Zach Klinefelter
I first saw this film courtesy of MST3K, and for years only knew of it from that hilarious episode. Years later I picked up the Image DVD and quickly found it to be an addictive little film with replay value. As a lover of both classic and trashy prehistoric cinema, "Lost Continent" may not necessarily be a good movie, but I feel it has plenty of entertainment value. The stop-motion is not on the level of Harryhausen or O'Brien, but it is solid and I enjoy the fact that only herbivorous dinosaurs are seen (certainly the result of the low budget). I can't help but love the macho characters; the nearly all-male cast is very much of that time period: these tough men climb a mountain and explore a vast lost world, with ample smoke breaks and reminders to the audience that these men are men, and American to the bone. The green tinted-footage is an interesting, if simple, visual effect. I am giving this a high rating for its entertainment value; it's not nearly as bad as some have suggested with their reviews, and better than MST3K may lead you to believe.
dougdoepke
Plot—a retrieval team is dispatched to the Pacific to bring back vital info from a downed rocket. Their plane, however, crashes on a prehistoric island, so adventure follows.Considering the production's barrel bottom pedigree, it's better than I expected. Not that this says much—the monsters are poorly done, the rescue team climbs endlessly the same rocks, the pacing sometimes drags, while the green tint is stomach churning. Still, producer Neufeld hired a capable cast, even if the women's roles dangle like appendages, (added no doubt for marquee value). Then too, low-rent comedian Melton restrains his usual buffoonery as one of the team.On a different note, catch the brief Cold War dialog between Rostov (Hoyt) and Nolan (Romero). Judging from the release date, I expect the movie was filmed at the height (late 1950) of the Korean War, so maybe the departure's not surprising. Anyway, the ambitions may greatly exceed the budget, but the cast manages some interest in an adventure movie that could have easily been a total loss.
bkoganbing
Lippert Pictures Lost Continent is an interesting and better product than normally you might get out of this low budget studio. Basically it's a version of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World updated with the plot to include the Cold War. It also is a film that glorifies our brand new United States Air Force only a few years old at the time.Scientists John Hoyt, Whit Bissell, and Hugh Beaumont are testing a new rocket, modifying those V-2s that the Nazis introduced before World War II ended. The thing goes completely haywire and disappears somewhere in the South Pacific.This part of the plot completely lost me. After all the fighting in the Pacific over various islands and decisions which ones to fight for and which ones to bypass, you'd think there would be no lost islands by 1951. But apparently we and the Japanese missed this one and it's a beaut. It's got more uranium per square yard than any place on earth and a big mountain with a prehistoric plateau on which a lot of prehistoric flora and fauna still exist. And a few large dinosaurs as well. Cesar Romero, Chick Chandler, and Sid Melton are Air Force men who take our scientists to look for the rocket and get the data from it. All six have the usual encounters with prehistoric life that one associates with films like these. It looks a whole lot like the Jurassic Park that Richard Attenborough created. The prehistoric sequences are photographed in a sepia toned green, the rest of the film is standard black and white.When I was a kid I saw this on television in the Fifties and I still remember Sid Melton getting gored by a triceratops. Lost Continent was an exciting film back then and kids who are the age I was back then might still like this film. It's better than a lot of Lippert products, but still very hokey.
Mark Honhorst
This movie is hard to get into. I mean, it's hard to look at,at first. This movie takes black and white to a whole new level as it enhances the drabness by making it gray and white. The rock climbing scenes are only saved by strong, adventurous music that seems unfit for the movie, and the rock climbing scenes without the music look more like someone's silent vacation video rather than an actual movie. In fact, this whole movie is a case where the music is much better than the film itself. I thought I was in for the most boring movie ever made, but I found myself unexpectedly entertained by the end when I saw the guy from Leave It To Beaver, John Hoyt, Cesar Romero, and Whit Bissel narrowly dodging tumbling rocks from an exploding island. But the best part of this movie is: Getting to see Sid Melcher(or whoever that guy from The Danny Thomas Show is) meeting his maker at the hands of a hungry herbivorous Triceratops, a most deserving fate indeed.
AD
