I Watch Films: The Lost World (1960)

 

The Lost World

Updated from Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel to the present day (1960) Professor Challenger returns from the Amazon Jungle on a TWA flight that appears to land very badly. The press try to question him but he dismisses them, knocking down Ed Malone of Global News – in front of the boss’s daughter. At the Royal Zoological Society he claims to have seen dinosaurs on top of a plateau, but lost his photographs when the boat overturned. This degenerates into an argument, with Challenger, his rival Professor Summerlee, big game hunter Lord Roxton and Malone forming a party funded by Global News.

Arriving at the headwaters of the Amazon we find the daughter and son of the Global News chief, who have come with the helicopter pilot. They insist on joining them; the daughter has a handbag dog and her luggage (and boots) are pink, just to show the level of seriousness they're taking this. It becomes clear that she and Lord Roxton had a thing, and she’s keener than he is.

They fly up, a dinosaur wrecks the helicopter and they try to find their way down. There are various monsters (lizards with horns and so forth stuck on, also a giant spider played by a normal spider) and a local tribe who came up through caves. It turns out that Challenger’s wasn’t the first expedition and some people are keeping secrets.

It’s old fashioned, and the monsters not especially good. When it moves briskly it’s fun, but it tends to bog down in the more elaborate sets, with characters arguing. That Challenger manages to be rude to everyone is fun, and refuses to be upstaged even by betrayers.

Watch This: For an old, family-friendly dinosaur adventure
Don’t Watch This: There are better dinosaur adventures