The Mole People

The Mole People follows a group of archaeologists who, while working in the mountains of Mesopotamia, become trapped underground after a quake opens a fissure beneath them. They find an abandoned city and a civilization of pale-skinned people who have lived for thousands of years without knowledge of the surface world, ruled by a high priest named Elinu. The underground society keeps a race of humanoid mole creatures as slaves. When the archaeologists arrive, they are at first taken for gods, but suspicion grows and their lives come under threat.

The film was directed by Virgil W. Vogel, whose only other credited directing work in the facts is Terror in the Midnight Sun, released three years later. László Görög wrote the screenplay, and William Alland produced for Universal International Pictures. The cast is led by John Agar as Dr. Roger Bentley, with Cynthia Patrick as Adad, Hugh Beaumont as Dr. Jud Bellamin, Alan Napier as the High Priest Elinu, Nestor Paiva as Prof. Etienne Lafarge and Phil Chambers as Dr. Paul Stuart. Running 77 minutes, it blends adventure, fantasy, horror and science fiction.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 5.1 from around 4,300 votes, and on TMDB it stands at 5.2 from a much smaller number of votes. Audience response has therefore been modest and the two scores sit close together.