The Lost World is directed and produced by Irwin Allen, who also co-adapts the screenplay with Charles Bennett from the novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle. It stars Michael Rennie, Jill St. John, Claude Rains, David Hedison, Fernando Lamas and Richard Haydn. A CinemaScope production in De Luxe Color, music is by Paul Sawtell & Bert Shefter and cinematography by Winton C. Hoch.A loose adaptation of Doyle's novel, this version was the first talkie to surface after the silent original back in 1925. The story pitches a diverse group of travellers/explorers onto an Amazonian plateau where it is hoped that proof of living dinosaurs can be made. Monster malarkey does follow.Given that it has a diverse reputation and average ratings on internet movie sites, you would be fooled into thinking this was a flop. Far from it! It made very good coin at the box office and it continues to be a well received fantasy favourite shown on TV schedules during holiday periods. In fact, there is a cult fan base out there whom steadfastly will defend the pic from violent attack!Irwin Allen used his average budget in areas other than for the creature effects, this is obvious, while it's true to say that most of the acting is from the school of ham and cheese sandwich. Yet the slurpasaur effects are engaging and effective. Oh for sure none of the creatures look like dinosaurs, which begs the question on why didn't they just write it as a new raft of undiscovered dinosaurs? But suspense and peril is eked out and the world created by the art design team is impressively interesting.The usual character stereotypes exist, including a surplus to requirements female character (St. John), who is attired in pink trousers and brings her pet poodle pooch along for the trip! The formula would get tired over the on coming decades (see Disney's Island at the Top of the World which would crib from this pic), yet there's still a lot of fun to be had with big creatures, big spiders, diamonds and a secret race of people with a specialist appetite - while you can't beat a good old chase finale topped off by peril and twisty strife.Sometimes cheap and cheerful, sometimes full of fun and frolics, all things considered, there's a good time to be had for the discerning creature feature/fantasy adventure film fan. 6.5/10

Well, this is not the sequel to Jurasic Park, as I originally thought it was, but I guess that is what happens when all you have is a label on a video cassette and have basically forgotten when you taped the movie because it was so long ago. Gee, all of that in one sentence, though I think I have done better.Anyway, this is a simple adventure story where a scientist discovers dinosaurs in the Amazon Rainforest, goes to England, creates an expedition, and returns to bring back proof. While they are there, the helicopter is destroyed so they are stuck on the plateau and must pass vicious natives and rivers of lava to escape. And when they escape, they bring with them huge diamonds to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams - a typical American fantasy, or so for its time.My question though is why don't they make adventure movies like this anymore? The last one was the Mummy, and the only really decent ones I have seen are the Indiana Jones trilogy and Congo (and maybe a few others thrown it). This does not include Jurassic Park as I would hardly call it an adventure movie, or even good.The effects weren't that great, but it is the best one can expect from that time. The dinosaurs were basically lizards made to look big and had funny things attached to their heads. After seeing Jurassic Park, such effects make us gag, but once again we must remember the time. Also, if we see or like a movie based purely on its effects, then we are missing out on a lot of good stuff.The other thing of note is that I found some of the scenery to be breathtaking, though most of it was filmed on a set.I was going to give this film a 6, but decided, on policy reasons, to increase it to a 7, namely because I am purposely protesting against those who simply rate movies based on special effects.

TLW is a classic piece of 50s/60s Hollywood cheese, literally overflowing with cheerful, exuberant prattle and every cliché in the dino book. The movie never lets up - not even for a second - in its dissemination of goofiness and hooey, but doing it with a Disney-like naivety that is almost screaming for an MST3K drubbing.TLW has a bearded scientist who had just come back from the Amazon (where else), where he supposedly saw dinosaurs. In fact, they were just a couple of iguanas with horns stuck onto their heads, and perhaps a Jesus lizard or two. He actually sweats over how to finance another expedition (as if a dino claim wouldn't shower him with generous offers and/or a plethora of other expeditions going there straight away), so he gets blackmailed into taking along a whole B-movie circus of hoy-paloy characters who would normally go out for a game of cricket, not so much the outer reaches of Jurassic Amazon.One of the comic-book characters joining him is Jill St John, who joins him on his way to the Amazon without any acting classes in tow, much to the dismay and amusement of the viewer, but she's quite pretty so it matters not. And where else but in a 50s/60s movie would you have a rich, beautiful, happy millionaire's daughter cling on to a guy 3 times her age. No, not talking about the professor for he's too old even for Jill. I'm talking about Michael Rennie, who looks older even than her father. Eventually Rennie, realizing perhaps that he should have had grand-kids by now, makes the path free for the slimy journalist to step in to woo her, but not before the two beta males have a fight-out – in which Rennie fights like a girl btw. Nevermind the dinosaurs and the biggest zoological discoveries of the 20th century, because our characters have their heads full of flirting and diamonds, that's all they seem to care about. Oh, yes and revenge. They are obsessed with flirting, diamonds and revenge. This is where Lamas comes in with his over-the-top "macho"-Latino character.The scientist seems to be rather "lost", too. He refers to the iguana dressed up as a stegosaurus as a "brontosaurus". The iguana and the make-up department went through all that trouble in making the lizard look like a stegosaurus and how does the non-professorial professor reward them for this effort? He calls him by the wrong name. Of course there is the obligatory battle between an iguana and another small lizard. How many lizards can say they'd been immortalized in a Hollywood flick? I can't really remember who won that spiffing duel, but I think it's safe to say that a small lizard came out on top.In the end, there is a lot of molten lava, the usual back-stabbing, diamonds and girlfriends, i.e. the usual B-movie claptrap. In these 60s-movie expeditions there is a weird phenomenon whereby the moment a team sets foot on an unexplored island or land, the volcano there seems to starts getting active, melting and even blowing up at least several mountains by the time the end-credits roll. Naturally, all the Westerners escape, leaving the locals to try and make ends meet in the post-apocalyptic wasteland full of dead dino body parts. The slimy journalist gets the girl, the badly-educated scientist gets his plastic ostrich egg, and the viewer gets to wonder what the heck happened to all those Ray Harryhausen effects he'd been promised. There wasn't one stop-motion scene in the entire movie. Liars.And yet, in spite of all this, the 1960 "The Lost World" is far better than Spielberg's "The Lost World".

I was 8 in 1960. And here was a big, colourful, widescreen film with adventure, excitement, dinosaurs, giant spiders, natives, cliff edge escapes, volcanoes - wow! Now, pushing 60, I am not so demanding as to insist that movies from 50 years ago should have effects executed to the same standard as the best of today's - far from it. In fact, I still have huge affection for the best effects movies of my childhood (by which, of course, I mean those by Ray Harryhausen).But hindsight illuminates the offerings of Irwin Allen as very much missing something on the effects side. I'm not entirely sure what or why, but they never quite go as far as they need to for the suspension of disbelief. Perhaps it's errors of scale, perhaps it's messy matte lines, and for sure it is lizards with fins glued on them. But there is something about Allen's films which always disappoints.And the funny thing is that I was aware of it when I was 8, too.