Unknown World

Terrell O. Morse's Unknown World (1951) comes to DVD in a fairly clean and decently mastered source, without too many flaws, and nothing to disturb the easy watching of the science fiction drama. The faces occasionally come close to being whited out without that actually happening, and once the action moves underground that situation is no longer a problem. The last reel has a thin vertical scratch on the right-hand side of the screen, and some underwater special effects shots are hazier than they ought to be in ideal circumstances, but otherwise this presentation is about on a par with broadcasts of the movie that this reviewer recalls from the 1970's. The sound is mastered at a fairly high volume level, which does a good job of presenting the score by Ernest Gold (this was one of many low-budget movies that Gold scored in the years before Exodus made him into a major Hollywood composer). The usual six chapters, standard to Alpha Video's releases, is present, and the disc opens automatically on start-up to a simple menu. And although it claims a 64 minute running time on the box, the movie actually clocks in at eight minutes longer.