Memorable, crazy movie

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Based on the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame), "The Lost World" follows the exploits of Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery) as he leads a team to an isolated South American plateau on which prehistoric creatures have survived. Although their often frenetic or overly melodramatic styles of silent acting dates the film, the human cast is fine but the real stars of "The Lost World" are the animated dinosaurs created by Willis O'Brien, who less than a decade later brought King Kong to life. I can't imagine what original audiences felt the first time they saw a brontosaurus walk across the screen or witnessed the iconic fight between a vicious and agile allosaurus and a heavily armoured triceratops - contemporary reviews suggest that they were astounded and impressed. Well worth watching as an entertaining, albeit implausible, adventure, or as a piece of cinematic history, or both.

The Lost World is incredibly ahead of its time being a mid 20's silent film with loads of creativity and well done animation. I'm still a little baffled as how the creators managed to make these dinosaurs seem so real on grainy footage. There are a ton of fight scenes between different types of dinosaurs that portrayed them pretty well to their potential ancient characters. The storyline was pretty good, dull at times, I just wish they would have added more dialogue and shortened up the duration of the readings. I found most of the characters unlikeable especially Malone and the professor but they weren't bad enough to make me dislike the film. Going into the movie I thought the plot was going to center around the humans and dinosaurs so I found it interesting and kind of cool to see that they added some buffoon type natives and an evil ape creature. I can definitely see how this movie set up for classics like King Kong and Jurassic Park. If you have the patience for an older silent film I really recommend The Lost World.

I wrote this at age 19, and I am 20 now that I am re-posting it. Here is my review of it: This film was quite interesting. I was impressed with the use of footage of humans and the stop-motion dinosaurs. However, there are many things that I need to mention. In elementary school, I was en expert in modern biology and prehistoric life. I, like everyone else, also understand basic geography. In the note of basic geography and modern biology, I noticed that the film is set in South America, yet African chimpanzees make several appearances. I also should mention that the main characters are British, but the characters occasionally use Southern American grammar. Now, the subject of prehistoric creatures, which dominate this film. The antagonist of the film is not the Tyrannosaurus Rex, as most dinosaur films they usually are. Neither is the Allosaurus, which appears the most throughout this film. Instead, a "long-neck" is the greatest villain. This Brontosaurus, (now known as an Apatosaurus) is wounded in a fight with an Allosaurus, and almost dies. Still alive, the heroes take it to London, but this "leaf eater" viciously attacks the town and swims away. The T-Rex is shown being able to use it's arms to catch prey. However, this isn't possible because it's arm's only have 2 fingers and are the size of an average man's arm. The T-Rex and Allosaurids are shown standing vertically, when they really would have stood horizontally. Knowing all of this by age 9, I found this film to be utterly hilarious being 10 years older (now). Without this film, there would have never been the beautiful 2005 version of King Kong. The Bronto/Apatosaurus is comparable to the great ape and his captivity in New York. I still enjoyed this historic piece of film. Possibly due to all of these excessive inaccuracies. The 1925 version of "The Lost World" is a film that should never go missing from our classic monster film library.

Last weekend I attended a screening of Harry Hoyt's THE LOST WORLD that offered the one- hour version. The quality of the image was great and the score was performed live. And I only had the obvious reference of it: Willis H. O'Brien, who was responsible for the special effects in KING KONG (the original 1933 version certainly), worked here, doing the stop-motion material as well. I'm pretty sure I'll write *King Kong* a whole lot more in this commentary since this is similar to "Kong" in many ways. I was actually very surprised because of that fact; I, certainly, expected similarity to "Kong" but really nothing more than something technical oriented. Actually, I would say THE LOST WORLD is pretty much KING KONG. It doesn't have, however, a very iconic character (nor a sad ending); after all, it isn't titled after the name of a specific creature (here we have dinosaurs of all kinds). But don't let this confuse you dear reader since "Lost World" does features iconic scenes. In other words, the dinosaur here (the one that suffers a similar denouement to the one Kong had) doesn't climbs a famous London building, equivalent to New York's Empire State (yes, this film, or better said, the last part of it is set in London, England), but we do enjoy a really wonderful scene featuring the dinosaur at a London landmark. Needless to say, this was made eight years before "Kong". THE LOST WORLD is one of those films that are worth watching not just because they were influential. I mean, this is so much FUN! Unlike many films of this kind, it never hesitates when it comes to show you its main attraction (the dinosaurs of course) – we get to watch lots of fights between them (great and fun material) and some heart as well (there's a crazy ape- man too). I'm willing to seek the DVD of it and hopefully I get to watch the full (or just longer) version. Meanwhile, this one-hour piece was a blast and a perfect Saturday night movie! Watch it, even if it's the online version that IMDb is offering now for free. *Watched it on 25 August, 2012