Finding The Lost World!

I snagged an entertaining gem, Irwin Allen's The Lost World starring Claude (Invisible Man) Raines, Michael (Klaatu) Rennie, David (The Fly) Hedison, Jill (Tiffany Case) St.John, Fernando (It is better to look good than to feel good) Lamas, and many more. (Surprisingly large cast given a "lost world".) It also features one of the most annoying animals ever in a movie, Frosty the Poodle, a beast you are actually eager to see gobbled up by a big old lizard. (I posted on this movie here a few years ago after seeing part of it; my opinion of the action is the same though overall it's a better story than I thought then.)

This is a project presumably that Willis O'Brien and perhaps Ray Harryhausen were scheduled to do, but which slipped away because of time and costs. So what you get here are giant lizards with stuff glued on them for dinosaurs. It's pretty ho-hum save actually when two of them fight and it's surprisingly intense. The acting is blah, the story is coherent, the sets are pretty fine, and the wardrobe offbeat and distracting in a movie supposedly set in the Amazon. St.John wears some distracting pink boots and pants through most of it, but then she might be distracting regardless. After they get to the Amazon the night before they helicopter onto the "lost world", they lounge around a pretty remote looking outpost in ties and dresses, looking way too slick for the outdoors. The whole of the production has that patented Irwin Allen antiseptic look to it, that might cut it on TV, but tears into the "realism" of a larger effort. But that didn't stop me from finding some enjoyment in this one, after finally getting to see it all the way through.

But what really got me to buy this wasn't the 1960 version, but the fact this package also included a restored version of the 1925 original with Wallace Beery and special effects by Willis O'Brien. I have this on VHS but this is a much better copy with many added scenes and much greater clarity. As one review put it, at last I got to enjoy this movie on its own merits as a story that actually captured me and moved me along, rather than endure a truncated version primarily to get to see some great special effects. The Missing Link character is in full form here and comes across much more menacingly. The Challenger character by Beery is hilarious and actually a bit scary from time to time. The dinos are great and the especially the bronto in London, a great great sequence. They used tones on this print, using sepia for day shots and blue for night shots adding to the emotional range of the movie. The organ music background was adequate and actually keyed to the action. All in all worth the price of the package all on its own.

And then there are the other extras, such as really lush galleries of photos and promotional materials. Included also is the complete Dell comic book adaptation by Gil Kane or maybe Alex Toth, there seems to be disagreement. That's a real treat, since I've seen a few pages but never the whole thing. It follows the movie fairly closely and those pink pants are just as distracting when Kane/Toth renders them. I see a lot of Kane here by the way, though I don't rule out Toth's hand.

All in all this is a dandy little package, well worth the bucks, and more so if you can scrap up a few coupons like I did.

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