Our ongoing series reviewing the greatest Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror movies. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
Directed By: Harry Hoyt (Stop Motion Directed by Willis O’Brien)
Produced By: Jamie White
Written By: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (novel), Marion Fairfax (screenplay)
Starring: Bessie Love, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery, Lloyd Hughes
Original Release: 1925
Reviewed By: John J. Joex
Rating: 4 ½ out of 5 Stars
Synopsis: Professor Challenger has returned from an expedition to South America where his associate Maple White was lost, though he had documented in his journal the existence of living prehistoric creatures on a plateau that he had explored. Challenger faces ridicule over his claims that these creatures really exist but he remains determined to assemble a rescue party to go back for White and to prove his claims true. A reporter for the London newspaper believes that his employer will finance the expedition as it provides a good human interest story. Challenger assembles the party which includes himself, the reporter, world famous hunter Sir John Roxton, and the daughter of Maple White. When they arrive at the plateau, they see a giant pterodactyl which proves Challenger’s claims about the prehistoric creatures. They scale the plateau and find it teaming with dinosaurs, but also find themselves trapped there when a Brontosaurus inadvertently destroys the tree-bridge they created to access the Lost World. Once they begin to explore the plateau, they discover that Maple White was indeed killed as Challenger had feared. They also watch as a Brontosaurus falls over the edge of a cliff during a skirmish with an Allosaurus. After first thinking they might be forever trapped in the Lost World, Roxton finds a tunnel that leads closer to the surface below, and the members of their party still at the bottom of the plateau manage to get a rope to them which allows them to climb down. Once there, they discover that the Brontosaurus who fell over the edge survived its fall but is now trapped in the mud below. They decide to free the creature and bring it back to London as the ultimate proof of the professor’s claims. Once they return, though, the dinosaur escapes when its cage breaks during the unloading and it rampages through the streets of London.
Review/Commentary: Those reading the synopsis above and experiencing a sense of déjà vu, especially with the last few sentences, will no doubt realize that The Lost World provided a run-up of sorts for 1933’s King Kong which stop-motion innovator Willis O’Brien also worked on. This 1925 film was based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle book of the same name and gave cinema one of its first films dealing with dinosaurs and monsters running amok throughout a modern city. But this film delivered much more than that.
Science Fiction was just starting to find its place in the nascent movie-making business and The Lost World gave us one of the first “big budget”, A-list movies in that genre. It had literary credibility with Doyle’s name attached to it and it had ground-breaking special effects to bring its monsters to life. It also had a good story driving it even if it was somewhat simplistic and lacked the sophistication we have come to expect from big screen productions these days. Still, this one managed to maneuver past the melodramatic tendencies of silent films that were so pronounced in a later epic Science Fiction film of the silent era, Metropolis. In fact, The Lost World delivered a good amount of well-acted drama interspersed with its more fantastic elements.
And of course you cannot talk about this film without giving due attention to Willis O’Brien’s technical accomplishments. Cinematic special effects were still in a very early age of development at this point and stop-motion was a new innovation that had only worked its way into a few films at that point. From the perspective of the modern-day movie-goer, the animated dinosaurs probably would seem quite crude and amateurish, not much better than a Gumby cartoon. And the dinosaurs definitely did not give off the same impression of size that O’Brien would later achieve with King Kong. But for their day, these stop-motion animated creatures wowed audiences the world over. At the time of the film’s release, the New York Times ran a front page piece stating that the “monsters of the ancient world . . . were extraordinarily lifelike. If fakes, they were masterpieces.” Look at the film within its context, and you can truly appreciate what it achieved. And fans of stop-motion like myself can really enjoy this early, formative movie that helped advance this special effects technique in the movie industry, and that provided us with a rather good early genre film as well.
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