The Lost World (1925)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stupendous story!
Year of Release: 1925
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Rated: Passed
Running Time: 76 minutes minutes (1:16)
Director: Harry O. Hoyt
Cast:
Lloyd Hughes ... Ed Malone
Bessie Love ... Paula White
Wallace Beery ... Prof. Challenger
Lewis Stone ... Sir John Roxton
Arthur Hoyt ... Prof. Summerlee
Alma Bennett ... Gladys Hungerford
Bull Montana ... Ape-man
Arthur Conan Doyle ... Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Summary:
Young and adventurous reporter Edward Malone is dispatched by his editor at the London Record Journal to cover a lecture by the boisterous Professor Challenger, who is convinced that dinosaurs are still roaming the earth. While the community thinks him a crackpot, he finds a believer in the esteemed hunter/explorer Sir John Roxton, who befriends Malone. Malone is introduced to Paula White, whose father was left behind in the Amazon outback to contend with the mammoth creatures; it's the father's diary, featuring sketches of the dinosaurs, that's proof positive for Challenger of their existence. Soon a rescue mission is under way and Paula, Malone, Challenger, and Roxton are awestruck by the presence of brontosaurs, pterodactyls, and allosaurs right before their eyes! The turbulent assaults of these prehistoric monsters, unexpected encounters, and a frenzied volcano sequence make this a spellbinding cinematic experience that won't be forgotten.
Review:
The Lost World, remindin' us that a century ago D.E.I. hiring usually involved a can of boot polish and ten minutes in the makeup chair.
And speakin' of unnatural skin blackening, it's gettin' to be that time of year when attendance at the Grime Time plunges lower'n the temperature in the backseat of a Datsun hatchback with a Hefty bag where the rear window should be, and that's before Skunky goes and schedules two silent flicks back-to-back.
I think the man suffers from Accidental Troll Syndrome, but basically what usually happens is the only people who show up for nights like this are the teachin' staff at the Naughty Pine Community College, the curator from the Chickawalka Museum, and the people who couldn't care less about what's on the screen 'cause they're only there to test the station wagon's rear shocks someplace where they can be sure the kids aren't peekin' through the keyhole of their bedroom doors.
I get paid the same whether there's one car or fifty, so I kinda enjoy watchin' the computer science instructor get more'n more P.O.'d until he builds up the nerve to confront the window foggers over the backseat symphony they're composin' to accompany The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This typically culminates in an optical assault by ass acne or pepperoni nipples when the body parts of some unashamed individual get plastered against a window as the offended patron tries to shield their eyes while tapping impatiently at the car's rear fender insisting its occupants "hold the noise down."
That's part of the reason Skunky ended up on the deck of the projection booth with Billy Hilliard and me when normally he'd be roamin' the aisles tryna con guys into headin' back to the concession stand to buy somethin' for their "poor starving wives" who normally stand about 5'2" and weigh 280, but turns out the Class A misdemeanors bein' committed all over the lot weren't his sole motivation for gettin' outta there.
"S'matter Skunky, no great white whales in need of sustenance down there?" I asked as he negotiated the last icy step and released the kung fu grip he had on the handrail.
"Lots, but they all geteen harpooned et moment. And why you no salt stairs? Guy could geet keeled comeen up here," he complained.
"That's part of it, but Juanita used up all the rock salt sellin' bootleg margaritas last week," I explained, passin' Skunky our spare lawn chair.
Skunky said somethin' but I didn't catch it on account of 'im bein' hunched over with his face buried in his beer belly.
"Whaf eah'n you, Funky?" Billy asked, turnin' off the old Windsor kerosene heater to keep Skunky's fumes from catchin'.
"Need to rebuild screen thees year. I tell customers the swayeen ees 3D, but some starteen geet suspicious," he grumbled.
"Awwwww, poor baby - you're gettin' $5 a carload for flicks that cost ya nothin' on toppa the take from the concession stand. Lord knows you don't pay *us* anything, so what's the problem?" I scoffed.
"Fo' reow. $40 a nigh' iv pihifow," Billy agreed.
"You're gettin' $40 a night?!" I growled, nearly chokin' on my Mello Yello.
"Iz not money," Skunky clarified, lettin' out a sigh like someone took a switchblade to a bounce house.
"Then what? Your cousins all work cheaper'n geriatric hook--" I was gripin'.
"Cozins deported last week," he interrupted, starin' at the screen but not really seein' it.
Billy and I just kinda followed suit and shifted over to the screen along with 'im, not havin' the slightest idea of what to say. Thankfully, Billy always manages to come through in the clutch in awkward situations like this.
"Nuggeh?" Billy offered, extendin' his basket over to Skunky.
"Gracias," Skunky replied, grabbin' a pair and goin' to work on 'em.
"All of them?" I finally asked.
"Nah, only seven. But others too scared to travel," he answered, reachin' down for a handfulla snow to wash his nuggets down.
"They'll be back in three weeks, tops. Don't sweat it," I chuckled.
"Probably two, iz not point," he replied, unmoved by my attempt at levity.
"You wondow if vey wookin' ah you diffwen," Billy elaborated, gesturing toward the Grime Time lot.
"Si," Skunky nodded.
After a few minutes of digestin' the situation and gettin' progressively more hacked off by the sound of what was likely the conception of more cleftskulls who'd grow up to advance similar policies, I finally found what I hoped were the right words.
"Listen Skunky, I'm not gonna tell ya things're gonna be okay 'cause I don't know that they will. That said, there's a LOT of hypocrisy that comes along with this kinda crapola, and those people down there aren't looking at you or Juanita any differently because to them you're 'the good ones.' You're *their* Mexicans, and that makes you okay. It's all those *other* people who're usherin' in the downfall of polite society and makin' it so 'normal' people can't get promoted to planer operator at the mill," I ranted.
Skunky just sat there lookin' like he was tryna remember the 52nd digit of Pi before finally gettin' up and headin' back down the stairs.
"I dunno if that's enough to keep ya goin', but it's the best I can offer without blowin' smog up your tailpipe," I shrugged helplessly.
"I guess eet have to be," he called back over his shoulder before headin' out to hustle some corn dogs.
There I was, all primed to watch antisocial allosauri launch unprovoked attacks on their Cretacean contemporaries for no apparent reason, and next thing I know the real world starts hasslin' me until I start to sympathize with the plights of the illegal alien and Rob Thomas all at once. I'm gonna do my best to remain professional even though I kinda lost the plot a few times between the Hernandez situation and the sudden realization that my eyedometer's clocked around 100,000 hours of TV since the last time I got my peepers checked, but I just feel the need to warn ya that there may be times when I miss the deeper meanin' of things 'cause some nymphomaniac in the back row was distractin' me by recreatin' the "hide the salami" sequence from Screwballs while I was tryna read the intertitles.
It's precisely these "I came here to breed, not to read" folks who really stand to benefit from this next part, so if you guys'd please keep your hands where I can see 'em for the next thirty seconds and fix your eyes on the screen, I'm gonna give ya a few examples of how cinema can still hold up after 100 years while breasts begin to sag after a quarter of that.
First, Flat Earthers can take some solace in knowing it's at least possible to fall off The Lost World. Second, releasing a brontosaurus into downtown London is an effective means of tackling the housing crisis, as its rampage invariably leads to every inch of real estate in its path becoming flat. And third, if you're stupid enough to battle prehistoric reptiles to win the love of a woman, it's probably best that your surname goes extinct.
The movie begins with some weenie (Ed) proposin' to his chick (Gladys) and gettin' shot down after revealin' she's savin' 'erself for an Alpha Male who doesn't look like he hasta ask his dad to borrow the car every night. Ed realizes that if he's ever gonna get into Gladys' tap pants he's got to be a macho, macho man, but instead of takin' shortcuts like punchin' holes in the drywall or buyin' a lift kit for his pickup, he decides to become the real deal and volunteers to go on dinosafari with this zoologist who looks like he just crawled out of a goodwill box (Challenger). Only problem is, Challenger's got an undiagnosed case of post-traumatic press disorder following a few run-ins with skeptical newsmen, and so when he finds out Ed's got a day job as a cub reporter he jumps off the auditorium stage mid-lecture and starts auditionin' for Bum Fights. 'Course Ed's still thinkin' about how Gladys is gonna dump 'im for some dogfighter from the Royal Air Force if he can't wrestle a mammoth to death, and so he ends up sneakin' into the maniac's flat to request an audience and barely survives the resulting Challenger explosion. Challenger likes Ed's moxie and the way his face removes the boot scuffs from a hardwood floor, so he introduces Ed to this gal named Paula who tells 'im about how her father got left behind on an expedition after she came down with a case of jungle fever and hadda be rushed back to civilization for either antibiotics or an abortion (you lose a lot with intertitles, alright?). She then reveals the sketches her dad made of his observations and her concerns regarding the dangers these kinda creatures' chompers pose to the human anatomy, and Ed's able to secure the bread for the expedition by sellin' his editors on the idea of a human interest story while keepin' saurian expectations to a minimum.
In addition to Ed and Paula, Challenger decides to bring along a great white hunter (Roxton) for protection and a skeptical naturalist (Summerlee) he's confident he can outrun in case of pursuit by primordial predators, and before ya know it they reach the entrance to the world that once was lost but now is found. They barely even have time to identify a suitable botanical source of toilet paper before these Gorillas in the Pissed start lobbin' boulders at 'em and muggin' for the cameras while the humans're fellin' a tree to cross a ravine, at which time their bridge gets rolled off the cliff by a border patrol brontosaurus tryna keep undocumented hominids off his plateau. Then a Ragin' Cretacean starts pickin' fights with everything that moves until it finds the human encampment and Roxton hasta fire a few pachyderm pulverizers into its face to teach it some manners, 'cept when Ed shinnies up a tree to see if the coast is clear he gets jumped by shag rug simian and Roxton hasta knock it down before it goes all Bitey Joe Young on Ed's face. Having witnessed a complete reversal of evolution, the group adopts a ''when in Rome'' attitude and starts rootin' around in a cave until Roxton comes across the remains of Paula's Pop who appears to have succumbed to complications stemming from consumption, at which point she becomes so emotionally distraught that she agrees to marry Ed who's recently realized he's gonna die a virgin if he doesn't dial back his standards a touch.
Unfortunately, the ceremony hasta go on the back burner when a volcano erupts and everyone durn near gets trampled and sauteed into London broil tryna evacuate in an orderly fashion in the midst of a saurian stampede, but thankfully, Challenger thought to leave some cockney and a boot polished native guide at their base camp below the plateau, and they construct a rope ladder outta kudzu. The two then send Challenger's pet monkey scurryin' up the cliff wall like Peter Parker with a string that Paula and Ed use to haul the rope up, only when Ed tries climbin' down the crassquatch shows up and starts a tug-of-war with the ladder until Roxton shoots 'im through the heart for givin' love a bad name. The group is just about to head back to London when they discover a disabled brontosaurus that fell off the cliff while in the throes of a lunch dispute, and so Roxton offers his kingdom to anyone who can crate it up and ship it C.O.D. to London. Next thing, it's the one-year anniversary of the group's prehistoric pilgrimage, and Challenger returns to the auditorium where he first made his pitch to announce his procurement of a live brontosaurus and a buffet of crow for his critics, only the feast hasta wait when Challenger's sauropodian security detail loses containment, and pretty quick we've got a rampagin' anachronism causin' serious traffic congestion and a massive uptick in A.A. attendance among disturbed pub patrons. Gonna stop right here even though there's only about five minutes left, but this one's in the public domain, and if you've hung in there this long you're gonna wanna stick around to see what happens when caution is thrown to the wind and infrastructural weight limit signs are ignored.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f7_n4Jg0pg
Alrighty, well, I apologize for takin' 100 years to get around to this one, but things've been a little hectic around here the last few decades and I'm doin' the best I can. It should be stated that The Lost World had been shown largely incomplete for the better part of 90 years until a near-complete print was finally pieced together in 2016 by combining numerous cuts of the flick that each contained some extra bits of footage that others lacked, but for the record, we've always shown the shorter cut at the Grime Time as a compromise for folks willin' to watch a film you can't even understand if you happen to be watchin' from a car with a cracked windshield. We don't show a lotta silent flicks for obvious reasons, but I make an exception for The Lost World every now and then because despite bein' artsy and historically significant - it delivers monster mayhem.
It's not often that a flick manages to hold onto its fanfare after a century, but The Lost World is significant as the first feature film to utilize stop-motion animation for its special effects (though Willis O'Brien had done shorts using the technique previously), and is credited as the progenitor of the dinosaur film in particular and the monster movie in general. O'Brien's greatest claim to fame would come eight years later with the release of King Kong, but there's no discounting the fact that that opportunity came along because of the success of The Lost World, and that both his career and the advancement of the stop-motion animation technique may never have reached their respective heights without this first ambitious effort. As it concerns special effects in cinema, The Lost World was that first fish that crawled out onto dry land and evolved into the techniques we know today... which if you stop at the turn of the century and disregard the CG quagmire that followed, is just about the highest praise one can offer an effects artist.
I hold no illusion that a broad appreciation for the silent movie still exists (I struggle with them as a general rule), and it's indisputable that much of The Lost World's relevance persists as a result of film professors screening it as part of their curriculum, but it's one of those flicks that even amateur students of film need to watch at least once to gain an appreciation for just how far the medium has come, and to marvel at the creative problem-solving techniques, persistence, and artistry that went into a film's production a century before you could literally make one on your phone. Silent films may not be your thing, and they're certainly not poised to make a comeback anytime soon, but one can't help but feel a certain reverence for the pioneering spirit that helped bring them to fruition; as well as a sense of appreciation for the foundational principles they established that helped make subsequent (and more enduring) successes possible. Besides, I dunno about you, but I can't help but respect what would become the first ever in-flight movie and the guts required to screen such highly flammable, nitrate-rich film stock inside a converted WWI bomber with a hull made outta wood. That's what I call art appreciation.
In any event, if you've been paying attention over the years you've probably noticed that any time someone yammers on about a film's ''cultural significance'' there's a good chance they're doing so because its a little lacking in thrills, so let's take an honest look at this piece of prehistory and find out if its fit for modern consumption or whether its remains have become fossilized and devoid of cinematic nutrition.
The plot, for its time, was downright fantastical, and brought a sensational, hitherto unexplored concept to the big screen in a way that, were it happening now, would probably be described as ''epic.'' By the standards of 1925, the premiere of The Lost World would have been considered a significant cultural experience rather than just an evening's entertainment. And while that may be a bit difficult to accept in a world where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work has long since entered the public domain and been re-imagined time and again in the days leading up to Michael Crichton's publication of Jurassic Park (which has itself become utterly played out), it's true all the same.
The movie isn't especially faithful to Doyle's novel, nor is it a brilliant tapestry of twists and turns, but the very idea of taking a story this incredible and ambitious and translating it to film would have been considered so outlandish or even impossible to studio executives of the era that one must be careful not to oversell it. It would be easy to get carried away by rating such a highly original concept based on the standards of the time, but realistically, the average person is going to consider a silent film unwatchable (more so if the flick has been remade a dozen times with newfangled filmmaking techniques like sound and color film), and once divorced from its landmark special effects and cinematic impact, it must be acknowledged that most people will find it tedious. In other words - one's rating of a film this age very much comes down to whether it is to be judged by the standards of the period in which it was produced, or those of the present, and those scores are likely to vary wildly. Furthermore, I'd strongly recommend that anyone averse to silent films view the 76-minute cut, as it cruises along and still includes a satisfying runtime of dino-on-dino action, while film students would do well to seek out the 110-minute restoration that smooths out the storytelling.
The acting is exaggerated and occasionally silly as a consequence of having to get emotion across without the aid of voice inflection, but even so, the performances of Bessie Love as the daughter of the doomed professor last seen livin' in the Land of The Lost, and Wallace Beery as the purveyor of outlandish claims whose response to criticism is always to bludgeon his detractors, both shine through with strong performances based entirely upon what they're able to put across with expression and body language. Lloyd Hughes, Lewis Stone, and Arthur Hoyt are less expressive and do little to distinguish themselves, but Bull Montana is rather entertaining as the snarling ape-man, and attentive literary nerds will be rewarded with a brief cameo of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, provided they seek out the restored 110-minute cut. Equally memorable, though not in a way that endears itself to the viewer, is Jules Cowles' casting as the blackfaced Zambo (swivel that ''Z'' around for additional outrage), complete with dialogue spelled in such a way as to emphasize the character's supposed ethnicity. It's not an unusual thing to encounter in films of this era, but it's something I'm inclined to point out for folks who might see it as a dealbreaker. In general, there are not a many observations to be made in regard to acting when it concerns non-comedic silent films (Buster Keaton is still hilarious a century later), but then I don't suppose many folks are watching to see how the love triangle comes out.
Here's who matters and why: Bessie Love (The Hunger, Vampyres, Children of the Damned), Lloyd Hughes (The Mysterious Island, The Haunted Bedroom), Arthur Hoyt (The Raven 1935), Margaret McWade (The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1939), Bull Montana (Flash Gordon 1936), Jules Cowles (The Terror 1928), Charles Wellesley (The Wolf Man 1923), Holmes Herbert (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1931, The Invisible Man 1933, The Son of Dr. Jekyll, The Mummy's Curse, The Uninvited 1944, The Undying Monster, Invisible Agent, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Tower of London 1939, Mark of the Vampire, Mystery of the Wax Museum, The Terror 1928), George Marion (The Man Who Laughs), Gilbert Roland (The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1923), Leo White (The Walking Dead, The Invisible Man 1933).
And the mainstreamers: Lewis Stone (Dr. Otternschlag in Grand Hotel), Wallace Beery (General Director Preysing in Grand Hotel), Arthur Hoyt (Zeke in It Happened One Night).
The special effects are the reason to watch, but it's also another situation where the flick's score hinges entirely upon how they're being rated. As mentioned, when Willis O'Brien's stop-motion creations shambled onto the screen for the first time it signified a watershed moment in film and thrilled audiences in a way no movie had up to that point. Enthusiasts of classic effects techniques may still watch the film and marvel at their sophistication, but despite the admiration they (and I) have for O'Brien's achievements, the truth is that they can't hold a candle to the work of his apprentice, Ray Harryhausen. It could be rightly argued that the comparison is unfair and that Harryhausen not only benefited from O'Brien's mentorship and hard work streamlining the process (as much as one can with such a time-consuming method) but that advances in film editing and compositing made the work easier. These sentiments are entirely accurate, and there's no question that, as a complete film, King Kong holds its own against the best titles Harryhausen contributed to (Clash of the Titans, One Million Years B.C., Jason and the Argonauts, etc), but when it comes to rating the effects, I don't think many people would dispute the superiority of Harryhausen's work, be that comparison fair or not.
I'm not trying to be negative or to diminish the significance of The Lost World's stop-motion marvels in any way, I only point this out as a means of illustrating how, over time, effects techniques become antiquated to the point that they can no longer satisfy the demands of younger generations of movie-goers, and how, consequently, films of tremendous importance are eventually left to languish as relics of a bygone era. Simply put - anyone reviewing The Lost World in 1925 would rate the effects as a 10/10 and then some, whereas a teenager viewing them in 2025 might give them a 2/10 or maybe even a 0/10, as the flick cannot hold a candle to the conventional and/or computer effects they have become accustomed to, and for better or worse, I have always made it a point to avoid rating aspects of a movie by the standards of the era in which they were produced because it feels like charity.
The sets are solid enough, with the live sequences being filmed inside Biograph Studios in the Bronx, and the animation being produced at Brunton Studios in L.A. You never quite buy the Biograph sets as authentically English, and you get the idea that the filmmakers only set the non-Lost World scenes in London out of a sense of obligation to Doyle's novel, but the jungle sets are enjoyable even if they do blur together and become repetitive at times. Additionally, it may be technically inaccurate to discuss them here rather than the effects section, but the miniature models used for the Lost World -- though not actual locations - are excellent, with the one created for the volcano sequence measuring 75' wide by 150' long. These, I would argue, are the special effects that, despite being less consequential, have held up well. But the reason I include them here is that a lot of time is spent watching dinosaurs grapple within their splendor, and, after a while, they genuinely *feel* like locations even if it's not actually so. The best traditional set is probably the one constructed for the cave interiors that includes numerous stalagmites and stalactites, and while some criticize the frequent use of tinting to cultivate atmosphere throughout the movie (green for the jungle, white for moonlight, yellow for sunrise, etc), I find the blue tinting for the cave interiors to be particularly effective.
The soundtrack is difficult to rate, as it seems every cut of the film is accompanied by a different composition made specifically for it. The one I watched was performed on an organ, others utilize orchestras, and the reconstructed cut is performed primarily on piano, but because film scores were performed live by a musician off stage in the silent era and those performances were never recorded, each of the modern soundtracks are just interpretations and estimations of their respective composers, produced with the sound of the 1920s in mind. In this respect, every composition I've heard improves the presentation of the film, but because the music literally never stops, there are a fair number of cues that don't sync up tonally with what's happening on screen. Still, a silent movie that is actually silent and devoid of musical accompaniment would be incredibly dull, and although it can be said that certain sections don't always line up well or make perfect sense in conjunction with the events on screen, they're all very charming and provide a quaint re-imagining of a theater experience that none of us can ever experience.
Overall, the stop-motion effects (though charming and entertaining) just don't hold up all that well and aren't on par with Willis O'Brien's later efforts on King Kong, nor can they match those of his apprentice, Ray Harryhausen, or even the works of David Allen during his tenure at Empire Pictures. That said, the plot concept is not diminished by having been copied dozens of times by imitators over the years, Love and Beery's acting performances are surprisingly effective given the limitations of the medium, the miniature sets are great, and despite my feeling that the stop-motion hadn't yet smoothed itself out sufficiently, I do *like* it a great deal even if I must acknowledge its weaknesses. I don't feel like the entertainment value is where it needs to be, but on a strictly technical level, much of its prowess remains intact. Recommended for its place in cinema history - but don't expect a roller coaster ride of thrills.
Rating: 61%