It’s Friday and that means it’s movie night! Yes, today we’re
going to look at a dinosaur movie, and this time we’re looking at one of the
first. Today’s film is from 1925-yes, dinosaurs not only were before people,
but before talkies. This is Harry Hoyt’s adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
the Lost World. Before Harry Potter and its trend of having films made of
recent popular books, this film was made only 13 years after the original book
was published, and proved more popular.
Every dinosaur fan has seen this,
every fan of special effects owes it to themselves to see it, and the bizarre history of this film makes it
special among even silent films.
Of course, when it comes to adaptations of fiction, you
reach a fork in the road when reviewing. You have two questions: first, how
well does it hold up as an adaptation of the original story? Second, how well
does it hold up as its own film without the original work taken into account?
As an adaptation, let’s just say it’s not alone. You see,
this is the first of six films and two television series based on the novel,
none of them having much in common in plot and characters. This one might be
the best, but it’s still a major deviation and in many ways inferior to the
book.
Only two characters are recognizable from their book selves,
and fortunately these are the main two-Professor George Challenger and Edward
Malone. Malone is an earnest, curious, tenacious, romantic and idealistic
reporter, much like in the book and played decently by Lloyd Hughes. Challenger
is a bombastic, egoistical, brilliant, aggressive larger-than-life character,
ably played by the great Wallace Beery. While Malone isn’t quite as nuanced or
sympathetic as in the book, and Challenger seems to fade into the background as
soon as the dinosaurs enter the scene, they are a great deal more successful
than the other two lead characters. Sir John Roxton, the wry, intrepid, quirky
adventurer in the book, comes off as a stiff, boring old man. His only role is
to act as the opposite man in the inevitable love triangle. We never see his
flashes of wit or action exploits in this version-indeed, it seems that outside
of Doyle, none of the filmmakers seem to have much fondness for the character.
Summerlee is the weakest of the four in the book, but at least he acts as a
level headed foil for Challenger. Here, he barely has much in the way of scenes
and could easily have been written out entirely.
There’s also a change with minor characters; Challenger’s
stolid butler Austin accompanies them and acts as cockney comedy relief, the
treacherous Brazilian helpers are removed entirely, and the loyal “black Hercules”
servant Zambo is reduced to merely blackface comic relief. There are two major additions in terms of
characters, however. One is a pet Capuchin monkey who acts as comic relief and
as a device to bring about the isolation of their party and their subsequent escape
by rope ladder. The other, more significant one, is Paula White, played by
Bessie Love. She is the daughter of explorer Maple White, hoping to rescue him
from the plateau. In the book, Maple White dies in Challenger’s arms during a
flashback and tells him of the titular plateau. White is inexplicably betrothed to Roxton,
falls in love with Malone, shares several tepid romantic scenes but has little
to do with the action, and then drives off into the night with Malone at the
ending. To quote a Carl Denham, “Isn't there any romance or adventure in the world
without having a flapper in it?” Every last adaptation of the story from 1925
to 2005 has an extraneous love interest, all of which come off as entirely
gratuitous and bring nothing to the story.
Of course, there is a major change in action set pieces.
Other than a shared Allosaur attack, the movie takes a very different approach
for the plot. Instead of a marauding colony of apemen and a great war between
them and the humans on the plateau, there is only one apeman and his chimpanzee
sidekick. He briefly harasses our party a few times before his attempt to pull
up their rope ladder leads to his shooting by Roxton. The Iguanodon herd of the
original is replaced by a brontosaurus, Apatosaurus simply being the more
popular dinosaur. Apatosaurus turns out to be the most significant prehistoric character,
knocking off the log bridge and later fighting an Allosaurus. The nightmarish
but mineral-rich pterosaur rookery is omitted entirely-Challenger brings home a
brontosaur! The rampage scene that makes the climax of the film is well done,
brief, and ultimately the prototype for similar rampages by King Kong,
Godzilla, and all their gigantic ilk.
Allosaurus is still the main dinosaur villain, but instead
of chasing Malone during one night and being brought down by native poison arrow
fire later on, it has its share of brutal battles. It makes its debut, instead of
the novel’s butchered iguanodon carcass, attacking and killing a trachodon.
Like the Apatosaur, Edmontosaurus eclipsed Iguanodon by then. The Allosaurus
attacks a herd of Triceratops, but one protective mother drives him off and he
meets his fate at the horns of an Agauthamas. Agauthamas is an interesting
case-based on dubious ceratopsian skeletal remains then illustrated
imaginatively by Charles R Knight. Sculptor Maurice Delgado based his creature,
along with all the others, on Knight’s art, and it makes its one and only film
appearance. Said Aguathamas is in turn slain by a Tyrannosaurus, making his
second film debut as a cameo. Another
Allosaurus fights a brontosaur, but the prey falls off the cliff during the
struggle.
Another film invention that precluded many more in the
future is the introduction of an erupting volcano and a forest fire. Volcanoes
have since become stock in prehistoric tales, but far more spectacular is the
world’s first dinosaur stampede. Herds of brontosaurs, Stegosaurus (film debut)
Brachiosaurus (not to be seen again on the big screen until Jurassic Park),
Triceratops, Agauthamas, Allosaurs, and Tyrannosaurs run around the massive
miniature jungle until the sequence (only existing for spectacle’s sake) is
over.
The action climax of the book is the battle with the apes
and the slaying of two Allosaurs, followed by the falling action of their
escape and return to London
with a pterosaur in tow. This is replaced-after the fire and Malone and Whites’
declaration of love, the aforementioned brontosaur sequence ends the film. This
is a deviation that has nothing to do with the original work, but can be viewed
as an improvement. You could easily
argue that this film improves on the original simply by having more dinosaurs in
a film than almost any other since. The romance, and most of the other changes
are detrimental, but no film has suffered for the inclusion of more dinosaurs.
How does it work as a stand alone film? It’s not much for
characters. Challenger is the only interesting character and he has little to
do once appearing on the plateau except speaking out paragraphs of exposition.
Silent films have inherent problems-no vocal performances limit what acting can
be done, dialogue is minimal, and there is no musical score to add much-needed
emotion. However, it’s probably the biggest special effects film of the silent
era, even more than Metropolis or a Trip to the Moon. With his stop-motion
animated dinosaurs, Willis O’Brien practically invented film special effects, a
feat that would only be surpassed by his work for King Kong. The dinosaurs are
as realistic as they come until Ray Harryhausen picked up the table from his
master. They not only look fantastic not only as models but also in motion
(Delgado’s models are detailed, aesthetically impressive, and based on the best
paleoartist of all time) and act mostly realistically. An Allosaur scratches
his jaw, a baby Triceratops seeks after his mother, and she defends him from
the predator. O’Brien fills his models
with character and acts through them-Allosaurus and its brontosaur prey glower
and sneer at each other, the Apatosaurus sniffs, roars, rears, and meanders its
way through London,
the Allosaurus snaps indignantly at being chased off by Triceratops and escaped
by the brontosaur, and dying dinosaurs writhe in agony, flailing their feet and
screaming silently. O'Brien, through his animation, is a far better actor than any of the cast. Imagining this film without O'Brien and Delgado is like imagining Jurassic Park without Phil Tippet, Dennis Muren and ILM.
The film, alas, was lost for decades, and only two
nearly-complete versions exist, and each has content the other one hasn’t. For
the complete experience, you’ll have to edit both the George Eastman and Film
Preservation Associate version. I think the FPA version is better, but they are
both excellent restorations of a film that, thanks to the arbitrary nature of
the film industry for its first 30 years, was cut down to the bare essentials.
This is a very good overview of the many versions in print:
I definitely liked it. Despite much of its problems both as
a film and an adaptation, it’s an entertaining film for its dinosaurs alone and
definitely a great historical piece. If you like stop motion animation,
dinosaurs, or both, this is definitely worth looking for. It’s still the best adaptation
of the book in my opinion, has more dinosaur action than most dinosaur films,
and by far my favorite silent film. I give it a 75/100.
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