Continente Perdido

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.

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.

Sam Newfield was one of the, if not THE, most prolific directors in American film history. Counting features and two-reelers, Newfield racked up close to 300 films in a career that started shortly after the turn of the century and ended in 1958. Newfield churned out movies so quickly and on such a regular basis that one studio he worked for, PRC (owned by his brother, Sigmund), tacked the names "Sherman Scott" and "Peter Stewart" on much of Newfield's output so it wouldn't look like one man was making almost all of PRC's product. As can be expected, much of Newfield's work is of little or no importance (his Buster Crabbe westerns for PRC in the '40s are especially worthless), but every so often something would happen and Newfield would turn out a film that was coherent, professional-looking and even (gasp!) entertaining. He was assigned by producer Sam Katzman to the Tim McCoy series of westerns for Puritan in the mid-1930s, and some of them are actually tidy little gems--tight, humorous, well-staged little examples of the best of the B-western. "The Lost Continent" is among Newfield's best work--in fact, it probably IS Newfield's best work. Working with a larger budget than he was usually accustomed to (even given the fact that it was a cheapo Lippert production), and given a stronger cast than he got in many of his films, Newfield manages to do quite a good job with what he is given. The story (an Air Force plane trying to recover a lost missile that has landed in what turns out to be a prehistoric jungle, complete with dinosaurs) is nothing much, but Newfield's pacing is quite steady, the dialogue isn't as mind-numbing as the usual Newfield extravaganza, and he actually manages to generate some suspense (a first for him) with the Russian character played by John Hoyt (is he or isn't he a Commie spy?). The crude stop-motion dinosaurs are cheesy and badly done, but since they seem to have been thrown in at the last minute, they don't really detract from the film all that much. If you're familiar with Sam Newfield's work, this will be a revelation to you. If you're not, check it out to see what is the best film in an otherwise almost completely undistinguished career.