Continente Perdido

Plot—a retrieval team is dispatched to the Pacific to bring back vital info from a downed rocket. Their plane, however, crashes on a prehistoric island, so adventure follows.

Considering the production's barrel bottom pedigree, it's better than I expected. Not that this says much—the monsters are poorly done, the rescue team climbs endlessly the same rocks, the pacing sometimes drags, while the green tint is stomach churning. Still, producer Neufeld hired a capable cast, even if the women's roles dangle like appendages, (added no doubt for marquee value). Then too, low-rent comedian Melton restrains his usual buffoonery as one of the team.

On a different note, catch the brief Cold War dialog between Rostov (Hoyt) and Nolan (Romero). Judging from the release date, I expect the movie was filmed at the height (late 1950) of the Korean War, so maybe the departure's not surprising. Anyway, the ambitions may greatly exceed the budget, but the cast manages some interest in an adventure movie that could have easily been a total loss.

The Lost Continent is an excellent, low budget dinosaur adventure from 1951. Although we don't get to see any dinosaurs until the last half hour, this is worth the wait.

A party is sent to a South Seas island to search for a missing atomic rocket. They eventually arrive there after a long flight and a lot of rock climbing. While resting on the rock face, one of the party sees an enlarged lizard, but no one else believes him. When they get there, they discover an uncharted plateau where time has stood still. It is tinted green. On the plateau, they battle a Brontosaurus, some Triceratops and a Pterodactyl. These stop-motion monsters look quite impressive, even though they are not done by Willis O'Brien or Ray Harryhausen. The party eventually finds the rocket, get the information they want off it and escape from the plateau which is then destroyed by an earthquake.

This movie stars Cesar Romero and several familiar faces from 50's sci-fi movies: Whit Bissell (Creature From the Black Lagoon), John Hoyt (When Worlds Collide) and Hillary Brooke (Invaders From Mars). All play good parts. The score in this movie is excellent throughout and the green tint looks good too.

I had been after this movie for ages and was pleased when I obtained an NTSC copy.

This is a must for fans of dinosaur movies and 1950's sci-fi. A treat.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

A synopsis of this film and a list of the cast members is bound to raise false hopes. Sad to say, it sounds much better than it looks.

An atomic rocket crashes atop a lofty plateau on a South Sea island, a plateau where dinosaurs still survive. Three military men and three scientists climb to the top of the plateau and struggle through the savage environment to recover important data from the rocket. The cast consists of B-movie sci-fi veterans: Cesar Romero ("The Jungle"), John Hoyt ("Attack of the Puppet People"), Hugh Beaumont ("The Mole People"), White Bissell ("The Time Machine" and others), Hillary Brooke ("Invaders from Mars"), Sid Melton ("Captain Midnight"), and a bit part by Acquanetta ("Captive Wild Woman").

The jungle sets and tabletop miniatures bear a pleasing resemblance to a poor-man's Skull Island (misty and surrealistic). The special effects during the climactic earthquake are nicely done. The cast does a fair job with Richard Landau's script. Admirable music by Paul Dunlap. Directed by Sam Newfield.

In spite of these assets, the film is defeated by a low budget and the poorly done animation (the credits do not name the animator). Only two triceratops, one brontosaurus, and one pterodactyl are shown. The dinosaur models lack detail. "The Lost Continent" came out early in the sci-fi craze of the 1950s, before any of Harryhausen's movies. The producers didn't realize how hungry the public was for rampaging stop-motion monsters.

In its day this film probably did appeal to teenagers looking for some vicarious adventure. "Lost Continent" is your typical 1950's Saturday afternoon matinée movie. With all that walking and climbing the characters do, there's anticipation of what they might find, and that anticipation probably lent some tension to the plot for viewers back then. Furthermore, no one could have foreseen CGI. The film's dinosaurs thus were probably quite impressive to kids in those days.

But, by current standards, "Lost Continent" is bland, unimaginative, slow, and hopelessly cheap looking. The story, about scientists who go in search of a downed rocket, is razor thin. It's really just a rehash of "The Lost World" (1925), except that in "Lost Continent", WWII rocket technology is the rationale for the exploration.

The action takes forever to get going. There's lots of back story and routine human drama scenes, all of which could have been edited out. But in that case, the film's run time would have only been about thirty minutes.

In addition to the thin story, another problem is the cinematography. In the many, many rock climbing scenes, there are too many close-up shots. Some distance shots would have provided at least some sense of vertigo, and therefore could have heightened the tension and suspense.

As cinema entertainment, "Lost Continent" cannot compete with more recent sci-fi. The film now is little more than a historic relic of a bygone era when viewers were much easier to please.

A decent cast is wasted in this low-budget film, hastily put together to compete with "Rocketship X-M", which wasn't all that good of a movie either. However, that movie at least attempts to convey some profound message, this film is satisfied with just being a typical "action" film. Unfortunately, very little action actually occurs as approximately two-thirds of the film is devoted to a search party making slow progress up a mountain.

Although, it should be noted that the film actually tries to avoid stereotypes with the German/Russian guy. For that, I think, the film deserves a little praise.