The Mole People is a black-and-white sci-fi movie starring John Agar and Hugh Beaumont as archaeologists searching for remnants of the Sumerian civilization. After a monologue by an English professor essentially
Lampshade Hanging that the movie is fiction, we're brought to unspecified Asia (probably the Himalayas) where the search is ongoing.
Unfortunately, an earthquake destroys the oldest extant record, but lo! The earthquake has also dislodged a fresh relic which a Sherpa boy dutifully brings the Heroes.
The Heroes, along with assistant Lafarge and a couple guides, head for the top of a huge mountain, where they find a ruined city. Unfortunately, disaster strikes and one guide plummets through a trap door to his death. To rescue him, everyone heads into the chasm opened up, but the rappelling process leads to another death and a cave-in.
It's thought that the remaining three are doomed, utterly doomed, but it turns out there's fresh air. The remaining passageway leads them to the underground city of the Sumerians. Said city is also populated by the eponymous Mole People, whom are forced into labor for the Sumerians.
But what other secrets await? It turns out that the Mole People are not too happy about their fate, and also...there happens to be a beautiful blonde woman trapped in here, who is sort of an outcast. Can the intrepid scientists escape? Can Agar ever shut up? And will anyone find out the existence of the Sumerians?
For the
Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, please go to the
episode recap page.
The Mole People contains the following tropes:
- Berserk Button: Don't drop the mushrooms.
- Character Filibuster: Agar
- Does Not Like Shoes: Adad is barefoot for the entire film.
- Downer Ending: Only because of Executive Meddling (See below).
- Dull Surprise: Not quite, but Agar has a very limited, very weird range.
- God Guise: The Sumerians think the archaeologists are gods because they come from "the world above" and carry "the Fire of Ishtar" (a flashlight). Their worshiping of sunlight as the Fire could count as a Cargo Cult, as well.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: Hugh Beaumont, and Alan Napier! Oh, and John Agar.
- Hollywood Evolution: Zigzaged. The albino, light-sensitive Sumerians actually make sense (there are species that developed pale skin and light blindness because they live in extreme darkness), but that doesn't explain about how humans could somehow create a "forced degeneracy" (as Agar calls it) to turn some people into humanoid mole monsters.
- Inferred Holocaust: That earthquake at the end can't be good.
- Insufferable Genius: Agar plays the most annoying and smarmy archaeologist in some time.
- The Load: Lafarge is an alternate Trope Namer. Later in the movie, he manages to graduate to The Millstone status.
- Mr. Exposition: Agar again
- Mole Men: The titular creatures.
- Neutral Female: Adad.
- Opening Monologue: By Professor Frank C. Baxter, a professor of English.
- Too Dumb to Live: Adad decides to inexplicably run back to a hole so she can be smooshed by a pillar.
- Executive Meddling: The producers ordered Adad's death because if she lived, she and Bentley would be in a mixed-race relationship. If that isn't enough to make you headbutt the nearest wall, consider the Fridge Logic that she's just as white as he is - apparently, "Ancient Sumerian But Mysteriously Caucasian" is too different from "Whitebread American" and might encourage miscegenation.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The light from an ordinary flashlight is enough to subdue both Mole Men and Sumerians alike.
- "No, light that's just slightly brighter than what we're used to!"
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