The Mole People (

1956

)

Sci-fi and horror movies in the 1950s were mostly intended for juvenile audiences, so it was pretty common for these films to at least pretend to be educational. Sometimes it works better than it has any right to, see the wiz-bang science experiments interspersed throughout in Gog (1954), but mostly you’ll be dealing with boring introductory newsreels along the lines of The Deadly Mantis (1957). Today’s film also has what looks like an educational opening, but the educational value of it is highly suspect. The alleged expert begins talking almost immediately about debunked theories from the 19th century about multiple habitable caverns beneath the surface of the earth. Absurd sure, but at least it has some relevance to a movie about a lost civilization underground. Then he starts to talk about theories that claim that the Copernican universe is not only incorrect but that what we think of as the heavens are actually located inside the earth with the real heavens beneath our feet somewhere. Seriously, what the hell is this guy talking about and what does this have to do with anything? Moreover, who in their right mind thinks any of this qualifies as educational? My guess is no one; more likely this intro is just an excuse for director Virgil W. Vogel to tack on a couple of extra minutes and get his movie up to a more respectable runtime.

At the film’s opening we are given the perplexingly nonspecific setting of “Asia” which is all the more baffling when the film starts mentioning specific historic civilizations and geographic bodies later on. Listen, if you’re making a film specifically about the ancient Sumerians you can tell us the film is set in the Middle East. That the plot demands the character be within hiking distance of a mountain range narrows down the location even further. I’m guessing the screenwriter had a particular environ in mind, probably the Caucasus, but the director either didn’t know or didn’t particularly care and slapped the title Asia on there to guarantee he’d at least be technically correct. Anyway, our heroes are a band of archeologists searching for remnants of a Sumerian kingdom that mysteriously disappeared from the historical records. They find some evidence that suggests the Sumerian king and his court fled into the mountains to avoid the great flood (the same one that inspired Noah to build the ark). So an expedition consisting of Dr. Roger Bentley, Dr. Jud Bellamin, and Professor Etienne Lafarge along with a squadron of native porters heads into the mountains to continue the search. It becomes pretty obvious that the rotund and elderly Professor Lafarge should have stayed behind. Mountain climbing and tomb-raiding are work for young men after all. Still the old fart continues to plod along, gasping for breath and sweating profusely.

Bentley, played by John Agar, is nominally our protagonist but boy does he seem hell-bent on alienating the audience. Every line is delivered with a condescending smugness of a sort I haven’t seen since I was still a graduate student. The script must have encouraged Agar, normally a more stoic and relatable hero, to take this unorthodox approach as his character is constantly given opportunities to explain the most basic things to the rest of the expedition. The combined effect turns him into a highly smarmy and highly unpleasant figure, a refreshing change of pace from the blandly heroic leads of most 50s sci-fi films but still annoying in the extreme. I can’t be the only viewer hoping that Bentley would wind up as mole food before the film’s end. Alas, I would be denied this simple pleasure.

The expedition finds its way to the mountain’s summit where they discover an ancient ruin and promptly lose one of their less important members to a sinkhole. Bentley et al. follow him down the pit in an attempt to save the man’s life but after an interminable climbing scene only manage to trap themselves in the pit. The native porters that the scientists had recruited prove singularly disloyal, as rather than try to dig their employers out they presumably pack up and go home with a shrug. Seriously, we never see these guys again, not even at the movie’s end when Bentley and the survivors emerge from the subterranean crypt. To be fair, if I was in their position I’d probably do the same, especially if my boss was as annoying as Dr. Bentley.

With no way back, the scientists press on deeper into the caverns. They quickly discover that the caves are inhabited not only by the albino descendants if the ancient Sumerians but also by a race of mole people that these pigment-less freaks keep in servitude. The Sumerians are nominally a monarchy, but the king is more of a figurehead and all the real decisions are made by the priest caste. In particular, the high priest Elinu is the one calling most of the shots. That’s too bad because Elinu is the one albino utterly convinced that Bentley and his fellows are demons come to destroy the last vestige of Sumerian civilization. He only grudgingly relents when it proves that the visitor’s flashlight is a powerful weapon against those that have never seen the sun before (no idea why this works when most of the sets are better illuminated than they would be if lit by flashlight but hey, a movie that was all darkness might as well be a radio serial).

The Sumerians keep their society limited to 150 people, as that is the maximum number that the underground biome can support. The priests keep the number down by ritually sacrificing people. One such sacrifice is scheduled to occur. Before the sacrifice though, the audience is subjected to a very long and very dull ballet/modern dance sequence. What is it with low-budget 1950s sci-fi movies having ballet intermissions? Between this and Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956) I’m starting to feel like I’m missing something. Did men, circa 1956, find ballerinas intensely erotic or something? Or is this just a shared fetish between Virgil W. Vogel and Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956) director Cy Roth? Because to me, the only thing an extended ballet scene is good for in the middle of an adventure movie is as an impromptu intermission and you don’t really need that in a 77-minute movie.

The Mole People is a turgid film that only occasionally rises to the lofty heights of amusing every now and then (usually for reasons other than those it intended). Yet all the same, I had a good time watching it. Part of this is no doubt due to the top-flight monster suits the film uses for its titular mole people. It’s not easy to mass-produce a set of costumes that look suitably horrific so as to inspire fear and suitably tragic so as to inspire pity. Hell, Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) barely manages to make it work with just one monster. The mole people have a veritable army of the things! Yet beyond grotesque creature, The Mole People just has a fun upbeat vibe to it. This is an adventure story, sure the production values are lousy, the pacing slow, and I want to throttle the lead character but its still an adventure story and I am a sucker for those. What’s more, despite its numerous flaws, The Mole People captures that innocent feeling of fun and excitement quite well. It’s like a crummier, infinitely more naïve Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

There is a quietly radical message tucked away inside this slow-paced and often bland film though, one which is not immediately recognizable. The lost Sumerian society is ruled in all but name by the priestly caste, which keeps their people in ignorance and controls them with fear of ritual sacrifice. Those who would have the power to challenge the priests (the rare non-albinos) are enslaved and treated as mere property. As metaphors for the America of 1956 it’s refreshingly subtle. The negative aspects of the Sumerian society are fear, ignorance, and an unwillingness to question those in authority. They work both in the context of the film, the context of 1950s America and as a general message that is applicable everywhere. It’s a good message, albeit overly simple and uncontroversial, and consequently a good fit for the wrap-up moral of a children’s adventure movie.

More startling is the film’s wholly negative depiction of slavery. Sure the creatures being enslaved are sub-human mole people but despite that the viewer cannot help but sympathize with the monsters’ plight. The practice of slavery is nearly as barbaric here as it is in real life, with the monsters held in chains and savagely beaten regularly. Slaves that get of line are publicly executed as a warning to their fellows. All this in an age when Hollywood preferred to depict the historical slaves of the Antebellum South as cheerful, smiling simpletons living a happy agrarian lifestyle; The Mole People is proof that you can get away with more speaking allegorically than speaking directly.

The other detail that the Mole People get right about slavery is just how terrified the masters are of their slaves. Slave Societies (that is societies whose entire economy is based on the practice as opposed to societies that merely own slaves) need to keep very large numbers of slaves in relation to their free population. The more slaves a society has, the more frightening the prospect of a general slave rebellion becomes. Just take a look at the paroxysms of terror that swept through the American South after John Brown’s failed attempt to stir up a general slave revolt for a real-world example. Historically, the slaves have never been victorious in these rebellions, well excluding Haiti at least, but that fact does little to quell the fears of the masters who see the principal sin of their civilization rising up to destroy them and all they know. In The Mole People we see the Sumerians constantly worrying about keeping their slaves in line. At the film’s end, when the slaves' revolt, the small number of Sumerians is quickly swept aside by the tide of Mole People.

Bentley’s response to the slavery practiced by the Sumerians is, to modern audiences anyway, highly unusual. He abhors the practice of slavery but does not cast his lot in with the slaves and try to free them. Nor does he help the Sumerians subjugate the rebelling mole people when the time comes. He seems content to let the Sumerians run their country however they wish. It’s a sound policy for a lone scientist trapped in the remnants of an ancient civilization but to modern eyes it seems singularly un-heroic. Yet I have reason to suspect this feeling is mostly due to decades of America that have attempted to transform it from an isolationist republic into a sort of global police force. The idea of letting other nations manage their own affairs is foreign to me, but it wouldn’t have been to the Americans of 1956 who were still uncomfortable with their country’s role as superpower.