King - Il re del mondo perduto

Supposedly based on Sir Arthur's "Lost World", this film must have him spinning in his grave. The only resemblance are the character's names and the Amazon jungle setting. This lost world is best described as an episode of TV's 'Lost" as written by your local college frat house. The King, or giant ape of the title, is constantly referred to as he, or him, never by name. At one point Bruce Boxleitner asks who "he" is and one of the natives, who look like frat house refugees, replies "you can not speak his name." Obviously as doing so would have involved a lawsuit for copyright infringement. I should mention that for the entire duration of the film, all 75 minutes, the "King's" screen times amounts to approx. 2 minutes. The remaining 73 minutes are filled with endless babble from bad actors on how they are going to get out of the jungle. Additionally the SFX are on the same level as the acting. This movie needs to be permanently lost!

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

If your going to produce a special effect movie, at least have the basics with which to carry it off. The Lost World was one of my favourite books as a child and previous translations to the big screen have been OK, at best. However although the acting was certainly acceptable, the budget for the effects must have been raised by a quick whip round of the stars and crew. awful doesn't even come close. The main creature (king Kong who wasn't featured in the original story anyway) looks like and moves like a glove puppet. Anyone over 7 who goes to see this is going to come away extremely disappointed.Bruce Boxleitner has appeared in many Sci-Fi TV series and movies and does his best to carry off this film but he is fighting a losing battle I'm afraid. With the technology thats available today for creating believable CGI effects, it inexcusable to release such a sub standard movies, especially when it seems to be released on the back of the New blockbuster "KING KONG". When low cost TV sci-fi's are being produced now, with quite acceptable visual effects, I fail to understand that those responsible for the graphic effects would deem this movie "Fit for human viewing"

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

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.