Le seigneur du monde perdu

I actually went out of my way to find this movie because I love giant monster movies, especially King Kong related monsters.

The effects in this movie were so bad they were embarrassing.

It's amazing that there were better effects in 1933's King Kong compared to this...I take that back...there were better effects in 1903's The Great Train Robbery compared to this bomb.

It's tough to mess up a movie with giant monsters and decent looking girls...but whoever made this movie did accomplish this feat.

Anyone who is curious like I was about this film stay far away as possible. It is a total waste of your time.

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.

I can't say this is the worst movie I have ever seen, but it is definitely in the top 10. The premise of the story is sound enough, and that is what actually attracted me enough to rent this movie. Unfortunately, that is the only redeeming quality in this movie. The actors were given virtually nothing to work with, as the dialogue was absolutely horrible. Some of the lines sound as if they might have been penned by Ed Wood himself, until you consider that Woods' work at least had some naive charm about it. The acting was atrocious. Every single actor in this movie seemed to mail it in at the same time, and it was not all due to the poor writing. Finally, the CGI was extremely poorly done. There was no hint of realism at all with any of the computer work. The effects were cheap and lacked any sort of attention to detail, something the entire movie lacked as a whole. I have to be fair and say that like the previous reviewer, I only watched part of the movie. It turned out that the movie was dirty, and stopped playing after about 45 minutes. I decided it was not worth the time to clean the disc and try to find where it left off. My advice would be to miss this one completely. Don't waste your money renting it, and if it shows up on TV you can certainly find something better to watch.

Where to begin...

This movie was the epitome of everything that is bad about movies from The Asylum. Sure, it should be said that The Asylum actually does spew out the occasional movie that is actually entertaining and worth watching. "King of the Lost World", however, was definitely not one such movie.

The storyline in the movie was such a scrambled and random mess of a storyline as it could be. It seemed that they actually just went in with 20 different ideas, shot them individually and then tied them together to make a movie. There was next to no red line throughout the course of this movie. And it didn't take long before my attention span dropped several levels.

The special effects in the movie were ludicrous. The CGI was phenomenally bad and it is hard to believe that something like that would actually pass as being worthy of making it into a movie even back in 2005. If you actually take the time to sit down and watch "King of the Lost World", you might want to wear protective eyewear just as a precaution.

What was up with the huge creatures that they crammed into the movie? Spiders. Scorpions. And some weird strange reptillian flying creatures. And of course the massive ape itself - which was so fake it was laughable to look at.

As for the acting in the movie, well let's just be honest and say you are getting what is to be expected from a movie such as this. But in defense of the actors and actresses, then they had nothing, absolutely nothing, to work with in terms of a proper storyline, a coherent script or interesting characters. So the acting performers were fighting a losing uphill battle.

I suffered through "King of the Lost World" so you don't have to. Take heed, and give this movie a wide, wide berth...

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