Originally made as a film, and as touted, the first full length Superman movie, this was folded into the following series. Done seriously and well directed, Lois Lane and Clark Kent are sent to Oklahoma where strange occurrences are taking place at a new oil well. Turns out they've tapped into a civilization at the center of the earth. This is really classic Superman. He uses his powers wisely and protects humans and the little creatures. One of the best, if the show had remained this serious, I'd have liked it more.

When underground beings explore the surface world from a deep oil well and inadvertantly cause a panic, only Superman can prevent a tragedy. Superman and the Mole-Men is packed with cartoony effects of the time, terrible acting and some of the dumbest humans i have ever seen in movie history, we don't even see him flying for god shakes the camera is like first person instead of 3rd one except one scene where he saves one of the mole men. Overall one of DC's absolute worst films and one huge waste of time and except an alright perfomance from George Reeves the film is just ridiculous. (2/10)

Superman and the Mole Men (1951)*** (out of 4) Reporters Clark Kent (George Reeves) and Lois Lane (Phyllis Coates) are sent to Texas to do a story on an oil rig that has dug six feet into the ground but soon the big story becomes the mole men that have crawled out of the hole. I really wasn't expecting too much at of this film but it turned out to be pretty entertaining in the same form that a lot of science fiction "B" movies are from this period. The most shocking thing is how good the story is. Sure, it only runs 58-minutes but there's really no dry spells in the film, although I wish the mole men had more to do in the story besides be chased around. Superman also doesn't get too much screen time but when he's on he really shines especially one scene where he must disarm a group of men who want to kill the creature. Reeves is excellent in the roles of Kent and Superman and I loved his no nonsense way of handling everything. Coates was also very good in her role as is Jeff Corey as the nutty local who wants the creatures dead. He makes for a great villain and really delivers in each scene he's in. The special effects are quite campy but they just add to the entertainment value of the film.

I just got the UK 4-disc special edition of Superman 1 for about $5. The additional stuff includes the 1951 feature Superman and the Mole-Men. So I slapped it into the DVD player last night, and here are my findings.Some initial disappointment - I hadn't checked, and I think I had it mentally tagged as one of the Kirk Alyn serials. I'm not a huge fan of George Reeves as Superman, and I hadn't seen anything other than the odd clip of Kirk Alyn - but hey ho, never mind.This black and white production runs for less than an hour. It has the feel of a couple of episodes of one of Reeves' early TV series, a two-parter, put together for cinema release, although IMDb says it was filmed as a cinema release in advance of the first TV series. In any event, it's an odd choice for reasons I'll get to later. I'm of an age where I recall TV and movie productions which are limited to one or two locations and sets, so there were no major surprises here. Even so, for a low budget movie, this one is REALLY low budget.The story concerns the small town of Silsby - population 1,430 - which, puzzlingly, is also home to the world's deepest oil well (6 miles). The story opens with the well's foreman hurriedly taking steps to close the well down. This conflicts with the arrival of Metropolis reporters Kent and Lane to report on the well, at the behest of the oil company. As Clark is sniffing out the fact that the drill has emerged into a radioactive cavern 6 miles down, a couple of odd little guys (small in stature, big in head, black in jumpsuit, and bushy in eyebrow) emerge from the capped-off drillshaft, and start mooching round town with puzzled expressions on their faces.A deep breath now, here is the remaining plot of the picture. The little guys scare some kids, so Jeff Corey (playing the town's rampant xenophobe) incites some pals to kill these "creatures". Superman steps in (moderately ineffectually) and catches one of the little guys who has been shot and takes him to the local hospital. Corey's pals burn down the shack the other little fellow has hidden in and assume he is killed, but he escapes and legs it down the shaft. Corey incites a lynch mob (despite the sheriff arresting him) to hang the hospitalised Mole-Man. Superman stops them entering the hospital and takes the injured chappie to the shaft to return him to his fellows. A total of 4 Mole-Men emerge with a weapon of some sort which they fire at Jeff Corey (I call this an Aargh! gun because its sole effect seems to be to make Corey go "Aargh!") and Superman saves him. He immediately changes his ways because of amazement at Superman saving him after the way he has behaved, the Mole-men go back down the shaft. The end.Despite the film only being an hour long, there is an inordinate amount of creeping around, bewareing and pursuing - I have left out all the "Mole-Man 1 creeps from A to B, looking out to make sure no-one is following him" stuff. The Mole-Men are never engaged in any way whatsoever - they have no dialogue - they just turn up, get persecuted, and go back. They do look a little creepy, but they are hardly the bug-eyed monsters that the town's reaction implies.Reeves is quite a good Clark Kent - very much a hard-nosed reporter, much more so than Phyllis Coates' rather indifferent Lois Lane. But he is a terrible, terrible Superman. Not only does he not look the part (at least his hair is dyed black in this, which is an improvement from the rather light hair he sported in some of the TV episodes), the way he plays it is all wrong in my book. I'm sure he was told to "strike the pose" (which Superman does constantly), but someone should have told him that it should be fists on hips, not fists on ribs. And he plays Superman as a rather strict and touchy schoolteacher - he doesn't actually wag his finger in remonstration, but he may as well have done.And Superman does a huge amount of walking around (I say a huge amount - he isn't actually in it all that much), and a bit of running. He takes off and lands a couple of times, but isn't seen in flight at any point. Oh, some bullets bounce off him, and he uses telescopic vision as Clark, but with no accompanying visual effect. In fact, visual effects are conspicuous by their absence, and the few which are present aren't very good.I've tried to consider this effort by reference to the standards of the time: but even by those standards I think it's a pretty threadbare effort. Thankfully, production standards on the TV series were higher, and at least they took the trouble to come up with stories which had a bit more to them.Something of a disappointment - I shan't be watching it again.