The Lost World (Special Edition) - 1960 & 1925 versions

The Lost World (Special Edition) - 1960 & 1925 versions Review

Irwen Allen's knock-off remake of The Lost World is glossy but very condescending. Hope sprang eternal in me when I found out that Willis O'Brien was the technical advisor. Hope fell on its butt when I discovered Allen had decided not to utilize O'Brien's stop motion talents. Instead, he wasted the talents of Claude Rains, Michael Rennie, Fernando Lamas, Jill St. John, and David Hedison on a cut-rate adventure that features lizards and alligators with fins and horns glued on. There's a stink of disrespect for the dinosaur genre permeating Allen's Lost World. So why the generous four-out-of-five-star rating? Shockingly enough, the film still looks reasonably well and plays close to Doyle's story (although the entire dinosaur-on-the-loose-in-London sequence was jettisoned).

More importantly, this DVD also features the original 1925 classic, with a miniature army of innovative dinosaur models created by O'Brien and sculptor Marcel Delgado, based on the classic Charles R. Knight paintings. The 18-inch skeletons were constructed to include ball-and-socket joints and articulated backbones that allowed for movable digits and appendages. Skins were made of latex and rubber sheeting. Some of the dinosaurs even contained air bladders that, when activated off camera, gave the creatures the appearance of breathing. The attention given to bringing these monsters to life is, by silent era standards, amazing. The cast is no less impressive, headed by such stars of the era as Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Bessie Love, Lloyd Hughes, and Bull Montana. With spectacular sets, acting, and dinosaur sequences, the lion's share of this DVD's appeal goes to the silent 1925 version. An eccentric scientist (Claude Rains) returns from the Amazon with news of a distant plateau where creatures from the dawn of time still prowl the jungle. To prove his story, he gathers a team of explorers, including a journalist (David Hedison), a playboy-adventurer )Michael Rennie), a beautiful socialite (Jill St. John), and a pilot (Fernando Lamas) with a secret plan of revenge. But an unexpected attack on their camp leaves the group stranded in a world of dinosaurs and other exotic creatures, where humans are no longer the lords of the earth¿they are helpless prey.