Weird Wednesday - The Land & People That Time Forgot Films

I'm a sucker for these old 1970s lost world films. I admit that they are total corner ball films but as cult films they make perfect fodder for games. The first film The Land That Time Forgot according to Wiki :
The Land That Time Forgot is a 1975 fantasy/adventure film based upon the 1924 novelThe Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The screenplay was written by Michael Moorcock.
Yup that's right Michael Moorcock wrote the first film..

The plot of the movie according to wiki is : 

The movie begins with Doug McClure as Bowen Tyler narrating the events, much as we see in many Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. A sailor throws a bottle with a written manuscript inside it into the sea, hoping for it to be discovered later. The story is set inWorld War I and involves the survivors of the sinking of a British merchant ship who are taken on board a German U-boat. Bowen Tyler and Lisa Clayton (named Lys La Rue in the novel) are passengers on a ship that is torpedoed by Captain von Schoenvorts.

Along with a few surviving British officers, Bowen Tyler convinces the other men to take over the surfacing submarine, this being their only chance for survival. After confronting the Germans on the deck, a fight ensues and they seize the German U-boat. Tyler takes command hoping to sail to a British port. Captain Von Schoenvorts, played by John McEnery, has his crew steer toward a safe sea port. But Dietz, played by Anthony Ainley, gets loose and smashes the sub's radio.

Off course and running out of fuel in the South Atlantic, the U-boat and its crew happen across an uncharted sub-continent called Caprona, a fantastical land of lush vegetation where dinosaurs still roam, co-existing with primitive man. There are also reserves of oil which, if the Germans and British can work together, can be refined and enable their escape from the island.

Bowen Tyler discovers the secret of Caprona: individuals evolve not through natural selection, but by migrating northward across the island. With the submarine working again, Deitz abandons Tyler and Lisa in Caprona and attempts to escape, but the U-Boat cannot function in the boiling waters and sinks. Bowen Tyler and Miss Lisa are stranded, and forced to move northwards. The movie ends with Bowen Tyler throwing the bottle, with the manuscript inside it, as seen in the beginning of the movie.
 
There's some great dinosaur on dinosaur action & the film sort of follows the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.. Sort of.. 

Carprona Random Encounter chart 

1. Tyrannosaurus Rex
2. Triceratops
3. Styracosaurus
4. Polocanthus
5. Diplodocus
6. Ceratosaurus
7. Pterodactyl
8. Plesiosaurus
9. Mosasaurus
10. Deinosuchus

Please note to add mutations every 3rd encounter from Metamorphis Alpha original rules, Carcosa, or Mutant Future 
The People That Time Forgot 

This is the direct sequel to the first movie & the one that interested me even more!
According to Wiki:
The film is a direct sequel to The Land That Time Forgot that initiated the series in 1975. The story follows a rescue expedition, led by Patrick Wayne in search of his friend, played by Doug McClure, who had vanished many years before. The expedition ends up in the same fantastic prehistoric land where dinosaurs and barbarian tribes of men coexist.
Yes there are some major changes from the book by Edgar Rice & from the previous film! In my opinion their for the better from a DM's perspectives! According to Wiki: 

The film makes some notable changes from the book:

• The lost world is a "polar continent" rather than the interior of a polar island.
• Bowen dies in the movie and Lisa (Lys in the novels) is already dead during the events of the film while they both survive in the novel.
• In the book, the ship's crew scale the mountains to come to the rescue.
• 
  
  
  
• The book ends with two marriages; the film, none.
  
  The People That Time Forgot's plot runs something like this: 
  Major Ben McBride (Patrick Wayne) organises a mission to the Antarctic wastes to search for his friend (Doug McClure) who has been missing in the region for several years. McBride's party: Norfolk (Thorley Walters), Hogan (Shane Rimmer) and Lady Charlotte 'Charlie' Cunningham (Sarah Douglas) find themselves in a world populated by primitive warriors and terrifying prehistoric creatures, all of whom they must evade in order to get back safely to their ship and they meet a race of samurai like warriors called the Nargas
  OSR Uses 
  
  
  So we've got an Antarctic Lost World, lots of cave people, & samurai! What could be done with this film? Just about anything really but lets add Lovecraft shall we. Could this Ice Continent be a section of the Mountains of Madness that has been given over to primeval experimentation? An Elder Thing hot house for biological specimens? Where else do we find strange tribes of unknown peoples, weird events, & strange environments? 
  There's a strong possibly that there are Elder Thing ruins complete with Shaggoths simply waiting in the mountains surrounding this Ice Continent.. The dinosaurs aren't the normal biological specimens at all. They're weird & slightly strange in that 70s movie style. 

Then there's the landscape itself which is odd a mix of temperate pine forests & rocky low land valleys similar to parts of Italy or perhaps Spain. There are several elements that cry out that this is an artificially created landscape seeded with dinosaurs, cavemen, & other weird stuff. 

1. Horned Mutant Dinosaurs similar to the ones in Peter Jackson's King Kong accept with lousy special effects 
2. Weird Cavemen tribes worshiping who knows what forbidden gods 
3. A volcano god like something out of "Land of the Lost" The volcano god appears to have wiped out the humans by the 1950s or at least the ones we know of.. 
4. The various tribes are mostly white European looking & pretty healthy looking at that.. They're also very advanced mostly due to the efforts of the various explorers. I'm not buying that one bit. I'm thinking that we seeing the children of various ship wrecked folks..
5. I believe there is a connection with the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket 
6. The place still exists at least into the 1957 until the volcano went. The place is seen in The Unknown Land

The Amicus Connection.

According to Wiki: 

Amicus was to make two more Burroughs adaptations, The People That Time Forgot(1977), a direct sequel to this film starring Patrick Wayne, Sarah Douglas and McClure in a cameo appearance, and At the Earth's Core(1976), with McClure (in a different role), Peter Cushing, and Caroline Munro. All three films were distributed in the United States by American International Pictures

I subscribe to the idea that the various "lost lands" all connect to the world from At The Earth's Core. The various dinosaurs encountered are all upon various migratory routes from the inner Earth too these lands. The routes were actually set up by the Elder Things in the ancient past as part of their food supply & experimentation stocks. 

An idea whose seed came from Here
 We know that the Elder Things were masters of biology & genetic engineering. They could have easily used the inner Earth of Pellucidar as their game preserve & ever present stock yard. The Earth of the pulps is full of incredible races, epochs unknown to man, etc. The Elder Things were only one of the races that inhabited the Earth during this time. But they held the Earth for quite a long time  & nearly came to a very bad end. Perhaps not all of them did.. 

Pellucidar ala Lovecraft

Another take on the Elder Things & make sure to hit the subtitles on this one! Tis an excellent little take on the story 

Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep, Heedless of all the cries I make, And down the nether pits to that foul lake Where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep. (Sonnet XX, “Night Gaunts” in Fungi from Yuggoth, 1929–30)

 The various races of Lovecraft existed together according to At The Mountains of Madness & they made war! Very brutal, nasty, & blood thirsty war. The world of Pellucidar might have been the biological element of a bomb shelter or safe house. Given the immensity of Pellucidar you could stick thousands of Lovecraftian races & throwbacks with never a human encountering them.

 I'd go so far to say that this inner Earth might be last bastion of the Elder Things on Earth. The warm seas, the places to which the degenerate inhabitants retreated is all there.
The Land Unknown & the Ice Continent might both be part of the same land mass but why the volcano surely that can't be part of the design? Perhaps it is.. Say that the food stock, their various resources, etc all get to be too much for the place. The volcano goes off & clears off the excess. The dinos simply come back through as part of the routes. Some other theories about the Inner Earth can be found right Here

 

“One squat, black temple of Tsathoggua was encountered, but it had been turned into a shrine of Shub-Niggurath, the All-Mother and wife of the the Not-to-Be-Named-One. This deity was a kind of sophisticated Astarte, and her worship struck the pious Catholic as supremely obnoxious.” (“The Mound”)
Lovecraft created his own inner Earth of a type with his ghost writing on The Mound.. The weird neco deathtech of the inhabitants of his inner world are strange evocative & make their own appearance in Chuhlutech as one of the bad guys.
There are 5 or more versions of Shub-Niggurath that can be used in all manner of games. The one in Deities & Demigods, the various incarnations in Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, the appearance in Goblinoid games Realms of Crawling Chaos & the infamous one in Carcosa. The last incarnation is one that concerns me. This incarnations spews forth the various Lovecraftian races & within my campaigns populates the worlds she is called to with her children.
 These lands cycle of birth & extinction might be a supreme sacrifice to the entity allowing her children to survive into the modern day.
 There could be well thousands of these Elder Things waiting,watching At The Earth's Core right now. Perhaps the Us government is covering more then simple uranium deposits & dinosaurs.
Crypts & Cavemen 


Given the nature of this style of game I'd possibly run it with the Crypts & Things engine supplemented with the various Labyrinth lord products with Carcosa for the technology & such.