Zach Klinefelter I first saw this film courtesy of MST3K, and for years only knew of it from that hilarious episode. Years later I picked up the Image DVD and quickly found it to be an addictive little film with replay value. As a lover of both classic and trashy prehistoric cinema, "Lost Continent" may not necessarily be a good movie, but I feel it has plenty of entertainment value. The stop-motion is not on the level of Harryhausen or O'Brien, but it is solid and I enjoy the fact that only herbivorous dinosaurs are seen (certainly the result of the low budget). I can't help but love the macho characters; the nearly all-male cast is very much of that time period: these tough men climb a mountain and explore a vast lost world, with ample smoke breaks and reminders to the audience that these men are men, and American to the bone. The green tinted-footage is an interesting, if simple, visual effect. I am giving this a high rating for its entertainment value; it's not nearly as bad as some have suggested with their reviews, and better than MST3K may lead you to believe.

William Samuel Lost Continent, which stars Caesar Romero and the dad from Leave it to Beaver, is one of the most boring movies I have ever seen. Most of it can be described as filler, and not very good filler at that. It begins, as did so many low-budget movies from the '50s, with stock footage of a rocket launch. The rocket soon crashes in some unnamed county (I think it's in South America, but it might be the South Pacific, or Africa) and a team of scientists and military types are sent to retrieve it. No points for guessing that their plane immediately crashes in the middle of wherever it is they are.They find out from the few remaining natives that the rocket landed on a nearby plateau, which they proceed to climb. Once on top, they discover a lost world where dinosaurs roam and uranium paves the streets, so to speak. Dinosaurs, jungles, treacherous climbs, and even a massive unexplained cataclysm at the end- this is the kind of material that pulp magazines and B-movies thrive on. Lost Continent has all the ingredients of a dumb but exciting adventure movie. You wouldn't expect this to be Oscar material, but you'd think there'd be a lot of action.Alas, Lost Continent fails to meet even these minimal expectations. Most shots involve the team members making small talk, slogging through jungles, or climbing. Oh how they climb. The movie is only 80 minutes long, and a full thirty minutes of that is spent getting up the cliffs. This could have been dangerous, or exciting, but that would have taken too much money. So instead we get the Captain Video effect, in which the actors climb the same fake ledges over and over again, while the cameras studiously avoid any breathtaking vertical shots which would reveal that they're actually at ground level. Even when someone falls to his death, we only see the reaction of the companion who failed to save him.You'd think the dinosaurs would spice things up a bit, but no. We get cheap Claymation dinos that are less detailed than the ones in King Kong, filmed twenty years earlier. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that the scenes with the dinosaurs are yet more stock footage lifted from other films. This would explain why we never see the dinos and the actors in the same frame, even through rear projection. And the Brontosaurus looks suspiciously like the one in 1925's The Lost World. So no, there isn't a single bit of excitement generated by the dinosaur attacks.The movie is further hampered by the lack of any real acting. True, I wasn't expecting the actors to be convincing, but I thought there might be some campy over-acting. Instead the cast performs as if they were on downers. Every line sounds like they were reading it off the script while fighting drowsiness. These guys are more wooden than a cigar store Indian. They get over their colleague's death in less than a minute, and pronouncements that they're running out of food and may never get home alive are delivered with no more urgency than if they were missing an episode of House. I suspect this is a reflection of the cast's total apathy. I also suspect that Lost Continent was made just so the distributors would have something to show on the bottom of a double-bill.If you've read many of my previous reviews, you've probably guessed by now that I cheated and watched the MST3K version. I was pretty good, as Joel and the 'bots had a field day pointing out the utter lack of action. This version is worth checking out for a few laughs. The original is worthless, except as a sleep aid.

joebergeron Russian refugee scientist John Hoyt attracts intense suspicion during the plane ride with his weird behavior. First, he refuses a cup of coffee. Traitor! Then, he is found to be looking at maps, another suspicious activity. Our stalwarts approach an uncharted island, somehow failing to notice its towering, sheer-sided pedestal of a mountain until they're on the ground. It's full of uranium, whose magical properties include a form of magnetism capable of attracting errant missiles. They climb it, discovering a few dinosaurs atop it, including a pair of sweetly doe-eyed ceratopsians who are nevertheless averse to humans. The rocket has augured straight into the ground, but appears to be undamaged.There has been some talk about how kind and gentle herbivorous dinosaurs must have been. I would like to mention a few contemporary herbivores: rhinos, hippos, cape buffalo, bison. Perhaps someone would like to walk up to these creatures and pet them.

acarrera As a child I hated Sci FI movies but this one was compelling the actors were great and the plot the same. its a must see again. I believed then and still hold some theory that one day we will venture in to a lost continent in the south Pacific, Ther are so many small uncharted Islands.