Mondo perduto

Along with King Kong this is one of the first films I remember seeing, on Saturday night TV sometime in the mid '60's. My expert judgement at 6 years old was that it was the best film ever made, over the years since it has somewhat slipped down my list – but at least is still in it! Viewed through rose-tinted spectacles I still enjoy watching it and trot the vid out every 5 years or so for another wallow in personal nostalgia. Viewed dispassionately I think it's also better than both 1925 versions – the long was too slow, the short unintelligible; forget any others.

Eccentric Professor Challenger challenges crusty Professor Summerlee in public to go with him on an expedition to find a plateau in South America where he (claimed) he saw prehistoric dinosaurs roaming around. A motley party is assembled to make the trip consisting of a cynical aristocrat with a secret, his eye-fodder girlfriend in pink and her eye-fodder brother, the hard working reporter who fancies her, and 2 dingy latins with plenty of secrets. A couple of hours after landing they discover … prehistoric dinosaurs roaming around partial to wrecking helicopters, and we discover Challenger appears rather challenged when coming to name them. Corn abounds, the special effects are worse than in 1925, every plot device is telegraphed ahead, and every racial, sexual and class stereotype is out in force – but I love it just the same! At least Jill St. John didn't twist her ankle, and the sets weren't always cardboard though.

If you didn't see this when young and impressionable don't bother, however if you did and you're not a serious type it's worth a try. You still might be horrified but you might return to a lost world of safe family adventure movies.

This was the first sound version of the Lost World and I think it is one of the best. The silent, 1925 movie is the best. There have been several remakes since this one.

Professor Challenger takes a party to an uncharted plateau where dinosaurs still roam. They arrive there by helicopter, but not long after they get there, this is destroyed by a dinosaur. Despite this, they explore the land and capture a native cave girl, who knows how to use a gun. We learn that Lord Roxton has been here on a previous expedition and he killed Gomez's brother. After a fight between two dinosaurs, the party are captured by unfriendly natives, who are cannibals. Luckily, the cave girl who the party captured earlier helps them to escape and after meeting Burton White, the blind surviver of an earlier expedition, make their way along a narrow ridge where Challenger nearly meets his death. The party collects some diamonds and then Gomez holds everyone hostage as he wants Lord Roxton dead, but the gun shot wakes the "fire monster" and it eats Costa. Gomez then meets his death by falling in the lava helping to open a rock door. The plateau then blows its top and everyone is safe. But one last explosion causes the dinosaur egg they found to fall on the floor and break, revealing a baby T-Rex...

The "dinosaurs" in this movie are enlarged lizards with fins and horns attached to them and an enlarged crocodile. This what director Irwin Allen wanted unfortunately. Pity he did not want stop-motion, despite Willis O'Brien helping with the special effects. We also see a giant spider and man eating plants.

The movie has a great cast: Claude Rains (The Invisible Man), Michael Rennie (The Day the Earth Stood Still), David Hedison (The Fly, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea) and Bond Girl Jill St John (Diamonds Are Forever).

I enjoyed this movie, despite the non stop-motion dinosaurs.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

You would expect much more from an Irwin Allen film than 1960's The Lost World delivers. This film is high on silly-to-obnoxious characters, and corniness. The first few scenes in the film are particularly loaded down by corniness as we are introduced to the characters. There's eccentric Professor Challenger (Claude Rains) with his silly facial expressions, and boisterous but stuffy personality. There's Lord John Roxton (Michael Rennie) with his selfish and uncharming personality. There's Jennifer Holmes (Jill St. John) who starts out by trying to show the men a woman can also be worthy to take along on an expedition, but then becomes a useless, timid character who shows no strengths at all. The sexist remarks made by some male characters in the beginning become even more obnoxious, because Jennifer never comes through on showing strength, courage or ideas to help her crew members. The only strength she really proves is that she can pick out some elegant but inappropriate clothing to wear during the dangerous expedition. Jennifer has also brought along her silly, little poodle named Frosty. And then there's Costa (Jay Novello), a wimpy, greedy, seedy, little man. Throw in Fernando Lamas as Manual Gomez, the hired helicopter pilot who is also along for a side plot of personal revenge. He plots his murder-revenge and strums his guitar along the way (the natives even let him keep his guitar when the group is captured!) Not too many characters to really care for, but there are a few to possibly like such as Jennifer's brother, David (Ray Stricklyn.) David actually turns out to be more of a help then originally believed. A captured native girl (Vitina Marcus) turns out to be one of the better characters in the picture, but that is most likely because she has none of the corny lines and characteristics the expedition party's characters have. There's also corny drama from a love triangle that forms along the way. We all know Claude Rains (Phantom Of The Opera), Michael Rennie (The Day The Earth Stood Still) and others can do fine acting jobs, and the acting in this movie is fine--It's just most of the characters are so corny at times it should be embarrassing to the stars of the picture. The action in the film does not really build to any exciting levels as the crew is menaced by various creatures. The dinosaurs are lizards and reptiles with fins and horns applied to their bodies, and the giant spider is a rather lame effect (especially since it just hangs there, and only moves its legs a bit.) There is an unpleasant scene in which a real lizard fights a real reptile (portraying dinosaurs) that seems very politically incorrect by today's standards (and should have been a no-no even back in 1960.) Irwin Allen and 20th Century Fox could've done much better than this, and it is not nearly as good of a film as Journey To The Center Of The Earth (also from 20th Century Fox.) Still, The Lost World may entertain on a Saturday afternoon matinee level, and it is one of those movies collectors of horror and science fiction films will probably want to add to their 1950's and 1960's collections.

The Lost World might have been a better film if it had been set back in the time when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the novel. Which would be in the pre-World War I days of 1912. Back then such a plateau might have escaped detection from modern man.

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.

From the "Master of Disaster", producer & director Irwin Allen, comes this fantasy-adventure that may be too goofy and corny for some tastes. But it's played with a healthy, hard to resist amount of humor, and it's just old-fashioned enough - albeit in color and widescreen - to keep it reasonably fun.

Claude Rains plays Professor George Edward Challenger, a scientist who discovered something extraordinary on a past expedition. It's a plateau, deep in the Amazon jungle, where dinosaurs still roam. A news magnate finances a second expedition to the area, so that Challenger can obtain proof of what he saw. In his company will be a hunter / adventurer (Michael Rennie), the magnates' headstrong daughter (Jill St. John), who actually invites herself along, her brother (Ray Stricklyn), a journalist (David Hedison), a pilot (Fernando Lamas), a cowardly guide (Jay Novello), and Challengers' rival Professor Summerlee (Richard Haydn).

This second screen adaptation of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story doesn't have much of a sense of awe & wonder, but it's staged and executed with some flair, and has its share of amusements. One thing it sadly lacks is effects work by the legendary Willis O'Brien, who worked on the first film. Here, he's credited as "effects technician", but his primary task was coming up with dinosaur designs. The so-called "dinosaurs" are actually played by ordinary Earth reptiles made to look huge through photographic trickery.

Our heroes are a likable enough bunch. Rains chews on the scenery in a flamboyant portrayal. One of his first orders of business is whopping Hedison on the head with his umbrella. St. John is cute, as is Vitina Marcus as a native gal. Rennie is a macho leading man.

It gets better as it goes along, delivering a fair amount of obstacles for the group to surmount on their way to freedom. The finale is particularly exciting as they race through mountainous tunnels and avoid lava flows. The music by Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter is rousing, the cinematography by Winton C. Hoch fairly colorful.

Seven out of 10.