The Lost World Silent

The movie starts out with a bit of slapstick as a cub reporter, Edmond Malone (with ink on his face from an accident in the copy room) gets himself insinuated to a hall where Professor Challenger is lecturing. Since reporters are not allowed in, he gets in thanks to the help of big game hunter Sir John Roxton. Sir John is a handsome, older guy.Students there are razzing the professor, playing with their noisemakers and yelling at the professor who claims that there are live dinosaurs in the Amazon jungles. Several think he is a liar and a fraud. He dares his audience to come with him as he returns to the jungles to find these monsters.A few raise their hands. One guy from the society who claims the Prof is a liar and a fraud and wants to prove it. The other is that same John Roxton. And then Edmond raises his hand. Things go smoothly until Edmond admits that he is a news reporter.The professor jumps up and tries to kill the guy and chases him out of the lecture hall!This is all very interesting as a start. We have a newspaper that wants the story, we have the professor being labeled as a fraud and we have poor Edmond who is tired of wishy washy assignments and wants a little danger.I think all four are getting more than they bargained for.The film moves quickly through the preliminaries of getting the professor to agree to having a reporter on the team and Edmond's anxious, desperate actions to make this all happen for himself.The film is not in the greatest of shape in this Front Row Entertainment DVD copy, however. The darks and lights are faded and the film scratchy and at times hard to follow because of the dust and scratches throughout the film.As the story goes one, we find one Maple White, whose diary was found that told of his exploration of this plateau where the dinos were found. His daughter, who we meet in the professor's study, wants to find her father who was abandoned and left up on that plateau alone. Oops. Bessie Love as Maple White's daughter is cute, but she's no Greta Garbo!The main attraction are the dinosaurs and the early still life animation created by Willis O'Brien, who also did the still life animation King Kong (which in turn inspired Ray Harryhausen to try his hand in it) and the rest, as they say, is history.This DVD is not to be confused with Image restoration, which apparently had some outtakes and some interview with an Arthur Conan Doyle historian, as well as two different kinds of orchestras to choose from.The original negatives were lost in the 1930s. Hopefully I can get a better copy. My DVD is very bare-bones, with scene selections.Recommended! These films owe their allegiance to this 1925 silent marvel: The Lost World (Special Edition) - 1960 & 1925 versions Lost World (1960) [VHS ] The Lost World - Jurassic Park (Full-Screen Collector's Edition)

Pretty cool for a old time movie.

It might come as a surprise to today's general movie-goer that back in 1925 audiences were already thrilled and delighted by a special effects action/romance/adventure spectacle not at all unlike the modern-day "Jurassic Park" type of films. This DVD really brings back the glory days of the silent era when all the genres of movies we have today actually developed and even reached their peak of sophistication, and "The Lost World" is a good example of how talented and skilled filmmakers already were back in the 1920s. Based on the famous novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Lost World" is a fictional adventure story based on a few facts, such as the discovery of a high mountain plateau in an unexplored jungle where unknown plants and animals were believed to exist. But then fancy and fantasy take over, and the explorers find aggressive, prehistoric dinosaurs roaming the plateau, and that's when the fun and excitement begins, culminating in a grand climax of a captured dinosaur wreaking havoc in the streets of London with scenes that could rival those of "King Kong" made only several years later. Watching these scenes, it is obvious that a great deal of dedicated effort went into the lengthy animation scenes, especially as many different kinds of prehistoric animals are featured in "The Lost World".It is fortunate that we now have a nearly completely restored version (minus about 10 minutes) of this special film which was a worldwide sensation in 1925, and can still stand up to modern-day movies of the same genre. While some scenes are obvious props or paintings, and sometimes the animals' movements and volcanic eruptions are just a little less realistic than modern digital or computer-generated images, the overall impression of "The Lost World" is that it was a great achievement and landmark in cinema, and paved the way for King Kong, Godzilla, Jurassic Park and many other similar movies along the way. There are two excellent musical accompaniments to choose from on this DVD; a traditional orchestral score, and a more adventurous score by the Alloy Orchestra with unusual sound effects which I actually found to be more suitable at times, such as in the action scenes with the dinosaurs. Along with excellent music and near-perfect picture quality, there are also some bonuses such as the reproduction of the original souvenir program booklet with various interesting articles and pictures, as well as a good audio commentary by an expert on Arthur Conan Doyle. His commentary gives in-depth insight into Doyle's story, how the book differs from the film, but also explanations about how the special effects and animations were done. Even for those of us not especially crazy about dinosaurs, "The Lost World" is still an exciting and fun adventure, and an important, historically significant film for all sincere film enthusiasts.

I got Eureka's release of The Lost World recently and boy it's a case of slipbox overkill - with the DVD case covered by TWO slipboxes, one inside the other :D. Jokes aside, it is a handsome package.I saw most the film yesterday and it's a pretty good entertainer with some grand old-skool stop-motion VFX. The transfer is reconstructed from a number of sources to get the most complete version of the film so far, hence the picture quality varies a fair deal between scenes, but a lot of it looks very good (bar scratches, which to me add nostalgic factor). Need to check out the commentary and other extras soon.

This wonderful restoration of a seminal film that was destroyed by the studio at the start of the talkie era anticipating a remake (this materialised as “King Kong”). We only have this virtually complete and excellent print due to an unknown copy recently discovered in Prague.The animated dinosaurs must have left audiences speechless in 1925; even now they stand up as outstanding examples of stop motion animation, in fact where the dinosaurs are fleeing the volcano one completely forgets the film was made eighty years ago.From the star point of view it is one of Bessie Love’s best roles, although she had one of the longest film careers spanning 1916 to 1981 her career faded during the mid 1930s.This is a multi tinted print commonly distributed at the time and comes with a long selection of animation out takes, and two alternative soundtracks, one traditional and one modern,So roll up ladies and gentlemen, sit and marvel at the precursor of “King Kong”, “Jurassic Park” and “Godzilla”.

This film should be much better knownFantastic (for the time, OK?) effects.As long as you are aware the story contains some pretty dodgy (again, by today's standards) attitudes, enjoy this pre Ray Harrihausen spectacular..

Don't trust the narrative product description. The description says "The disc features the choice of an original, modern score by the Alloy Orchestra and a classic orchestral score compiled and conducted by Robert Israel (both enjoyable and effective)." Not this disk from Alpha Video. The only option at the start of this disk was the choice between "Play" or "Index," the latter taking the viewer to a choice of four chapter stops. The narrative says the disk is the result of a meticulous rebuilding process that created a restored version "which is 50 percent longer than previously extant prints." Again, not this disk. This is the truncated hour-plus version. The narrative is probably the description of the Image (eOne films) disk available at ASIN: B00005ABVFBut even in the present form, this is still a classy film -- though this print bears the marks of many years of use. The basic outlines of the original film are here, just as they have been since the edited version was released in the 1930s. The production design showing how the filmmakers pushed the limits of their craft is clearly here. And it's not a bad hour's entertainment, for what it offers. It seems to be basically the version available on the Internet Archive. For 7-and-change you get a DVD without the tedious process of downloading and converting and burning. That may be worth it for you.Unfortunately, it's not quite what the narrative promises. Hence the three-star, "it's okay" rating. It's not a bad disk, but the catalogue promised so much more. You could think of this as 60% of a classic… it still has class, just not all the way to classic.

Doyle wrote the novel in 1912. This 1925 silent is far better than the 1960 version (Michael Rennie & Jill St. John). A youngish Wallace Beery and Jessie Love are superb abd the monsters are better than anything preceding Ray Harryhausen. I wish the other Challenger tales had been filmed.