JLRVancouver Based on the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame), "The Lost World" follows the exploits of Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery) as he leads a team to an isolated South American plateau on which prehistoric creatures have survived. Although their often frenetic or overly melodramatic styles of silent acting dates the film, the human cast is fine but the real stars of "The Lost World" are the animated dinosaurs created by Willis O'Brien, who less than a decade later brought King Kong to life. I can't imagine what original audiences felt the first time they saw a brontosaurus walk across the screen or witnessed the iconic fight between a vicious and agile allosaurus and a heavily armoured triceratops - contemporary reviews suggest that they were astounded and impressed. Well worth watching as an entertaining, albeit implausible, adventure, or as a piece of cinematic history, or both.

Bret Hampton This version greatly improves upon the previous Image Entertainment DVD release. Not only is it a new HD film scan masterfully done by Lobster Films in Paris, but there are many special features, including a new stereo orchestral score by Robert Israel, deleted scenes, a couple of short films directed by special effects master Willis O'Brien, an image gallery and a booklet chronicling the restoration of this important film that made the classic King Kong possible.

Zach Klinefelter Any film buff with half a brain who has seen this film will appreciate its place as one of the most important special effects films of all time. It baffles me the rating stands at a mere 7.1 on this site. While not a masterpiece in every sense of the word (the dinosaurs are far more compelling than the humans), this 1925 gem was single-handedly responsible for pioneering stop-motion animation and inspired countless filmmakers to pursue their dreams well after the film's release. Factoring in the film's outdated stereotypes and racism into one's opinion of how it holds up today is pathetic and pointless! It's hard to say how things would have been different and what rate visual effects would have evolved had this not been made. Willis O'Brien refined the methods he used on TLW for "King Kong" a mere 8 years later, a classic which owes its special effects, story, and legacy to "The Lost World". The craftsmanship and wonder that TLW displays is beyond comparison; no "lost world" movie since has given such an epic display of prehistoric life. Remarkable. See the restored edition if possible!

zardoz-13 Long before Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park: The Lost World" astonished audiences by releasing dinosaurs to rampage around Southern California, co-directors Harry O. Hoyt and William Dowling had beaten them to the punch with their 1925, black and white silent movie dinosaur saga "The Lost World" where a brontosaurus creates havoc in metropolitan London. In truth, the silent film "The Lost World" qualifies as the first live-action dinosaur epic. The ingenious filmmakers blended shots of actual flesh-and-blood actors with scenes of model dinosaurs tromping through the jungle by means of the static matte and the traveling matte so that both appear to be interacting at the same time. The first special effects guru, Willis O'Brien, paved the way for future classics with his pioneering efforts in stop-motion animation with which he achieved greater and more enduring success in 1933 with "King Kong." Although time has not been kind to it, "The Lost World" still ranks as the best adaptation of author A. Conan Doyle's science fiction novella. Incidentally, this is the same Doyle who wrote the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Until David Shepard of Film Preservation Associates restored "The Lost World," this landmark opus has been shown in prints that eliminated about a third of its actual length. The egregious public domain versions average about an hour, while the Image DVD restoration boasts 93 minutes. Experts have estimated that the original running time of the film was about ten minutes longer that this restored version. Again, the claim to fame here is that "The Lost World" not only beat the "Jurassic Park" sequel to the punch, but it also predated the seminal Japanese monster flick "Godzilla" as well as "King Kong." Everybody who has produced a fictional dinosaur film owes a debt of gratitude to Hoyt and Dowling as well as O'Brien and his behind-the-scenes collaborator, Mexican sculptor Marcel Delgado, who carved the miniature dinosaurs for him. Ironically, during the production of "The Lost World," the suits at First National Studios didn't believe that O'Brien's ground-breaking technical innovations would fare as well as they did. Mind you, this wasn't the first time that O'Brien played around with miniature dinosaurs. O'Brien engineered the effects for the 1918 film "The Ghost of Slumber Mountain," that some would argue was the original "feature-length" dinosaur movie. Reportedly, not only did Doyle see a print of "The Lost World" but he also liked it! According to the archivists at Turner Classic Movies, "The Lost World" was "the first in-flight movie, shown on an Imperial Airways flight in a converted Handley-Page bomber from London, UK, to Paris, France, in April 1925."