30-Second Review: The Lost World

Top Star Wallace Beery        Date 1925        Category Adventure

The Story
Beefcake, babe, and boorish prof battle an island full of stop-motion prehistoric monsters.

The Verdict
Slower than a triceratops in a tar-pit, but essential viewing for F/X purists.

Best Scene
Captured Brontosaurus Rampaging Through London Streets!

At first, this scene falters like the others before it—we are told, rather than shown, how the huge animal’s cage broke loose over the dock and set it free. But things pick up as the Brontosaurus plows through the urban landscape. While the film still fails to integrate footage of the crowds with footage of the beast, life-scale modelling now brings the two elements together. We see a mother and infant trapped in the dinosaur’s path... then director Harry O. Hoyt cuts from the stop-motion animal to the cowering humans and inserts a shot of a giant, clawed foot bearing down upon them. This technique is used liberally in King Kong, but nowhere else in The Lost World.

For the full-length Silent Volume article, click HERE.