Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961)

Narrator: When Columbus discovered America, a series of mysteries arose to confound the scholars of Europe. Here are two continents, completely isolated from each other, yet they simultaneously developed similar cultures. For example, the Mayans measured time on the same principle as the Gregorian calendar of Europe. They used the same signs of the zodiac, the same decimal and mathematical system. They valued silver and gold, using both for jewelry and barter. Another mystery was the banana plant, a native of Asia that cannot be grown from seed, yet Columbus found it thriving in the New World. Elephants at that time did not exist in the Americas, yet their likenesses were cleaved on the walls of prehistoric caves in Peru. The pyramids in Mexico and in Egypt were built on identical architectural principles. Then there was the striking resemblance of a witch of Spain, and the witch depicted in the New World. But the most significant of all, Mayan and Aztec legends shared with Greek and Hebrew and Assyrian literature an account of a terrible deluge, a deluge many believe had destroyed the link, the mother empire, that had spread her civilization to both sides of the Atlantic. The Greek scholar Plato recorded this theory first, over two thousand years ago. There was once another continent: Atlantis: The Lost Continent.

---

Narrator: Atlantis is gone. But free men, *wiser* men, carried the culture from the mother empire to the four corners of the earth.

---

Azor the High Priest: Empty! Just as all the others. The bees have deserted us.
Demetrios: Strange.
Azor the High Priest: Each morning of my life I have awakened to the singing of birds. Now only silence greets the day. Perhaps it is instinct, call it what you will, but they *sense* something, something evil. A strange breeze now rises with every outgoing tide, blowing dead leaves out toward the open sea. The humblest insects seem to know it carries them, not to destruction, but to survival. Even the seeds forsake their mother soil. All nature senses that the end is near. Man alone turns deaf ears to nature's warnings.

---

read more quotes from Atlantis, the Lost Continent...

The special effects model of the Atlantean submarine has been part of the collection owned by Forrest J Ackerman for many years.
The large statue in the temple was from The Prodigal.
George Pal was forced to begin production before the script had been polished due to an impending writers' strike. The strike occurred during production which stopped any rewrites.
read more facts about Atlantis, the Lost Continent...