For as brilliant as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle supposedly was, his belief in fairies made him seem like a bit of a nutjob. Of course, the only reason his name is still in the public consciousness is for the Sherlock Holmes stories. But he wrote other stories as well, and some of those are less than brilliant.
Consider The Lost World, in which an expedition from England goes to a plateau deep in the Amazon rainforest, where various species of dinosaurs still exist, because they had been isolated from the rest of the world up there. I guess the giant meteor that wiped out dinosaurs around the world had no impact on creatures below a certain height.
I’m more confused about the pre-historic humans among the dinos. While I may not know what the scientific consensus was in Doyle’s time, having those two groups around at the same time feels too much like The Flintstones. At least I can fault the 1960 film adaptation, because we damn well knew by then that the eras of dinos and humans were separated by millions of years.
In what is a bit of surprising casting, Claude Rains is the head of that expedition into the Amazon. I would have thought the actor would believe himself above this material, but he often appears to be having fun with it. His character glimpsed the dinos from afar on a previous expedition, and is mocked by his peers when he reports his findings to the “Zoological Society” (not to be confused with The Royal Society). And so he challenges the audience for volunteers for an expedition “to leave for the Amazon immediately!” I like to think the volunteers had to go straight from the lecture hall to the boat without packing any bags. Also, his character’s name is Dr. Challenger, which I guess explains why he is always so confrontational.
Along for the ride are Richard Haydn, as the most skeptical of the Society board. The expedition will be funded by Michael Rennie, who is somehow a lord, despite having an accent that sounded unmistakably American to these ears. Then there’s the newspaper reporter played by David Hedison, in what may be the most personality-free role I have ever seen.
In South America, the group meets Fernando Lamas, their guide and helicopter pilot. And there’s his friend, Jay Novello as the obligatory comic relief who, alas, does absolutely nothing the least bit humorous in this film.
Then there’s Jill St. John, who has arrived at this outpost ahead of Rains and his team, much to his chagrin. He had vociferously opposed her coming along on this boys’ adventure. Her role is a solid example of the confusion experienced by Hollywood in the mid-60’s. She knows how to shoot and is supposedly brave, but we don’t see her do much of anything heroic. She seems to be strong-headed but, gosh darn it, she just wants to find herself a titled man and play house with him. At least she brought appropriate clothing for the journey, though it is all in bright colors and in qualities great enough to warrant several suitcases, because “women…amiright?” and all that. And, oh yeah, she also brought her brother (Ray Stricklyn) with her for reasons I could not discern. Maybe the film just needed somebody to rival Henison for blandness.
It is only the first night on the plateau that the helicopter gets stomped by a giant dino, forcing our heroes to fend for themselves against giant reptiles and hostile natives. Alas, the former are nothing more than lizards with stuff glued to their bodies and which are pitted against each other in a fight to the death. I was irritated enough stop motion wasn’t used, but doubly annoyed animals were harmed.
There was much in this picture that left me confused. I guess zoologists were incredibly popular back then, given how reporters swarm Rains emerging from a plane as if they’re teenage girls and he’s The Beatles. Or, why do the natives call the dinosaurs the “curupuri” (pronounced “curry purry”), except to maybe laugh at how stupid non-natives would sound saying it? Why are our protagonists so intent on capturing the first native girl they see (Vitina Marcus)? Heck, Hedison even chases he down large passages made entirely of spider web, which has a giant spider at the end, of course. He takes the insect down with a single shot, which makes those hobbits in a similar situation look like total pussies.
The Lost World is the kind of film I normally enjoy as a guilty pleasure, but it didn’t try hard enough to win me over. Using actual animal deaths for entertainment lowered my opinion ever further. By the time we get to the stock comic relief guy trying to rape the native girl, I had checked out completely. I found The Lost World to be a lost opportunity.
Dir: Irwin Allen
Starring Michael Rennie, Jill St. John, Claude Rains
Watched on 101 Films UK blu-ray (region B)