Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

People are voting emotionally.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Producer: Irwin Allen. An Irwin Allen Production. Copyright 1960 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Warner: 13 July 1960. U.S. release: July 1960. U.K. release: 28 August 1960. Australian release: December 1960. 97 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Zoology Professor George Edward Challenger (Claude Rains) flies home to London from South America to announce he has discovered a "lost world" where Jurassic monsters from 150,000,000 B.C. still roam. His claim is doubted by members of the Zoological Institute, so he offers to lead an expedition back to the area. Those who accompany Challenger on his next exploration are Lord Roxton (Michael Rennie), a playboy and big game hunter; Jennifer Holmes (Jill St John), daughter of the American newspaper executive who finances this venture; David Holmes (Ray Stricklyn), Jennifer's brother; Ed Malone (David Hedison), American newsman and photographer; and Professor Walter Summerlee (Richard Haydn), a scientist who has long been critical of Challenger.When the party arrives at a remote trading post on the Amazon, two others join the expedition — Gomez (Fernando Lamas), who pilots the helicopter to the plateau where the "lost world" exists, and Costa (Jay Novello), a jungle travel agent and guide. Gomez, who notices everything while he plays his guitar and sings, realizes that Jennifer is very interested in Lord Roxton, but Roxton isn't serious about Jennifer.Gomez lands the helicopter beside a cliff, atop the "lost world". This is a land of strange vegetation, of intertwining vines, of contorted trees and bizarre colors.NOTES: "The Lost World" was first filmed by First National in 1925. It was directed by Harry Hoyt and starred Lewis Stone, Bessie Love and Wallace Beery. In the earlier film the adventurers returned to London with the baby dinosaur which later terrorized the city.COMMENT: After carping about "Journey to the Center of the Earth", a lot of critics then had the audacity to compare this movie unfavorably. I found both equally enjoyable. Neither is meant to be taken seriously so far as plot and characters are concerned, but both have wonderful sets and effects which are ideally suited to and look absolutely great in CinemaScope.I especially liked Claude Rains as the larger-than-life Challenger, Michael Rennie as the steadfast hero, Richard Haydn the ideal Summerlee, and Jill St John the appealingly comic-stripped heroine.OTHER VIEWS: Pleasingly chipper... refuses to take itself too seriously... fright with a smile on its face. — Paul V. Beckley in the N.Y. Herald Tribune.

Irwin Allen's version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World is very much in the spirit of 1959's JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, with double-crosses, character revelations, back-projected giant lizards with fins and frills made out to be dinosaurs, and lots of bubbling lava come the finale. Unfortunately it's nowhere near equal to the status of that acknowledged classic, saddled with grating characters, very dated, and very much a product of its time. The excellent, atmospheric set design (including spooky jungles and fiery caves) and the reliance on an action-orientated plot to keep the film moving at all times makes it watchable, escapist B-film fun with a budget larger than usual, nothing more.The cast is also pretty good, with not one but two heavyweight performances listed. The first is Claude Rains who excels as the short-tempered, reporter-beating Professor Challenger, and considering his age at the time Rains does a brilliant job, really fitting into the character. Michael Rennie is big-game hunter Lord Roxton but you can't help feeling his performance is a little wooden here and there - perhaps his outstanding turn in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL was a one-off, or maybe he could only play one type of character skilfully. Whatever, he seems miscast here and out of place. David Hedison (brother of THE FLY's Al) has the uninteresting role of the young macho reporter/adventurer and makes a fist of what is pretty much an inconsequential part. Sadly, as with other adaptations of the Doyle story, superfluous characters have been grafted in to make the relationships a bit more complex - even a poodle! Jill St. John is the annoyingly feisty red-haired companion and what is it with that irritating voice of hers? The jabbering natives and sweaty diamond-seeking Mexican character reek of racism and are an unfortunate by-product of the period.I was elated to see the name of the pioneer of stop-motion animation, Willis O'Brien, appear in the credits but alas this is a deceit, as there is no stop-motion in the movie. Instead we get some rubbishy effects of enlarged lizards with spikes and frills glued on to their bodies in place of real dinosaurs and the effect is less than convincing. There is one exception, a shot at the end where a wiggling man is trapped in the jaws of these reptiles and he's certainly not a dummy, and I'm still curious as to how that particular shot was achieved. Cheap thrills come from giant spiders and killer plants but these can only be enjoyed on a so-bad-it's-good level, as the effects have dated that much. Fun does come from watching a few errors, like the hilarious action man falling down a cliff at the end or the dinosaur egg which breaks and turns out to be hollow with a lizard inside! There's also a fist-fight between Hedison and Rennie with hilarious dubbed-in punching noises which had me laughing out loud. Overall this is an okay effort, not great but it certainly passes the time for kind fans of the period.

I was 8 in 1960. And here was a big, colourful, widescreen film with adventure, excitement, dinosaurs, giant spiders, natives, cliff edge escapes, volcanoes - wow! Now, pushing 60, I am not so demanding as to insist that movies from 50 years ago should have effects executed to the same standard as the best of today's - far from it. In fact, I still have huge affection for the best effects movies of my childhood (by which, of course, I mean those by Ray Harryhausen).But hindsight illuminates the offerings of Irwin Allen as very much missing something on the effects side. I'm not entirely sure what or why, but they never quite go as far as they need to for the suspension of disbelief. Perhaps it's errors of scale, perhaps it's messy matte lines, and for sure it is lizards with fins glued on them. But there is something about Allen's films which always disappoints.And the funny thing is that I was aware of it when I was 8, too.

This 1960 retelling of the novel has many good points and far more bad points. The characters are more or less the same just updated in social class and occupation to suit the modern setting. All the explorers led by Challenger visit a plateau that Challenger claims to be inhabited by prehistoric monsters. They end up having their helicopter smashed by a brontosaurus (in reality a monitor lizard with a large frill and Godzilla style spikes on it's back ) so they have to find a way out of the mountain. Along the way the encounter natives more dinosaurs which include the creature that destroyed their helicopter , a baby alligator and another monitor lizard all of which have fins glued on. The acting isn't great but it certainly isn't bad just fairly average , the dinosaurs are goofy but they do look quite cool and sometimes fierce like during the fight between two of them , they are lizards but it is kind of fun to watch. I wouldn't recommend it but i wouldn't prohibit it either , it's a Marmite movie you love it or hate it. The only thing i'm not happy with is certain scenes of animal cruelty involving the lizards.