***Into the bowels of the earth with James Mason, Pat Boone, Arlene Dahl and… Gertrude, the duck***

In 1880, a professor from Edinburgh (James Mason) leads a team to follow a renowned scientist's path down an extinct volcano in Iceland to explore the bowels of the earth. Pat Boone plays the professor’s favorite student, Arlene Dahl the Swedish wife of the professor’s rival, Peter Ronson a towering Icelandic ranch hand and Thayer David the morally dubious descendent of the original pioneer.

Very loosely based on Jules Verne’s book, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959) is an amusing and imaginative family-friendly adventure flick with a superlative cast. It’s not great like “Mysterious Island” (1961) and is a little less serious, but it’s cut from the same cloth and is worth checking out if you can appreciate the quaintness of movies from that time period. Redhead Dahl is stunning, a true whoa-man. And Gertrude the duck is entertaining, but what happens to her is unforgivable.

The film runs 2 hours, 12 minutes, and was shot in Edinburgh, Scotland; Carlsbad, New Mexico; and Malibu & Lone Pine, California; along with lots of stuff done in the studio.

GRADE: B-