Le seigneur du monde perdu

The Asylum's "King of the Lost World" (2005) is a TV knockoff of Peter Jackson's "King Kong," released one day before that blockbuster during Christmas. While there's a giant ape and an island of colossal creatures, the similarities end there. This has more to do with Arthur Conan Doyle's fantasy/adventure novel "The Lost World" (1912) than "King Kong." The plot revolves around a group of survivors of a plane wreck who search the mysterious island; and clash with the giant creatures & primitive-type people that dwell there.

The movie only cost $1 million and the blurry CGI creatures look it. If you can get past that, there's quite a bit to like here for fans of comic book adventure flicks, especially of the lost on a deserted island variety. Imagine "Mysterious Island" (1961) if it was done on a miniscule budget, like "Planet of the Dinosaurs" (1977), and that's what this is.

The Asylum's "The Land that Time Forgot" (2009) is comparable, but that one had over double the money to spend, as did the 1974 film with Doug McClure. Another point of reference is those cheesy primeval flicks from Hammer back in the day, like "The Lost Continent" (1968) and "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth" (1970).

If you don't appreciate Grade B (or Grade C) adventure fare like this I'd suggest passing but, if you can roll with it, the story and cast are decent, highlighted by curvy Sarah Lieving in form-fitting shorts, not to mention a couple others. The Southern Cal locations feature magnificent coastlines, lush jungles, cool caves and barren landscapes.

The film runs 1 hour, 20 minutes and was shot at Pikake Gardens, Valley Center, and San Diego County, California.

GRADE: C

I saw the cover. Obviously a cheep movie that is trying to make some money from the popularity of Peter Jackson's King Kong. Anyway - a huge gorilla in the lost world - cool! I knew it was going to be cheep, but I liked the idea. And the rating was still 5,8 so I thought it will be worth watching. I was wrong. Since it is the Lost World I expected some dinosaurs. Nope. Compared to this movie the TV series "The Lost World" look like a Hollywood blockbuster. No dinosaurs. Just a sloppy CGI giant spider, a couple of sloppy CGI giant scorpions, and a sloppy CGI giant gorilla, which you finally see for a couple of seconds at the end of the movie. I love B-movies, but not B-movies that pretend to be A-movies, if you know what I mean. If this movie was done intentionally stupid just for the fun if would be nice. Now it is just boring. And I guess a couple of days ago it had 5,8 rating because all the guys from the ending credits voted here.

This was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I liked the TV show of the Lost World, but this just stunk. BIG time. The acting was awful, and I noticed that many of the actors are in a number of movies by this director. Low budget movies with low budget actors. 2/10. The CGI stinks, the acting is worse. Even the people who have made up the tribe can't act worth two hoots and a darn. I had to keep turning up the TV just so I could hear it. The only actor I know was Bruce. Heck I don't even know who the director is. I only watched it because I could not find something better on. I would have rather watched Golf over this, as I think that watching Tiger Woods hit a little ball into a cup would have had more excitement in it.

King of the Lost World is not the worst Asylum movie out there, there are definitely worse. That is not saying very much however because it is still a terrible movie. The opening scene was fun and set the tone of the film reasonably well, and the score is both intense and catchy. That is it for the good unfortunately. Although I was not expecting much in my quest to see whether The Asylum are capable of finding a good movie(so far I Am Omega, #1 Cheerleader Camp and When a Killer Calls are their best, and they are only decent, mixed-reception and average), I was determined to take things at face value and enjoy it for what it was, but sorry it was just too inept to make me do that. Technically King of the Lost World is a mess. The editing is choppy that it doesn't allow you to appreciate the dully lit but non-amateur settings, while the special effects are just terrible, there is a fair amount of them and every single one of them are crude. The ape itself is more goofy in look and manner than it is menacing. The script is childishly written and painfully unfunny, while the direction is flat and the story is dull, predictable and a choc-a-block of ridiculous scenes that you'd be here all night and probably about 500-600 words over the review word limit. The characters you just cannot engage with at all, they are not developed at all and just annoy the heck out of you. The acting is atrocious from almost all of the cast with one exception which is Steve Railsback who isn't in it anywhere near long enough to save it. So all in all, one big colossal failure. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Plane crash survivors in the Amazon battle exceptionally lame CGI critters in this dull, slow-moving tale, which bears absolutely no resemblance to the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story. The Asylum's "War of the Worlds" shows that they are capable of telling a decent story when they want to do so. They must not have wanted to do so here. This film is exceptionally bad. No dinosaurs, just scorpions, spiders, man-eating vines, and a giant gorilla so bad that it fortunate for the audience that we only see it for a few minutes. The special features reveal that this film was a rush job – no doubt to capitalize on the publicity for Peter Jackson's "King Kong." The reason they went with scorpions and such instead of the dinosaurs was because the special effects guy already had them partially created. At eighty-minutes, the movie drags. (Drags is the wrong word. It's like it's daring you to keep watching it. It was quite a battle, but I managed too.) I ultimately found myself wondering who this film was aimed at. There aren't enough monsters for monster movie fans. Not enough action for action movie fans. It was too boring to children, who shouldn't be able to watch it because of the language anyway. It was like an episode of "Lost" without the insightful writing and acting. Literally, the best thing about the film is the jungle location they found in a private garden. For that, I will credit the location manager, not the director, producer or writers, all of whom should be ashamed of themselves.

And don't get me started about the white native tribe in the Amazon…. Oy Vey! Ineptitude, you have a new name. And poor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he's spinning away in his grave somewhere.