Oh and of course...SPOILERS
Basically the film starts with our possibly mad Professor Challenger (Claude Rains) arriving in London and hitting our lead on the head with an umbrella. Seriously. Ed Malone (David Hedison) is a reporter bothering Challenger and he consequentially hits him and then announces a meeting with the London Zoological Society. Ed then meets our female lead Jennifer Holmes (Jill St. John) and together they attended the meeting where Challenger claims that he has found an isolated plateau in South America where dinosaurs still roam. Challenger then dares rival Professor Summerlee (Richard Haydn) to send an expedition to confirm Challenger's claims, because that's how all scientific expeditions start off. Anyhow, after some convenient plot developments the expedition team ends up consiting of Ed, Challenger, Summerlee, Lord Roxton (Michael Rennie) and later Jennifer and her brother David (Ray Stricklyn) squeeze in there too.The team heads to South America and is again joined by yet another member Manuel Gomez (Fernando Lemas). Who basically has the soul purpose of creating unnecessary drama later on. Oh and he's a pilot...or a guide or something that is apparently usefull. That said he is one of the more interesting characters.
The team takes a nice helicopter ride to the plateau and soon they discover that Challenger is not insane and that the dinosaurs are not only real but also hate helicopters. The team's one way off the plateau is destroyed and they are trapped. They discover that along with the prehistoric life there is also giant spiders and a primitive tribe of people who somehow know how to use guns. Along with this shocking development is the discovery of Burton White's diary, another explorer who went with Lord Roxton on an earlier expedition to find diamonds. Oh and it turns out Manuel's brother was also
on the expedition with Roxton and that Jennifer now has a love interest in Ed. The rest of the movie unfolds on these lines with one dinosaur battle thrown in and the group being captured by the primitive tribe who also turn out to be cannibals. After being captured the team are lead by one of the befriended tribe women to the now blind Burton White who informs the team of a way out that just happens to be incredibly dangerous. Manuel also learns his brother is dead and intends to take revenge on Roxton. Thus begins a harrowing journey through the pathway out which involves lava and eventually diamonds. Manuel eventually decides not to kill Roxton and sacrifices himself to save the others and the plateau explodes for one reason or another. Jennifer and Ed hook up and Challenger somehow snuck a dinosaur egg out of the lost world to prove to the rest of the world that he was right. The End.Really there's alot more to this but its the basics that you need to know. This is in no way a great film, everything just bearly works. The acting is average, the "special" effects are poor even for the 1960's and over all the film fails to really give the audience anything to be amazed at.
The film takes way too long to get to the plateau and then to see one of the creatures, there is way too much filler put in to set up the internal tension the expedition has later on. I would not have a problem with this if the story needed internal character tension but in a film where people are surround by giant spiders and dinosaurs it is not really necessary. This fact made me incredibly frustrated when watching simply because I wanted to see some dinosaurs killing people rather than David trying to get it on with primitive woman. Another problem is that none of the team are killed until the very end of the film (where Manuel's assistant is eaten by dinosaur) and this makes it very hard to feel that the characters are ever in any real mortal danger.
As I said the special
effects are fairly silly, mainly being lizards with horns glued on and then projected behind the actors. I know it was the 60's but I feel stop motion animation would have worked much better here, it's hard to take the lizards as dinosaurs and therefore harder to believe in the world that the film is trying to create. Heck even if it looked remotely like a T-Rex I could buy it and just write it off due to the film's age.The size of the cast can also be annoying but I guess this also ties into the whole "no one being killed" problem. Usually in a film like this with an cast of this size you would expect maybe 2 or 3 to make it out but here everyone (except Manuel and his assistant) make it out to a happy ending. I just don't buy that. It's about as believable as someone telling you a small lizard is a baby T-Rex.
Overall "The Lost World" has it's camp value and charm being from Irwin Allen's golden age but there are just too many problems to make it truly enjoyable. Maybe I'm nitpicking and I'm sure people who saw this as kids loved it but ultimately it falls flat on it's face.
2 out 5 Stars
Well that's all for Retro-vision, tune in later for (hopefully) my review of "Kick-Ass"
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