The Mole People

Director: Virgil W. Vogel

1956 / 77min / 16mm

A trim, fleet Universal-International sci-fi thriller from the ’50s heyday of drive-in creature features, Vogel’s film follows two archaeologists played by John Agar and Hugh Beaumont on their discovery of a hollow world beneath the Earth’s crust—and along with it, a race of albinos descended from ancient Sumerians still practicing human sacrifice and the humanoid mutant mole men that the exiled Mesopotamians keep as chattel to harvest the mushrooms on which they subsist. A splendidly preposterous monster movie romp, replete with a grave pseudo-scientific prologue by University of Southern California professor Frank Baxter.

Part of Animal Farm: Moles