ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

Unlike "Lost Continent" (1951), this 20th Century Fox Cinemascope production had an ample budget — but the money wasn't well spent.

A good cast (Michael Rennie, Claude Rains, Jill St. John, David Hedison, and Fernando Lamas) are all part of an expedition that discovers a plateau in South America where dinosaurs still thrive.

Unfortunately, producer Irwin Allen elected not to use stop motion animation to create the dinosaurs. Instead, the audience is treated to two hours of disguised iguanas and baby alligators. Irwin Allen also co-wrote the script, which is burdened by an excess of soap opera melodrama.

On the positive side, the fine musical score is by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter.

The top quality production values make the film easy enough to watch, but there's a tragic story behind "The Lost World". Willis O'brien, creator of "King Kong", spent several years during the late 1950s making preparations for a big-budget remake of his 1925 version of "The Lost World". He made his pitch to producer Irwin Allen and the big wheels at 20th Century Fox, showing them the hundreds of preproduction drawings and paintings he had done, and he persuaded them to make the film.

But 20th Century Fox refused to let O'Brien do the film's special effects, substituting the poorly embellished reptiles instead.

From all reports, O'Brien's version would have been the greatest lost-land adventure movie of all time. Irwin Allen's lack of vision is puzzling in view of the fact that in 1956 he produced "The Animal World" with animated dinosaurs by Ray Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien!


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Rocky Jones]

Ouch! That's gotta hurt.

You have to wonder about those studio honchos, but I suppose the movie industry isn't managed any better today. I suspect the fall of the old studio system was as much due to stupid management like that as it was the advent of TV. I would have loved to see the film with O'Brien's effects. That would have been totally awesome. He was a busy guy with projects that, sadly, didn't come through for him. He also planned a big budget Cinerama Kong remake that was scrapped in the early '60s or so.

[Pow]

There are sooo many sf films that would have been vastly enhanced had they chosen to use stop-motion animation for them as opposed to magnifying lizards & insects,or creating a body suit for a person to wear.
So Many.

[Bud Brewster]

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Re-reading the posts above put me in the mood to download this crazy movie. And while doing so, I asked myself, "Why not write a new post while watching it?"

Myself couldn't give me a good reason not to — so, here goes nothing.

First of all, a tip 'a the hat to producer/director Irwin Allen for lassoing a great cast for this big-budget "missed opportunity", a movie that promises the moon . . . and lays an egg. But I don't want to just rant on and on about its faults, so I'll temper the mix with it's good points, too.

For example, film fans really have to work overtime to dislike a movie that stars the great Claude Raines, the legendary Michael Rennie, the likable David Hedison, and the lovely Jill St. John.





The rest of the cast might not be quite so legendary or lovely, but they're all familiar faces from better movies that didn't almost ruin their careers.

The opening scenes with Professor Challenger proposing his expedition to the Amazon to corral a few dinosaurs (while the skeptical spectators scoffs at his claims) is the perfect way to launch such an adventure.





And by the fifteen-minute mark, our valiant explorers arrive in the Amazon, where they meet secondary characters who pretend they have no hidden agendas that might complicate the plot.

We know damn well they do, of course.







Unfortunately, the plot stalls a bit between the 20 minute and 30 minute mark while all the big name stars chat with the Hollywood wannabes, and they waste time with soap opera dramas.





But after ten yawn-filled minutes, the explorers make their dawn departure in one of those huge ugly helicopters that look like they were designed by blindfolded engineers, just to see if it was possible.





By this time the audience has begun to think they're going to finish their popcorn before these guys even get to the famous plateau, much less see any big lizards. To be fair, however, we are treated to a suite of beautiful music and some truly gorgeous location photography of landscapes that certainly seem suitable for prehistoric giants.









Naturally this is about the only time we see real outdoor locations, because the rest of the film is mostly table-top miniatures and studio jungles. But I have to admit, the table-top miniatures are magnificent, and if Willis O'Brien's animated dinosaurs had been allowed to wander around on them (instead of just heavily decorated alligators and iguanas), this movie might have wrestled 1933's King Kong to the ground for a quick 10 count and then stolen his crown.











Once the team reaches the fabulous Lost World in their big ugely helicopter, the explorers bed down for the night. But suddenly, in the scary jungle darkness, they're threatened by a brontosaurus!

At last! Dinosaurs!

Okay, if you've never seen The Lost World before, your imagination created mental images a moment ago that were far superior to what we see in the movie. Instead of giving us an exciting scene with our explorers fleeing from a stop motion dinosaur, we just get actors stumbling through the underbrush to escape the roaring noises on the soundtrack — and a few mobile vines that grab Jill St. John and cop a feel.

If that disappointing scene had just been a teaser for greater things yet to come, we could have forgiven the movie for showing us nothing more exciting so far than Miss St. John in tight pink pants. But the first good look we do get of a "dinosaur" (at the 40 minute mark) is this —





— and when Claude Raines proudly proclaims that it's a brontosaurs, every kid in the audience above the 4th grade realized that these people didn't know their ass from an archaeopteryx.

And to make matters worse, while the audience waits for more dinosaurs disguised as lizards (to put it humorously), what they get instead is a lot of boring arguments among the characters. Obviously Irwin Allen liked to employ the truism "talk is cheap" to save money. He would just have his characters eat up screen time by beating their gums and chewing the scenery.

During this gabfest, the closest thing to action is a brief fist fight between Klaatu and Captain Crane (Rennie and Hedison), which results in Rennie falling to the ground and just accidentally finding a diary that tells the story of a previous expedition — (Gosh, what good luck, eh?) — except that the diary reveals that Rennie had been part of a previous expedition and he'd failed to come to their rescue when they got in trouble.





Ah, but the diary also mentions a vast treasure in diamonds — which Rennie refers to as the legendary El Dorado of the Spanish conquistadors!

Wait, wasn't El Dorado supposed to a vast treasure of gold? I mean, El Dorado is Spanish for "golden one", right? I guess in this case, El Dorado is Spanish for "Diamonds are a girl's best friend."

For the next fifteen minutes we get enough soap opera and dramatic dialog to choke a triceratops — with just one quick dino-roar in the background, thrown in by the sound man to remind us that we bought movie tickets for a dinosaur movie that didn't actually get made!

I did promise to make positive remarks about this film to temper the negative ones, so . . . ummm . . . I'll mention that The Lost World provides ample chances to go the snack bar without missing anything good.

There. How 'bout that?

However, if you happen to be in the theater lobby at the one hour mark you'll miss the awesome Jurassic Smack Down that pits a lizard and a gator against each other in a battle that is genuinely savage and just a little bit disturbing, because it's obvious from the start of the battle that these poor animals hadn't been fed in days!









The starving critters tried to eat each other right before our eyes, and we knew we weren't going to see one of those disclaimers at the end of the movie which promised that "no animals were harmed or killed during the making of this motion picture."

However, the plot does liven up a bit after the reptiles chew on each other so enthusiastically. A party of natives from the Central Casting tribe capture the explorers and try desperately to drown out more of their bickering dialog with constant drum beating.

Sadly, it doesn't work.





Admittedly the movie's climax manages to give us a daring escape, a few impressive sets, some nice matte shots, a lake of bubbling lava, and one more "dinosaur" on loan for the reptile house of the San Diego Zoo.

















Audience members under the age of six are surprised when an earthquake destroys the Lost World at the end of the movie, but the older folks saw that one coming after they heard the movie's title when the trailer played on local television.

The last scene in the film is a sneaky trick the movie plays on the audience. Challenger reveals that he slipped a dinosaur egg into his pocket, and when it hatches right in his hand the filmmakers managed to show us a "dinosaur" without even having to make it look big!

God, that must have pleased Irwin Allen.





Professor Challenger informs us that this is a Tyrannosaurs Rex, but I think he's mistaken. Clearly this creature is a prime specimen of an . . . Irwin Allosaurus!

P.S. I had so much fun writing this post and making these screen grabs from the fine download at the site below that now I'm eager to watch it with somebody in our chat room. Anybody interested?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[alltare]

I'm in complete agreement with your mostly negative opinion of LOST WORLD, Bud. I'm watching this lousy movie for the first time as I write this. It still has about 40 minutes to go on MOVIES TV, but I'm not sure I can stand that much more. I must learn to avoid watching Irwin Allen productions.

[Bud Brewster]

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I saw this movie at the little East Point Theater when it first came out, at the tender age of 12 years old. Even then I knew it was colossal failure in almost every way.


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But the screen shots I made for the post above gave me such a keen appreciation for the gorgeous look of the movie, I ended up sort of liking it!

As long as I don't actually watch it.

Besides, the poster is a pretty nice work of art (see the full poster at the top), and if you look close enough you'll see Jill St. John in pink "Daisy Duke" shorts!


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Ah, good old Irwin Allen.

He never let good writing, character development, logic, or science get in the way of a bad script in his movies, in his TV shows.

Some say he did for science-fiction what the iceberg did for the Titanic.

[scotpens]

[Bud Brewster]

[orzel-w]

I swore off Irwin Allen decades ago, both movies and TV series.

And I, too, have a fondness for the Sikorsky S-55. I read somewhere long ago that someone had converted one into a flying camper. Clever adaptation, if you know how to pilot a 'copter.
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...or not...

WayneO
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[scotpens]

Now my curiosity is piqued. What's that coin in the second picture? I've done a Google search and it isn't a one-cent piece from any country that I know of.

[Maurice]

[Bud Brewster]

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Wow, you mean the title on the marquee was the only thing that doesn't quite look right?

Well then, I guess I did a good job when I spent several hours carefully turning the original picture (shown below, taken many years after the theater closed down) —

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— into something closer to what I remember from my childhood in 1960!


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Notice that I had to expand the buildings and the street horizontally, remove all the power and phones lines, add actual "Beyond the Time Barrier" posters (greatly reduced) on each side of the ticket booth, and fixed that dreary sky!

UPDATE 9/2/17: Based on Scotpens post the next day, I redid the marquee letters so that they we all upper case. Scotpens saw the old version and called the mistake to my attention. Later still, Wayne improved the type of letters which appear on the marquee.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

Good job Bud!

The idea was to recapture the essence of the theatre as it exists in your memory, not the reality of it.

That, my friend, is ART!

[Bud Brewster]