Poor old Willis H. O’Brien. For his last film credit, the guy who created the eighth wonder of the world, better known as King Kong, was reduced to drawing dinosaur sketches for a film that ultimately didn’t use any of them.
To add insult to injury, the finished product, 1960’s THE LOST WORLD, a remake of O’Brien’s 1925 stop motion animation silent classic, ended up dressing lizards with horns and frills to appear as dinosaurs. Thus we get an iguana filling in for a Brontosaurus, an alligator masquerading as a T-Rex and a poodle playing…well, a poodle (yes there is an annoying dog scampering about in this one folks).
Produced and directed by Irwin Allen for 20TH Century Fox to cash in on the success of the previous year’s JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, THE LOST WORLD may seem lost when it comes to its special effects, but it’s still a lot of colorful fun.
You get a fine cast, which includes Claude Rains, David “The Fly” Hedison and a young and very pink Jill St. John…
A scene featuring a giant, green spider grabbing at a beautiful native girl (Vitina Marcus)…
A cliffhanger sequence above a bed of red, bubbling lava…
And did I mention Jill St. John….?
Ultimately, this isn’t the best way to first catch an adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic adventure tale, that should be reserved for the 1925 version. But if you’re looking for a cheesy, good old-fashioned time in CinemaScope, you could do worse.
— MAC BELL (@lookatthegrouse).
Tags: Alligators, CinemaScope, Claude Rains, Columns, Dinosaurs, Iguanas, Irwin Allen, Jill St. John, Poodles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Spiders, Trailers, Willis H. O’Brien
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