Review of The Lost World

Before King Kong scaled the Empire State Building, Godzilla stalked the streets of Tokyo and Spielberg's T-Rex gobbled up that lawyer, a brontosaurus in "The Lost World" swam down the Thames river. As well as containing the prototypes of the over-sized beasties that would come to populate other movies of this sort, "The Lost World" features other characters typical of this genre, including a scientist committed to the point of madness in his quest for some mysterious creature, a reporter or writer who tags along out of curiosity and a plucky young woman (often searching for a father who went missing on a similar excursion). Of course the human beings in such movies are usually of secondary interest (with the exception of the great Fay Wray), so the real question here is, how well do "The Lost World"'s dinosaurs and the twenties stop motion special effects hold up? The answer is, surprisingly well. Perhaps the animals would have looked fake in Technicolor, but they are quite impressive in black and white, especially the predatory allosauruses (although they are rather cute in close up when they fastidiously lick their digits after a particularly juicy chunk of flesh or snarl like Elvis Presley.)

The only complaint I had about this movie was the abrupt jumping from one plot point to another—the young male and female leads who seem barely acquainted are all of a sudden engaged by the middle of the movie. After reading other comments, however, I realized that these problems were probably due to my viewing a shortened version, 63 minute version of this film. If possible, try to find the full 93 minute version.