El profesor Challenger dirige una expedición de científicos y aventureros a una meseta remota en lo profundo de la selva amazónica para verificar su afirmación de que los dinosaurios aún viv... Leer todoEl profesor Challenger dirige una expedición de científicos y aventureros a una meseta remota en lo profundo de la selva amazónica para verificar su afirmación de que los dinosaurios aún viven allí.El profesor Challenger dirige una expedición de científicos y aventureros a una meseta remota en lo profundo de la selva amazónica para verificar su afirmación de que los dinosaurios aún viven allí.
- Dirección
- Guionistas
- Elenco
- Premios
- 1 nominación en total
- Jennifer Holmes
- (as Jill St.John)
- Man at Airport
- (sin créditos)
- Airport Attendant
- (sin créditos)
- Prof. Waldron
- (sin créditos)
- French Member of Zoological Institute Forum
- (sin créditos)
- Indian Chief
- (sin créditos)
- Guest at Zoological Institute Forum
- (sin créditos)
- Member of Zoological Institute Forum
- (sin créditos)
- Dirección
- Guionistas
- Todo el elenco y el equipo
- Producción, taquilla y más en IMDbPro
Opiniones destacadas
For his cast, he chose British character actor Claude ("The Invisible Man") Rains to play the indomitable Professor Challenger, leader of the expedition. As Playboy Johnny Roxton, he cast another British actor, Michael Rennie. David Hedison played newsman Ed Malone, Jill St. John played Jennifer Holmes, daughter of Malone's publisher and Fernando Lamas was Gomez, the expedition's pilot. Supporting them were Jay Novello, as a cowardly guide, and Vittina Marcus as a helpful island native girl. Forced to forego his original Stop-Motion technique, Allen had to make do with photographing lizards, alligators and such, adding horns and gills when necessary. The result was pretty much the way it sounds - the creatures this bunch discovered were a long way from prehistoric beasts. Nevertheless, the movie entertains, with truly beautiful wide screen photography, a fantastic collection of colors which really bring the striking sets to eerie life.
As for the performances, they are decent enough. Rains has gotten plenty of criticism over the years for his bombastic Challenger, but that's the way the character was written, and Rains is true to the material, and highly enjoyable too. Michael Rennie is a bit colorless in his big game hunter part, but he does have some good scenes as well. David Hedison is OK as Malone, who falls for Jennifer (Roxton's girlfriend) though their romance must have ended up heavily edited, as there's little evidence of it here. Ms. St John and Ms. Marcus are mainly eye candy, (this WAS the '60s after all) but act capably enough, though for a woman described as "brave as a lioness". Jill certainly does a lot of screaming while dressed in a very flattering, if impractical wardrobe (which includes a Toy Poodle). Ray Stricklyn is very persuasive as her rather immature but compassionate brother. Lamas and Novello are the supposed villains of this piece, though Lamas has a reason for his hostility. Allen's direction is good and the score by Bert Shefter and Paul Sawtell adds immeasurably to the drama and suspense. All in all, the picture is perfect Saturday Matinée fare, and though the script is talky in places, it still delivers the goods at the climax. The movie is a textbook example of a period when celluloid escapism was all viewers demanded, and here, they got it In spades.
Fox Home Video has just released "The Lost World" as a two-disc DVD set, with special features (trailer, newsreels and galleries of promotional material) from the film on disc one, and a restored version (with a few outtakes!) of the 1925 original on disc two. Allen's film looks wonderful in it's anamorphic CinemaScope transfer, and after years of suffering through the faded pan-and-scanned prints used for TV and video this is really a revelation. The new stereo soundtracks are equally impressive and make this film, from a producer/director who would one day be known as the "Master of Disaster', (thanks to such fare as The Poseidon Adventure' and "The Towering Inferno") a must have for collectors.
In any event it's been updated to 1960 and I remember seeing it for the first time at a downtown Rochester theater long since demolished and I was with my grandmother. She took me when I was by myself visiting them in Rochester. I remember the movie, but I also remember how slow she was moving. What I didn't know was that she was in the first stages of Parkinson's disease which would eventually kill her.
Seen as an adult it's a film better left to the juvenile set. And it could use a makeover now and replace those dinosaurs with the more realistic ones of Jurassic Park.
But I doubt we could get a cast as classic as the one I saw. Claude Rains is in the lead as Conan Doyle's irascible Professor George Challenger who was the protagonist in about five books. Not as many as that much more known Conan Doyle hero Sherlock Holmes, but Challenger has his following.
In this film he's back from South America in the country roughly between Venezuela and British Guiana at the time, deep in the interior at some of the Amazon tributary headwaters. He claims he saw some ancient dinosaurs alive on a plateau.
True to his name Claude Rains invites company and financing on a new expedition to prove him right. His rival Richard Haydn accepts as does big game hunter Michael Rennie and David Hedison who is an American newspaperman whose publisher promises financing for an exclusive.
Of course it wouldn't be right in the day of woman's liberation if the shapely Jill St. John, sportswoman and a crack shot doesn't come along with her brother Ray Stricklyn. Guiding the expedition are South Americans Fernando Lamas and Jay Novello who have an agenda all their own involving at least one member of the party.
Watching The Lost World again, I think of myself as a kid back in the day and even with such a cast it really should stay in the juvenile trade. And this review is dedicated to my grandmother Mrs. Sophie Lucyshyn who took me to the movies that day back in 1960.
Anyway, I'll try to say something new (or at least unsaid) about this slightly tarnished Golden Oldie. I think one person did note the excellent score. One of the best things in the film is the Main Title sequence with the tempestuous music of Paul Sawtell and Bert Sheftner playing against FANTASIA-like shots of swirling molten lava. (These are certainly more vividly fantastic than the disgusting looking goo that passes for lava at the climax of the film).
One might say the film goes downhill from there, but the DVD's stereo version of the original 4-track CinemaScope soundtrack makes the entire score (and film) sound even better. The impressive aerial shots of the Amazonian jungles during the flight to the plateau are an especially effective fusion of wide-screen cinematography and music.
I personally was drawn back into this LOST WORLD after revisiting the great Circus-Circus episode in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, one of the best sequences in the middle-period Bond cycle.
Her role as Bond girl, Tiffany Case, is certainly a high point of Jill St. John's film career. Her smart pants suits and stylish look in DIAMONDS are possibly modeled on singer Elly Stone in the long-running Off Broadway show, Jacque Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. At any rate, she looks great and the DIAMONDS wardrobe is certainly an improvement on the hot pink Capri pants she impeccably sports throughout the jungle madness and slobbering lizard attacks in LW. (The versatile Ms. St. John also wrote a cookbook, which is still apparently in print).
Claude Rains and Richard Hayden, the voice of the caterpillar in Disney's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, do the best they can with the material. Rains even looks something like the original Challenger in the classic silent version.
Ray Stricklyn as David Holmes was nominated for a 1961 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in THE PLUNDERERS, and also for Most Promising Newcomer in 1959. But for better or worse LOST WORLD (and THE RETURN OF Dracula) remain the films for which he is most remembered. Scarlet Street, the cult genre magazine (for which I used to write about film music) published an interview with the then out-of-the-closet (and since deceased) Stricklyn in issue #35.
The 2-disc LOST WORLD DVD set includes an excellent restoration of the original silent version. The dream-like, sometimes surreal imagery is made even more so by the restored multi-colored tinting.
For viewers who fondly remember the era of the original 1960 release a complete version of the Dell movie tie-in comic will be an especially welcome and nostalgic addition among the bonus features.
¿Sabías que…?
- TriviaOne of the last screen credits for Willis H. O'Brien who was the mastermind behind the special effects for the original King Kong (1933). O'Brien's input was largely restricted to hundreds of conceptual sketches for the dinosaurs. Budget limitations meant that none of them were realized on film.
- ErroresAt the opening of the film a reporter says he's from the B.B.C. and is at London Airport which is confirmed by a large sign on a grass bank saying 'London Airport' in which case why are all the vehicles seen American.
- Citas
Professor George Edward Challenger: [to the people at the Zoological Institute] I have seen these creatures with my own eyes. Curupuri. To the Indians, creatures of the supernatural. And well they might be. For we know them as gigantic creatures of the long dead Jurassic period. In other words: live dinosaurs!
- ConexionesEdited into Viaje al fondo del mar: Turn Back the Clock (1964)
Selecciones populares
- How long is The Lost World?Con tecnología de Alexa
Detalles
Taquilla
- Presupuesto
- USD 1,515,000 (estimado)
- Tiempo de ejecución1 hora 37 minutos
- Color
- Relación de aspecto
- 2.35 : 1