Search - The Lost World on DVD

The Original Lost World - Front Row Entertainment DVD Versio

Scotman | Mt. Shasta, CA | 05/08/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The movie starts out with a bit of slapstick as a cub reporter, Edmond Malone (with ink on his face from an accident in the copy room) gets himself insinuated to a hall where Professor Challenger is lecturing. Since reporters are not allowed in, he gets in thanks to the help of big game hunter Sir John Roxton. Sir John is a handsome, older guy.

Students there are razzing the professor, playing with their noisemakers and yelling at the professor who claims that there are live dinosaurs in the Amazon jungles. Several think he is a liar and a fraud. He dares his audience to come with him as he returns to the jungles to find these monsters.

A few raise their hands. One guy from the society who claims the Prof is a liar and a fraud and wants to prove it. The other is that same John Roxton. And then Edmond raises his hand. Things go smoothly until Edmond admits that he is a news reporter.

The professor jumps up and tries to kill the guy and chases him out of the lecture hall!

This is all very interesting as a start. We have a newspaper that wants the story, we have the professor being labeled as a fraud and we have poor Edmond who is tired of wishy washy assignments and wants a little danger.

I think all four are getting more than they bargained for.

The film moves quickly through the preliminaries of getting the professor to agree to having a reporter on the team and Edmond's anxious, desperate actions to make this all happen for himself.

The film is not in the greatest of shape in this Front Row Entertainment DVD copy, however. The darks and lights are faded and the film scratchy and at times hard to follow because of the dust and scratches throughout the film.

As the story goes one, we find one Maple White, whose diary was found that told of his exploration of this plateau where the dinos were found. His daughter, who we meet in the professor's study, wants to find her father who was abandoned and left up on that plateau alone. Oops. Bessie Love as Maple White's daughter is cute, but she's no Greta Garbo!

The main attraction are the dinosaurs and the early still life animation created by Willis O'Brien, who also did the still life animation King Kong (which in turn inspired Ray Harryhausen to try his hand in it) and the rest, as they say, is history.

This DVD is not to be confused with Image restoration, which apparently had some outtakes and some interview with an Arthur Conan Doyle historian, as well as two different kinds of orchestras to choose from.

The original negatives were lost in the 1930s. Hopefully I can get a better copy. My DVD is very bare-bones, with scene selections.

Recommended! These films owe their allegiance to this 1925 silent marvel:

The Lost World (Special Edition) - 1960 & 1925 versions
Lost World (1960) [VHS]
The Lost World - Jurassic Park (Full-Screen Collector's Edition)"