brother up there (Kerry McCreary) is right about the reason he was in the film.  My Girl Scout troop was hired to do body makeup for the Lemurians - which can be a pretty disgusting thing when you're 13 years old and you have to put white pasty makeup on a 50 year old man's inner thighs! (Can't remember his name, the Lemurian that's 2nd in command, used to be in Shazam!)  Anyway, it was definitely an experience to remember, including the carbon monoxide poisoning that had everyone so sick.  The next week's headline on The Star magazine read "Movie Star Saves Crew's Lives" and showed a picture of Robert Powell leading Lisa Blount out of the cave.  The story went on about how he alerted the crew of the poisoning and got everyone out ... in reality, he and Lisa Blount heard about it and took the only golf cart available in the cave and got the heck out!

On another note, Timothy Bottoms was a lot of fun.  My mom, brother, and I ate lunch with him and he flirted with mom a lot.  He even dressed up as a Lemurian and kept poking mom with his "woomer."  Ahhh, to be a movie star.

 I was a "runner" on the set of this movie for the first week. For the next 2 weeks in Alabama, I assisted the special effects man, Rick Joespheson. I had the opportunity to meet most of the "stars" and even got my name on the credits at the end of the movie......(not sure I am happy about that) ;)
  This movie was made in 1983, and I just found a copy I rented. I would like to find a copy to purchase, just for a keepsake. Your information would be helpful. Thanks!

I think this review is a little harsh in some areas but not in others where it perhaps should be. I can see why they started the shoot with the Goliath stalagmnite because its situated at cathedral Caverns whey they filmed most of the interior scenes. There's some awful editing at the start though, especially with that sodier climbing the slope afer George & Wolf.
   On the back of my tape it says they travel to Spain, but in the film they go north to Belize in Central America -although according to the film and Steven's map it's in SOUTH America!  On the front of the tape is a cool pic of a Lemurian in mid-scream, but I notised the American version has a drawing of Wolf and Leslie on a rope....
  Santos is given a bit of a hard time in this review....when the snake attacks, his gun jams.

for What Waits Below check ebay.com regularly or mysimon.com or half.com

Believe it or not it shows up from time to time.

Dolores (a Robert Powell fan)

Hey! Already FOUR members of the cast/crew have posted on this messageboard, surely a record in coincidence for a bad film. Perhaps if we get a Warners representative here they can be persuaded to finance a remake  ;)

One more thing - I bought a copy of this movie on DVD off of eBay, but it was in the European format (whatever that is) and wouldn't work in my DVD.  My brother said he bought some copies of it on Half.com.

If this doesn't beef up the sarcasm, I don't know what will.  I was an extra in this film.  I was 9 or 10 years old at the time.  The reason I was even there at Cathedral Caverns, is because my sister's Girl Scout Troup was invited to help out with the make-up crew.  I find it amusing now to think that they paid us $35 per day to stand around all day each day for this.  Myself and my mom were dressed as lemurians.  And to juice it more....They forgot to have my mom take her glasses off in a couple of the shoots.  My sister was one the ones sick from the Carbon Monoxide incident.  BUT...It seemed SOOOOO Hollywood for my youthful eyes.  I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.
PS...I have seen this on ebay for sale on VHS.  I've been meaning to buy one for myself.

I just bought this movie on DVD from www.blackstar.co.uk for £2.99. I remembered seeing it as a kid and thought that, at such a cheap price, it would be worth watching. Ok, it isn't great. Just as it started getting good when the Lemurians were running around the caves en masse it got really lame again. The knife-fight was badly edited and the concept of them just running away afterwards was pretty crap. With just a few touches it could've been good. It has a great atmosphere and some of the matte paintings are really good. If only the human/Lemurian contact was more substantial than the sub 15 minutes we actually got. On the DVD; don't get excited, it's a bad print and there's zip when it comes to extras. Wonder what stuff, if any, was deleted. Surely there should be a 20th anniversary re-release special edition DVD...but then again(!)

What makes this movie so much fun is that it was filmed right down the road.  As a matter of fact, my son and I were in the cave this morning!  I took him on the "commercial" tour of the cave so he could see the ballroom (the large room in the movie) and showed him a few of the stalagmites that were manufactured for the movie.  Why in a cave full of stalagmites did they need to create more?  Don't know...Anyway we then took what is called the historic tour which comes in from the original entrance and it gets steep and tight and dirty.  My kid loved that.  I'm going to get a copy of this corny movie from somewhere just so my boy can see the cave the way everyone who has seen the movie sees it...not the same.  If you are EVER in McMinnville, TN go to Cumberland Caverns.  The ballroom is incredible.

Being a Visual Effects guy and a Sci-Fi fan, I have to admit I loved the film, despite it's flaws.
 
A percerption I got from the Lumerians home is that they were living in the remnants of an ancient spacecraft.  They also had alien circuit boards and various electronics for jewelry.
 
From what I've read about the film no one mentions any of this.  Am I mistaken on this?
 
Erik  
 

Erik–
Major Stevens and Lieutenant Neuman do stumble into a cave full of futuristic-looking machinery, perhaps hoarded from above having disturbed the Lemurians fragile senses as the transmitter did, but it's never fully explained in the film. Some of it looked pretty heavy though, so you might be right about the crashed spacecraft idea. Perhaps just part of an undeveloped plot strand.

I was one of the Lemurians as well (so, what, that's 5 crew members here now, right? And, I know the whereabouts of 4 others, so we've got the numbers for a remake!).  It was fun when you were 12, anyway.  My wife says she wishes I still had my Lemurian outfit...hmmm...

OK...here's crew member number six...

I can't believe that I found this.  I entered a search for own name on tthe IMBd website (like Googling your own name), thinking that there might be an actor out there with the same name.  There was....he was credited with playing "drunk" on "I Dream of Jeanie"...but he was also credited with playing "Latin American Soldier" on "What Waits Below".  It took a few seconds to realize that that was ME, that I had made the credits for this movie as an extra (!) and that it had been mistakenly credited to this guy.  Same mistake on the New York Times site, too, and others that credit it to a script writer who also has my name.  Guess that makes me sort of a ghostly celebrity.

I've worked as an extra before, but that was the most disorganized set I was ever on.  Nobody could tell me where to go or even where to wait.  After an hour or so I walked up to someone as they were about to start shooting and asked, "Uh...do you guys need to use me for anything?"  After some shouted discussion, they decided that , yeah, I should go over there and look menacing in the next shot.   I suspect that if I hadn't done that I would have gotten paid to hang around and do nothing while wearing a khaki uniform and carring a huge rifle for a day.  But I got my four seconds of fame.


Sorry I missed the cave scenes.  Sounds like fun (except for the carbon monoxide).

Wow! I can't believe I found this website. I was one of the extras the got to experience the glass contact lenses,
the itchy glue under the wig. And the most memoriable and crazy title, The first lemerian to drop from the carbon monioxide. I love having these great memories. And Timmothy Bottoms was an absolute riot as a lemurian!

Probably, the worst movie i have ever watched, was bored from start to finish, if their is any weirdo that thinks this film is even ok, they should be beat to a pulp!
The special effects!!!! dont even go their!

this is not lie
i would give it
0.5 out of 10
(the 0.5 is just for the actors turning up!)

Hey, i remember this one.
Had some trouble tracking it down as it was called
Nicaragua Code (!?) in Sweden back in the 80s...
Nevertheless, it sucks in a cheesy kind of way.

Inspired by Andrew's interview with the "cast", I finally got around to watching my DVD copy (that has sat unopened on my shelf for at least a year).

It was all I hoped it would be and more.  The snakes and the "red shirt" were awesome!  Lisa Blount was sleasy AND vulnerable.  The exploding cigarettes were priceless.

I will say that I liked the music.  Suitably eerie.  I also liked the Lemurian makeup (for the most part).  The above posts about 13 year old girl scouts rubbing 50 year old Lemurian inner thighs were a little creepy though.  The "alien" machinery in the caves was a cool concept.  Too bad it was never properly explored.  Not a bad way to waste 90 minutes.

...no fake formations exist in cave as we know it today.  i am a former guide of CC, and actually worked with the founders.

however, it is an awesome place to visit...and if you can do so, go on the wild tour

just watched this via  [NO LINKS TO PIRACY SITES PLEASE - THERE IS A LINK TO BUY THE MOVIE IN THE REVIEW - thanks, mods] - haven't seen it for 20 odd years.... It's all over the place, but wasn't completely awful, I've seen far worse, there is some suspense for a little while...

GOOD:

Lisa Blount (fitty)
The Alien Machinery in the caves
Some of the Background Set Paintings
Decent Performances all things considered
The Animation on the Commodore 64

BAD:
Everything Else

BOTTOM LINE:

The Descent borrowed the core concept and got it right...


Your review made me laugh BTW, nice site

I remember this film from years ago and it had a few interesting ideas but failed in the execution of those ideas. To be honest I did like the idea of a hidden civilization!

 :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle: :thumbup: