Dos mundos perdidos

Two Lost Worlds and I only counted one of them is a cheap knockoff of a film with stock footage from One Million BC and Captain Caution thrown together fill out a film where a Yankee sailor finds love and romance and dinosaurs and volcanoes and kangaroos in one sixty minute film. If you like all those things you got your money's worth.

This low budget independent casts James Arness in the lead as the Yankee sailor who after a firefight with some pirates in the New Hebrides island is dropped off in Queensland in Australia to recover from wounds. Where he falls in love with Laura Elliot who is engaged to rancher Bill Kennedy. That's your romance.

But the pirates aren't done yet, they capture Elliot and her little sister as hostages after a raid and Arness and Kennedy lead a rescue attempt. After another pirate firefight they get stranded on a volcanic island with some dinosaurs. I think you can figure the rest out.

I saw this when I was about 8 years old on Million Dollar Movie in New York. I thought it was hot stuff then, but my ardor for this film has considerably cooled. It's half romance novel, half science fiction and not done well in either department. And absolutely no one talks like they're from Australia.

This movie is available on video, and I recommend buying it. A problem with the bad movie genre (subgenre? metagenre?) is that it is dominated by science fiction and horror. Well, this movie has elements of both, but it is mainly an adventure film gone horribly wrong. So, it is often overlooked as a source of unintentional laughs. Here's 10 good reasons to see it:

1. Look at the tattoos in the opening and closing title sequence.

2. Is it a historical drama? A pirate adventure? A monster movie? Who knows?

3. Bad narration -- lots of it! Could be missing pieces of soundtrack.

4. James Aurness (sic) -- He was more expressive as the carrot in "The Thing"

5. Bill Kennedy -- the grouchy costar was later a popular TV movie host in the Detroit area -- a special Michigan connection

6. Fight montage sequence -- there must be stuff from 10 movies in here!

7. You know, you can MOVE that camera! But this cinematographer obviously wasn't aware -- he just turned the camera on, and people walked in and out of the shot. Guess he was in the can a lot.

8. The monsters fight each other, but pose no threat to the humans. They should get guest star billing!

9. If you can tell the two lead women apart, you're doing better than me.

10. Last but not least -- the finale features the world's most powerful handheld telescope as a side-splitting topper.

I've said enough -- and last but not least -- it's SHORT! The best quality a bad movie can have. This one's a winner, folks.

During the 40s and the 50s many sci-fi and adventure movies were produced about giant monsters fighting brave adventurers. "One Million B.C." (1940) is probably the best known example and the one that started the trend, but there were many low-budget films that tried to emulate the success of that film with less than spectacular results. "Two Lost Worlds" may be one of those lesser known films, but what makes it "different" from the rest is the fact that it contains basically every element of the action-adventure sub genre to tell its story. From pirates to dinosaurs, and from naval fights to cowboys, this one has it all.

James Arness is young Kirk Hamilton, a brave captain who is severely injured after being attacked by pirates on their travel to Asia. While his ship continues the trip, he is left in Queensland, Australia to recover, where he'll find the beautiful Elaine Jeffries (Kasey Rogers) and her precocious sister Nancy (Jane Harlan), as well as earning the enmity of Martin Shannon (Bill Kennedy), a man who is also in love with Elaine. But adventure calls him even there, as the pirates return and raid Queensland, kidnapping Elaine and Nancy and taking James and Martin to adventure. In their rescue trip they'll fight not only the pirates, but the strange creatures of a nearby island.

Well, this film is basically an epic adventure that includes basically every element necessary to be classified as "adventure". While this is indeed as messy as it sounds, it has an explanation: "Two Lost Worlds" was made of two episodes (maybe three) of a failed TV series project blend together to work as a B-Movie. The origins of the film are very notorious, as the movie changes of "theme" as it changes of setting (aided by some rather poor use of stock footage), as the film goes from one adventure to another the pace feels at times disjointed and the constant narration doesn't help to make it better.

The movie's most notorious "detail" is the use of the famous footage "One Million B.C.", and while it is in fact sold as the hook of the film, the actual scenes used are rather short (due mostly to the previously discussed factors). Technically, the film is rather poor and it probably would had worked a lot better as a TV show (as it was intended). This was director Norman Dawn's final movie after directing a long series of adventure movies, some of them rather infamous like "Wild Women" (1951) and "Tundra" (1936).

If there is a redeeming feature in this movie (and one that's worth a lot), is the acting. A pre-"Gunsmoke" James Arness carries the film with grace and makes charming a character that otherwise would be poor and stereotypical. Kasey Rogers (who would participate in an iconic scene later that year in "Strangers on a Train") is equally effective although her character may be "too 50s" for today's standards. Bill Kennedy is also good as the Kirk's rival and has very good scenes (his character was probably the most developed of the cast).

It would be easy to point out the many problems of "Two Lost Worlds", but one has to consider that it was a low-budget production (for TV) on a time where special effects were a novelty (it wasn't the only movie to use ""One Million B.C."'s stock footage) and while this is no excuse for its disjointed storyline, the film is considerably more enjoyable than most films of its era.

"Two Lost Worlds" is by no means a classic. It may not even be a good movie. But at least it entertains, and for most movies that's something. People looking for classy horror and adventure better look elsewhere, those interested in a strange novelty and/or the career of a young James Arness will find "Two Lost Worlds" an interesting piece of film. 5/10

Pirates attack the ship carrying Kirk Hamilton (Jim Aurness aka James Arness), scion of a ship-building family, in the New Hebrides forcing the ship to take refuge in Australia (in a part of Queensland where everyone has an American accent). When the pirates begin ransacking the local villages, Hamilton convinces a Royal Navy captain (Tom Monroe) to pursue their ship. Both the navy ship and the pirate ship are sunk in the ensuing battle but a small group of survivors (including Hamilton) escape in a lifeboat only to find themselves marooned on a volcanic island populated by gigantic beasts. The low-budget film, directed by Norman Dawn, is an uneven mix of sea-adventure and fantasy with little to connect the two elements. This is particularly noticeable on the island, when the narrator (Dan Riss) excitedly describes the castaways' search for water, and later food, while making no comments whatsoever about the 'dinosaur' fight that occurs in front of them, almost killing them. Typical for a low-budget B-film 'Two Lost Worlds' liberally borrows from earlier films, notably One Million B. C. (1940) for the 'dinosaurs' and 'Captain Caution' (1940) for the climactic fight with the pirates. Discounting the repurposed footage, the film has the production values of a '50's TV show and none of the cast do much with the trite storyline and script. Since there is nothing novel or interesting in the new material, the sum of the film is worse than its parts.

Two Lost Worlds is one of those movies that I remember seeing as a very young child...well, at least I remembered one part of the movie, not knowing which one it was from. The scene where the cavegirl is caught in the lava flow was one of those pivotal images with me for some unknown reason. The scene was also repeated (I'm not sure if it was the exact same shot, but it could have been) in Valley of the Dragons.

While this movie has special effects and "dinosaurs" (lizards in make-up), it is very hard to classify this as a real science fiction movie, even under the very un-demanding criteria of the time. For the most part, this movie is a pirate-style adventure. James Arness is as stoic as ever in it, and there isn't much else to really recommend the film.