The dinosaurs in "The Lost World" are walking proof that sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Without fancy THX-enhanced sound effects or even sync-sound, these simple beasts prove both entertaining and menacing. Since the film revolves around these creatures, Harry O. Hoyt clearly built his classic thriller on a solid foundation.
When initially released in 1925, "World" was an unrivaled, phenomenal spectacle. Audiences worldwide were truly convinced that prehistoric creatures still walked the earth and were captured on film for this motion picture. Forget "Blair Witch Project;" this is the first feature film to seriously fool audiences into believing it was real, and that wasn't even its purpose.
The effects that bring the dinosaurs to life seem primitive by today's standards but are still a lot more fun than the predictable CGI (computer graphics imagery) monsters. Everything is accomplished with stop-motion animation and forced perspective. Brontosaurs graze in the fields, triceratops battle with allosaurs and pterodactyls fly overhead to provide food for their young.
The creatures even have some emotional range, thanks to some close-ups of their snarling faces and brief scenes that show them protecting their young. Their main flaw results from recent scientific discoveries. "World" depicts plant-eating animals as fanged creatures that can cause just as much mayhem as vicious carnivores, a portrayal which appears unlikely based on fossil evidence. Actually, this fact adds camp value to some scenes that were meant to be dead serious, particularly a fight with a brontosaurus biting deeply into an allosaurus's neck and nearly ripping it open.
The man behind these sights is effects wizard Willis O'Brien, who went on to create effects for "King Kong" and train one of the greatest stop-motion artists ever, Ray Harryhausen. He takes great care with almost every nuance of his models, justifying his legendary reputation and demonstrating the strength of his innovations.
The jaw-dropping phenomenon this created 75 years ago is analogous to the fuss the first computer-generated dinosaurs in Spielberg's 1993 "Jurassic Park" created. Speaking of the director, his 1997 sequel, "The Lost World," though based on a novel by Michael Crichton, resembles this film much more than the book on which it is based.
The 1925 version, too, was based on a book (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, no less). It kicks off with Ed Malone (Lloyd Hughes), a young London Times reporter who, eager to impress his fianc
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
