Zach Klinefelter Any film buff with half a brain who has seen this film will appreciate its place as one of the most important special effects films of all time. It baffles me the rating stands at a mere 7.1 on this site. While not a masterpiece in every sense of the word (the dinosaurs are far more compelling than the humans), this 1925 gem was single-handedly responsible for pioneering stop-motion animation and inspired countless filmmakers to pursue their dreams well after the film's release. Factoring in the film's outdated stereotypes and racism into one's opinion of how it holds up today is pathetic and pointless! It's hard to say how things would have been different and what rate visual effects would have evolved had this not been made. Willis O'Brien refined the methods he used on TLW for "King Kong" a mere 8 years later, a classic which owes its special effects, story, and legacy to "The Lost World". The craftsmanship and wonder that TLW displays is beyond comparison; no "lost world" movie since has given such an epic display of prehistoric life. Remarkable. See the restored edition if possible!

zardoz-13 Long before Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park: The Lost World" astonished audiences by releasing dinosaurs to rampage around Southern California, co-directors Harry O. Hoyt and William Dowling had beaten them to the punch with their 1925, black and white silent movie dinosaur saga "The Lost World" where a brontosaurus creates havoc in metropolitan London. In truth, the silent film "The Lost World" qualifies as the first live-action dinosaur epic. The ingenious filmmakers blended shots of actual flesh-and-blood actors with scenes of model dinosaurs tromping through the jungle by means of the static matte and the traveling matte so that both appear to be interacting at the same time. The first special effects guru, Willis O'Brien, paved the way for future classics with his pioneering efforts in stop-motion animation with which he achieved greater and more enduring success in 1933 with "King Kong." Although time has not been kind to it, "The Lost World" still ranks as the best adaptation of author A. Conan Doyle's science fiction novella. Incidentally, this is the same Doyle who wrote the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Until David Shepard of Film Preservation Associates restored "The Lost World," this landmark opus has been shown in prints that eliminated about a third of its actual length. The egregious public domain versions average about an hour, while the Image DVD restoration boasts 93 minutes. Experts have estimated that the original running time of the film was about ten minutes longer that this restored version. Again, the claim to fame here is that "The Lost World" not only beat the "Jurassic Park" sequel to the punch, but it also predated the seminal Japanese monster flick "Godzilla" as well as "King Kong." Everybody who has produced a fictional dinosaur film owes a debt of gratitude to Hoyt and Dowling as well as O'Brien and his behind-the-scenes collaborator, Mexican sculptor Marcel Delgado, who carved the miniature dinosaurs for him. Ironically, during the production of "The Lost World," the suits at First National Studios didn't believe that O'Brien's ground-breaking technical innovations would fare as well as they did. Mind you, this wasn't the first time that O'Brien played around with miniature dinosaurs. O'Brien engineered the effects for the 1918 film "The Ghost of Slumber Mountain," that some would argue was the original "feature-length" dinosaur movie. Reportedly, not only did Doyle see a print of "The Lost World" but he also liked it! According to the archivists at Turner Classic Movies, "The Lost World" was "the first in-flight movie, shown on an Imperial Airways flight in a converted Handley-Page bomber from London, UK, to Paris, France, in April 1925."

Boba_Fett1138 Thing with this movie is that we'll most likely never get to see it as it was original intended and released as during its initial theatrical release. There are several different prints of this movie available, all variating heavily in its running time. Now days there are versions available that combine as many sequences as possible from all of these different prints that have emerged over the past decades but its still minutes short of its original theatrical released version. Therefor we'll most likely never be able to judge to movie for what it original was but the long put back together versions of the movie should give us a fair and decent enough impression of what the movie was supposed to be like.For its time this movie obviously was a big movie experience. It's the first ever movie to use stop-motion effects for its creatures. It must have really impressed audiences back then to see all of these use dinosaurs walking around on the screen and fighting and interacting and all of that. Before there was "King Kong" there was "The Lost World" and there is no denying that the movie because of its effects remains an historically important and revolutionary one. It was like "Jurassic Park" for the '20's. You can tell in some of the sequences that the techniques used are still far away from perfection in this movie but still watching stop-motion is always an impressive and extremely delicate and detailed thing, even in this 1925 movie and you just can't help to have some enormous respect for it. Its effects and concept help to make this movie a very entertaining one, especially for its time. But this is also one of the problems for the movie. Basically all this movie is a bunch of people in the Amazon encountering a whole bunch of different prehistoric creatures. There is not really much story to it all, though I'm sure that the original Arthur Conan Doyle novel this movie was based on had some more depth and story and character development to it all.Thing I also don't like about this movie is its use of title cards, especially during its first half. I don't know if this was purely due to the restored longer version of this movie that I watched but the movie extendedly used title cards for its dialog and to explain what was happening all. It's sort of annoying when a silent movie does this too much, as this movie does. When you have a good director and good enough actors there really is no use for an extended use of title cards. You can let the all of the images and expressions of the actors speak for themselves and while watching this movie you can't help but wonder if most of these title cards were even needed in the movie. You could perfectly follow and understand the story without them, I would say.But well, all this doesn't matter that much though. This movie could obviously made purely for entertainment purposes and was supposed to impress with its new revolutionary techniques and its overwhelming images. You can pretty much forget about the story and simply enjoy this movie for its entertainment, though its of course hard to still please todays modern audience with this movie.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

ma-cortes The film deals about Professor paleontologist Challenger(Wallace Beery), an eccentric scientist. The London Record Journal publicizes : ¨Famous zoologist returns from South America without proofs of strange tale , Challenger a well-known author and scientist, has returned to London with a strange tale of Mammoth, Pteradoctyls and other prehistoric monsters, roaming at large somewhere on the upper reaches of the Amazon. Unfortunately for the Professor's reputation for veracity, he refuses to give the exact location of his alleged discoveries and still more unfortunately, the photographs in his possession are so badly damaged when the Professor's canoe is said to have been evidenced ¨. Challenger leads a British expedition to the Amazon in 1912, a motley group formed by the journalist Ed Malone (Lloyd Hughes), Paula White (Bessie Love), adventurer Roxton (Lewis Stone) . The mixed characters in search for a fantastic and remote plateau where the prehistoric beasts still exist confronting adventures and other risks .In the Amazons , the journalist writes the following : ¨I will not bore those whom this narrative may reach by account of our voyage. Eventually we found ourselves in that no-man's-land which is formed by the half-defined frontiers between Peru, Brazil and Colombia, The sealed map promised Challenger to not open until we arrived here is only a blank page. Excepting a miracle, our expedition seems to have come to a premature end ¨. Later on, Ed Malone writes to Mr. McArdle : ¨It is just three weeks since we sent back the canoes and tonight we are camping at the base of the great plateau upon which Maple White was marooned . Challenger has guided us to this spot, and proved that the plateau is a fact, but we have no reason to believe that any monsters are roaming about up there. In Fact, I don't think ¨ . After that, the expedition find themselves confronted by dinosaurs, Brontosaurs, Alosaurs, among them. Then 'The Record-Journal' publishes : ¨Explorers reach the last outpost of civilization searching for Lost World may not be heard from again for months¨.This classic, first and silent version is a stupendous story of adventure and romance. The tale provides sweeping and exciting entertainment . The action scenes blend creatures and humans more seamlessly than ever before in silent cinema and has some nice battles between prehistoric animals. Surviving Brontosaurs,Triceratops, Dinosaurs,Alosaurs, Pterodactyls are the true stars , rise to the occasion to amuse in an otherwise dated and old movie. The fantastic beasts are stunningly made by Willis H O'Brien -the master of Ray Harryhausen- as researcher and technical director and sets and architecture by Milton. Furthermore, photographs by Arthur Edeson, being well directed by Harry Hoyt.Other adaptation about this story based upon novel by Arthur Conan Doyle are the following : 1960 by Irwin Allen with Claude Rains,Michael Rennie and Jill St. John, 1992 by Timothy Bond with John Rhys Davies and David Warner, 1997 by Steven Spielberg with Richard Attemborough, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, 2002 by Stuart Orme with Bob Hoskins, Peter Falk and James Fox.