Review of The Lost World (1925) by Victor L — 02 Jun 2010

Long before Steven Spielbergâ??s â??Jurassic Park: The Lost Worldâ?? astonished audiences by turning dinosaurs loose to rampage around Southern California, co-directors Harry O. Hoyt and William Dowling had beaten them to the punch with their 1925 silent movie dinosaur saga â??The Lost Worldâ?? where a brontosaurus creates havoc in downtown metropolitan London.

In truth, the silent film â??The Lost Worldâ?? 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 Oâ??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 â??King Kong.

â?? Although it remains a dated effort, â??The Lost Worldâ?? still ranks as the best adaptation of author A. Conan Doyleâ??s science fiction novella. Incidentally, this is the same Doyle who wrote the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Until David Shepard of Film Preservation Associates restored â??The Lost World,â?? 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 â??The Lost Worldâ?? not only beat the â??Jurassic Parkâ?? sequel to the punch, but it also predated the seminal Japanese monster flick â??Godzillaâ?? as well as â??King Kong.

â?? Everybody who has produced a fictional dinosaur film owes a debt of gratitude to Hoyt and Dowling as well as Oâ??Brien and his behind-the-scenes collaborator, Mexican sculptor Marcel Delgado, who carved the miniature dinosaurs for him.

Ironically, during the production of â??The Lost World,â?? the suits at First National Studios didnâ??t believe that O'Brien's ground-breaking technical innovations would fare as well as they did.

Mind you, this wasnâ??t the first time that Oâ??Brien played around with miniature dinosaurs. Oâ??Brien engineered the effects for the 1918 film â??The Ghost of Slumber Mountain,â?? that some would argue was the original "feature-length" dinosaur movie.

Reportedly, not only did Doyle see a print of â??The Lost Worldâ?? but he also liked it!