Reelin' In The Years -- The Lost World (1925), directed by Harry O. Hoyt

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Dinosaurs Will Die", by NOFX

       While Arthur Conan Doyle’s life will forever be connected to his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, whether he wanted it to or not, the man did in fact write other things. One other thing, at least for the purposes of this review, 1912’s “The Lost World”. Aside from being the basis for the second Jurassic Park movie and kind of getting its plot ripped of for King Kong, “The Lost World” was a prime example of a subgenre of fiction that conveniently enough could also be labeled as ‘lost world’ stories, where the protagonists stumble upon some hidden section of the world that contains some secret heretofore unknown to Western civilization. Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”, “King Solomon’s Mines”, and so on and on. Following the rise of science fiction lost world stories have steadily been replaced with alien worlds and other dimensions, except those made intentionally with the aesthetic in mind, but seeing as most of the planet has been scouted out at this point I suppose it was inevitable. Plus the whole ‘plundering other people’s culture for your personal glory and enrichment’ thing has long since been played out at this point.

       Thirteen years later, “The Lost World” would get the motion picture treatment, directed by Harry O. Hoyt and a screenplay by Marian Fairfax. After an introduction by Mr. Doyle himself, who would actually pass away 5 years after this, we get into the movie proper: Ed Malone is a young reporter who doesn’t take many risks in life. So much so, apparently, that his girlfriend refuses to marry him unless he puts himself into some kind of life-or-death situation, because that’s what a healthy relationship looks like. Desperate for some danger, Ed ends up attending a presentation by Professor Challenger, who claims to have discovered a place deep within the jungles of South America where dinosaurs still live. Challenger is unsurprisingly treated as an object of ridicule by the scientific community, but when he mentions that he’s looking for volunteers to mount a second expedition in order to prove his claims, Ed finally finds that life affirming experience that he’s been searching for (for about 2 hours). It doesn’t go too well at first, it turns out Challenger likes to attack reporters on sight, but soon Ed, Challenger, Professor Summerlee the bookish coleopterist, big game hunter John Roxton, and Paula White, daughter of Maple White who died on the first trip, are off to South America in search of this mysterious ‘lost world’. I wonder if they’ll find it?

       As it was with the other films we’ve covered so far, it’s surprising to see just how much they were able to accomplish so early in the medium’s lifespan. With the combination of  good set design, matte paintings, extensive miniatures and forced perspective shots, the jungles of South America and the streets of London both have a vibrancy to them, in spite of their age. Nowhere is that more apparent than the dinosaurs, all of which are animated in stop-motion. Given you rarely see stop-motion animation because it’s so ridiculously time consuming even with modern technology, that The Lost World has the amount of dinosaurs it has, the variety of dinosaurs it has, doing all the things they do is pretty crazy. The animation is fairly smooth as well, not too far removed from what you’d see in King Kong less than a decade later.

       The Lost World is also a lot more light-hearted than you’d expect from a movie involving dinosaurs dying in horrible ways. It’s been at least a decade or so since I’ve read the original story, and while the Sherlock Holmes stories certainly weren’t devoid of humor, I didn’t expect the movie to have such a goofy bend to it. The opening is not that far removed from what you’d expect from the Buster Keaton film we covered last time, with gags peppered throughout, occasionally breaching into downright madcap territory. It doesn’t help matters that the score, composed by the returning Robert Israel, is quite good while at the same time being perpetually whimsical. Listening to this music while looking a Professor ‘I Look Like Brian Blessed’s Dad’ Challenger makes it a little hard to take things seriously.

       Which leads into one of the two biggest problems with The Lost World: The  dramatic tension, or lack thereof. Perhaps it’s my modern sensibilities here, but this is a film that feels like it has no stakes, nothing that really gets the blood boiling when you’re watching. They set up a love triangle that you think it going to lead to something big, and then it’s resolved amicably. You’ve got the characters stuck on a plateau with a bunch of dinosaurs, which they never interact with (wouldn’t be until Kong that you’d get interactive puppetry). In spite of the extremely stressful situations the cast finds themselves in it’s rare to find moments where it feels like they’re really in danger, and in several of those cases the situation is resolved almost immediately. It’s not that I’m expecting people to get picked off like it’s Kong: Skull Island, but when you’re dealing with animals the size of apartment buildings you’d expect a bit more carnage. Hell, The Invisible Man had a higher body count by the end of his movie, and that was one naked dude running around in the winter.

       The second biggest problem has to deal with a topic that was bound to show up covering old movies:Racist imagery. In the case of Destiny, while there were cases of Chinese and Arab people played by folks who clearly weren’t, it seems like those cultures were used more because of how different it probably seemed to Germans audiences at the time rather than to denigrate or mock those cultures (although I’m not Chinese, Arabian or North African, so that’s not my call to make). With Our Hospitality you have a Black man working for the Canfields, and since that movie takes place in the 1830s you know he’s not getting a 401K, but he’s only in a couple of scenes and doesn’t really do much. In The Lost World however, you get treated to ‘Zambo’, who suddenly appears when the movie shifts to South America and is unmistakably some dumpy fuck in blackface, and who sports a broken arm the entire time he’s on screen, which is either from a lost scene or I had a stroke at some point and forgot when that happened. If that’s all it was you could probably ignore it and move on, but then they decided to give Zambo some lines, so you get to experience this one man minstrel show in big ol’ letters on the screen. Overall it’s not a lengthy part of the movie, it’s not integral to the plot, but as soon as that shit started to happen all that atmosphere or suspension of disbelief or what have you that had been built up to that point instantly dissipated, and it never fully recovered. Mind you, this happens while there’s still about an hour or so of movie to go, so that’s a long fucking time to be half-way paying attention to a movie with no sound.

       1925 is here, and The Lost World leaves with no recommendations. While the stop-motion animation and the art design are a treat, the fact that you have to sit through blackface and that the movie is 144 minutes of lukewarm oatmeal that builds to an okay finish. I’ve mentioned King Kong multiple times now, but honestly that is essentially this movie done larger and better. Or if you wanted something a bit different you could try The Valley of Gwangi, wherein a bunch of cowboys fight a T-Rex. It was even made by Ray Harryhausen, so either way you’re getting a taste of that sweet, sweet stop-motion action. And the Reelin’ In The Years tour rolls on...