Journey to the Center of the Earth

IMDb RATING

7.0/10

20K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

Play trailer3:21

Adventure Family Fantasy Romance Sci-Fi

An Edinburgh professor and assorted colleagues follow an explorer's trail down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the earth's center.An Edinburgh professor and assorted colleagues follow an explorer's trail down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the earth's center.An Edinburgh professor and assorted colleagues follow an explorer's trail down an extinct Icelandic volcano to the earth's center.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.0/10

20K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

2,772

4,840

See production info at IMDbPro

Nominated for 3 Oscars
- 4 nominations total

Kirsty
(uncredited)

Alan Caillou

Rector
(uncredited)

Gertrude the Duck

Gertrude
(uncredited)

John Epper

Groom
(uncredited)

Edith Evanson

Innkeeper
(uncredited)

Alex Finlayson

Prof. Bayle
(uncredited)

Molly Glessing

News Vendor
(uncredited)

Frederick Halliday

Chancellor
(uncredited)

Kendrick Huxham

Scots Newsman
(uncredited)

Owen McGiveney

Shopkeeper
(uncredited)

Director
- Henry Levin
Writers
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Pat Boone didn't want to make this film, but his agent talked him into it. Years later, he said he's glad he did it because of the regular residual checks, and it's the movie he'll probably be best remembered for.

Goofs
(at around 21 mins) Early in the movie, Oliver Lindenbrook speaks of the "stars and galaxies of outer space." In the 1880s, however, our Milky Way galaxy was believed to constitute the entire universe. Knowledge that other galaxies exist beyond our own did not come about till the 1920s. Thus a man of the 1880s would not use the word "galaxy" in its plural form.

Quotes
Sir Oliver Lindenbrook: Are we to be abducted every day in Iceland?

Alternate versions
In some European versions of the film, for example the Spanish dubbing, the "Prof of Geology's Song" was re-dubbed into the "Gaudeamus Igitur" song.

Connections
Edited into Attack of the 50 Foot Monster Mania (1999)

Soundtracks
My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose
By Robert Burns
Set to music by Jimmy Van Heusen (as James Van Heusen)
Sung by Pat Boone

User reviews174

Review

Featured review

8/10

Grand fantasy film-making, fun for all ages.

I can attest to the feelings expressed by the last couple commentators about 1959's "Journey To The Center Of The Earth." This is a wonderful family film from the bygone Eisenhower-era of the 1950s. Even though I've been watching it on TV since I was a kid in the sixties, I'd only seen pan&scan versions, and it wasn't until I got it letterboxed on laserdisc that I finally saw what a big-screen entertainment this movie was meant to be. It has wonderful scope and a score by Bernard Herrmann that takes you right down into the bowels of the earth. Listen to it and you'll notice what I mean, as the movie progresses the music keeps going into a lower and lower register. Five organs were used, including one meant for a Cathedral. (The complete original recordings of the score are available on CD from Varese Sarabande.) This movie also has the great James Mason in it, so you know it's got to be good. Sure it's long in the telling and takes a while to get you down that extinct volcano in Iceland, but it's fun all the way with great special effects work by L.B. Abbott and matte paintings by Emil Kosa Jr. The only way to watch this movie is in wide-screen and it's long past due that 20th Century Fox puts this out on DVD in a letterboxed anamorphic transfer. Let's hope that they do it soon.