Goofs

(at around 1h 8 mins) When Carla discovers the original three notches and the trick that the Count pulled on them, all of the original party except Alec are at the juncture of the two trails. Sir Oliver chisels a piece of stone from an opposite wall for a specimen, and a huge flood is released. But instead of going down the right trail (or even the left one where Alec was) they take another trail that wasn't there before and wind up in the dead-end room that fills with water.

(at around 1h 11 mins) When Hans is helping Carla and Lindenbrook out of the cave filling with water, from above Lindenbrook is seen with his head to the top of the hole, the water up to his neck. In the next shot from below, the water is only up to Lindenbrook's waist.

(at around 1h 45 mins) Carla's left hand changes positions on her head when she's lying on the beach talking to Professor Lindenbrook when the camera moved to Hans. By the time the camera was again on her she had already changed positions.

(at around 1h 45 mins) When Hans wakes up on the beach and is shouting for Gertrude, there is no echo. When the rest of the party is shouting for Hans, there is an echo.

(at around 1h 50 mins) When 'Atlantis' is discovered, James Mason is heard delivering one line in a regular voice and the next in a voice with an echo without changing locations.

(at around 1h 40 mins) When on the raft, Professor Lindenbrook remarks that their gold is being drawn away by a great force, and says there must be "a conjunction of magnetic forces from the north pole and the south pole". Even assuming that he is talking about the magnetic rather than the geographic poles, such a location would result in the magnetic pull from the poles being cancelled out. In any case, there would be no effect on the gold, as it is not attracted by magnetism.

The party is underground for many months, yet the men's hair length never changes, and Lindenbrook even comments when the updraft near Atlantis is bothering Carla by making her long hair blow into her face, "If we had shears, we could cut if off." They claim there was no way the men could give each other haircuts, and their hair never seems to grow throughout the many months they are underground.But it is inconceivable that they would make this excursion without knives, and they could trim everyone's hair with these.

When they find the plumb bob encased in the piece of lava. Plumbbobs are made of lead, this would have melted in the extreme heat of the lava.

At one point the supposedly female duck Gertrude strides manfully across the scene while uttering the deep-throated slow "quaaarcks" that can only come from a drake.

Lindenbrook's rival, Prof. Goteborg, is Swedish--yet, when his personal diary is found, its entries are all written in English instead. For starters, the cover's title should be 'dagbok', not 'diary'.

This is not strictly true. During many trip to the Åléns department store well known throughout the entire country of Sweden, there have been a great many diaries for sale with the title given as 'diary.' Whilst the word 'dagbok' is the Swedish word for 'diary' it does not follow that the item for sale has to be titled as such. Why, even in Finland where the diary would be called ' päiväkirja' it as sill often sold with the title 'diary.'

A Swedish scientist is named Goetabaug. Göteborg is the name of Sweden's second biggest city, but is unknown as the name of a person. The writers apparently assumed that since English-speaking people such as Jack London and Michael York can be named for large English cities, then Swedes can be named after Swedish cities, but this is simply not so.

That is incorrect. With the exception of Icelandic and Faroese families, the Nordic nation's family names can be named after localities. One example is a famous pair of Finnish brothers named Suomalinnan from the rout Suomi meaning Finland. Also, Swedish friends of mine have the family name Växjö which is a Kommun within Sweden.

(at around 1h 40 mins) The rope that Carla trips on while trying to escape the dinosaurs is shown to catch the tip of one of her boots, then around her ankle, then at the tip of her boot again. This happened because she is struggling to get free, so, of course the rope is going to move.

(at around 2h 5 mins) Near the end of the movie, when Alec is trapped in the tree at the convent, he falls and grabs one of the nearby sheep to disguise his nakedness, you can see the shorts he is wearing.

Alec and Jenny are supposed to be Scottish, yet their accents sound very American.

(at around 2h) When the altar stone is being pushed upward in the volcano, the distance shot of the model shows it remaining in a fixed position. But in the close-ups of the actors, the stone is turning and moving back and forth as it travels upward.

(at around 2h) When Alec attacks the lizard's tongue with the chisel, the point he hits is a different color to the rest of the tongue, making it obvious where the fake blood is set.

(at around 25 mins) When Goetabaug gets in the carriage and leaves the volcano, tracks from the wheels are visible. The tracks end, as if the carriage had backed into its position.

(at around 7 mins) When Alec arrives for dinner, he rings the doorbell. When he does so, Jenny goes to answer the door telling the maid that her Uncle Oliver has arrived. If it is Oliver's house, why would he need to ring the bell to gain entrance?

Perhaps he has forgotten his door key? It is possible for a house owner to ring their own doorbell to gain entry.

At 22min 30secs, it is clearly a stuntman in a dress that takes the fall down the library steps.

(at around 21 mins) Early in the movie, Oliver Lindenbrook speaks of the "stars and galaxies of outer space." In the 1880s, however, our Milky Way galaxy was believed to constitute the entire universe. Knowledge that other galaxies exist beyond our own did not come about till the 1920s. Thus a man of the 1880s would not use the word "galaxy" in its plural form.

(at around 1h 45 mins) Near the end of the film, when Hans is calling for his duck, Gertrude, his mouth movements don't match his words.

(at around 51 mins) At the beginning of their underground trek, Alec is asked to start singing for them. The concertina music starts while he is still walking using the alpenstock and holding a lamp, an impossibility if he were playing the concertina which requires both hands and is shown in the next take as the scene continues.

(at around 1h 13 mins) When Alec walks alone over a rock bridge, a dislodged chunk falls away silently. When Alec tries to backtrack over it, two more chunks break away, but this time both pieces make splashes as they hit a phosphorescent pool distantly below.

(at around 1h 30 mins) Refreshed in the mushroom forest, the expedition dances to the music of the concertina, except no one is playing one.

When the group walks around 'Atlantis', their voices produce a prominent echo; Alec's breaking of the stale bread in the exact same spot however doesn't.

(at around 1h 45 mins) Hans pursues Count Saknussemm after killing Gertrude the duck. When Hans looks up to find Saknussemm carving into a wall. That shot reveals a camera and/or lighting equipment in the upper-left corner of the shot.

Towards the end of the movie just before the party enters the underground sea, they are attacked by giant lizards. Carla trips over the boat and when the party goes to help Carla up you can clearly see a hand move some rope on the bottom right side of the screen, even though all the party is present in the shot on the left side.

At about the 1:42 and a half minute mark the giant lizards start to bite the fallen lizard. Underneath the lizard, you can see a person's fingers grabbing and guiding the lizard to bite the fallen one.

(at around 18 mins) Camera shadow on Lindenbrook when he gives the university officials the plumb bob.

(at around 45 mins) As Prof. Lindenbrook and company begin their trek up Mt. Snaefells the shadow of the camera can be seen on James Mason's chest as he passes by.

(at around 26 mins) When Lindenbrook is in the carriage after being kidnapped, the topography looks more like the southwest United States than Iceland.

(at around 1h 35 mins) When the professor first sees the underground ocean, the view from behind him shows the light coming from the far distance, ahead, yet his shadow is cast from a light which must be to his left.

When Lindenbrook discovers the shaft leading to the surface near the end of the film, he exultantly yells to the others that they could climb up. Since they were at the center of the Earth, that climb would have been a mere 4,000 miles (the radius of the Earth) straight up, and by that time the group had lost all of their equipment and provisions! Climbing out would have been an impossibility in any case.

By the time the team reaches the mushroom forest they've mentioned several times that they've been down there for several months, living on dried beef and hardtack. This would require about 20 to 30 pounds of food per person. With 4, and then 5 people, who was carrying this massive load? And without vegetables, dairy, and carbohydrates, their internal organs would succumb to atrophy, metabolic/mental breakdown, and even disease in that amount of time.

(at around 1h 50 mins) If Atlantis sank 5,000 years earlier, its 4,000-mile journey to Earth's center would never have left an ancient marketplace standing intact and upright, with dishes of stale food neatly stacked on countertops. Such a long, tumbling journey would have left everything smashed to powdery bits.

Having found Atlantis, the Lindenbrook party finds the remains of a human whom they assume is Arne Saknussemm. Saknussemm could not have written the instructions to begin the journey to the center of the Earth, in which he states he has completed the journey himself, if he never made it back to the surface.

After climbing into the sacrificial bowl awaiting the explosion that cleared the blocked shaft leading to the surface, the four explorers are carried by molten lava into the shaft and up to the surface and out of an erupting volcano in a matter of minutes. Since the trip started at the center of the Earth amidst the ruins of Atlantis, the four were 4,000 miles from the surface, and they could not possibly have been expelled from the volcano to safety in a matter of a few minutes.

Iceland, the eldest democracy in the world, has had no titles of nobility for nearly 1000 years, therefore Saknussem's epithet of "count" is meaningless.

(at around 1h 50 mins) The "Count" pleads with the enraged Hans in English although they are both Icelandic, and the Count already knows that Hans speaks no English.

(at around 18 mins) Professor Lindenbrook and his colleagues mispronounce the name of the extinct volcano Snaefellsjokull. Pronouncing it (snuffles-yo-kull) when it is actually (sny-fells-yo-gudt).

(at around 49 mins) When the Professor and team lower themselves down the first shaft in the volcano they all hold up on a small landing about 50 feet down. Hans immediately pulls the last of their ropes down to them, thus literally stranding them there, with no place to go if they find no further route downward.

(at around 57 mins) Just before they start their walk underground, Professor Lindenbrook lays down some ground rules. One of them is not using more than two of the lamps at any one time. Just after the large boulder chases them down the path, the group is standing with three lamps illuminated.