Way back in the early 70s, you could get your fill of cheesy science-fiction fun on Saturday afternoons on KHQ-TV in Spokane, Washington. If baseball was over, the station would fire up the Saturday "Creature Feature," and lay on some tasty bits of sci-fi and fantasy. This is where I first saw Irwin Allen's take on an A. C. Doyle story, The Lost World.
I loved this movie. I still do. It is the best thing Irwin Allen ever did. TLW has all the best in Saturday afternoon matinee-dom (and a critic would stress the dumb). Fake dinosaurs, good guys and frumpy-grumpy scientists, simpering bad guys and Jill St. John (who embodies--and what a body--why "females" should not go on dinosafaris), and Michael Rennie wondering where his career went wrong after betraying "Mr. Atoz" from Star Trek.
David Hedison's toupee never comes loose, Fernando Lamas rides a tree trunk into eternity, and Claude Rains seems to be having a great time at 71 as he hoofs and gritches and howls about nobody having an idea what privacy means.
I'm not kidding. Of all the Land That Time Said Screw It flicks I've seen, this is the best. It's just so much damn fun! The native girl's mini-skirt stays rigid (so that you don't get a glimpse at Amazon undies), the big ol' helicopter that gets mooshed by a whateverthehellasaurus looks sort of, well, fiberglassy, and the only sour note in the movie is Ms. St. John's character, who starts as a hotter-than-hell liberated woman and ends as a screechy little girl who's afraid of everything.
That's bad character writing, not bad acting.
I've said again and again that the best movies are the ones where you can tell the cast and crew are having a great time working. The Lost World has that vibe. When I was a kid, 50 years ago, watching a 12 year old monster movie, I picked up on that feeling that everyone was thinking, "Hey, this is fun!"
Put your logic in the car park at Heathrow, folks, Professor Challenger and his crew are going for a helluva fun ride!
And, did they have to pay the lizards union scale when they glued the horns and spikes on their faces?
Just wonderin'?
I loved this movie. I still do. It is the best thing Irwin Allen ever did. TLW has all the best in Saturday afternoon matinee-dom (and a critic would stress the dumb). Fake dinosaurs, good guys and frumpy-grumpy scientists, simpering bad guys and Jill St. John (who embodies--and what a body--why "females" should not go on dinosafaris), and Michael Rennie wondering where his career went wrong after betraying "Mr. Atoz" from Star Trek.
David Hedison's toupee never comes loose, Fernando Lamas rides a tree trunk into eternity, and Claude Rains seems to be having a great time at 71 as he hoofs and gritches and howls about nobody having an idea what privacy means.
I'm not kidding. Of all the Land That Time Said Screw It flicks I've seen, this is the best. It's just so much damn fun! The native girl's mini-skirt stays rigid (so that you don't get a glimpse at Amazon undies), the big ol' helicopter that gets mooshed by a whateverthehellasaurus looks sort of, well, fiberglassy, and the only sour note in the movie is Ms. St. John's character, who starts as a hotter-than-hell liberated woman and ends as a screechy little girl who's afraid of everything.
That's bad character writing, not bad acting.
I've said again and again that the best movies are the ones where you can tell the cast and crew are having a great time working. The Lost World has that vibe. When I was a kid, 50 years ago, watching a 12 year old monster movie, I picked up on that feeling that everyone was thinking, "Hey, this is fun!"
Put your logic in the car park at Heathrow, folks, Professor Challenger and his crew are going for a helluva fun ride!
And, did they have to pay the lizards union scale when they glued the horns and spikes on their faces?
Just wonderin'?