Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a superbly cast and well acted sci-fi adventure yarn based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sci-fi fantasy of the same name. The main draws of this silent film are a well integrated cast of fine actors, all working with much chemistry with one another; and of course, Willis O'Brien's once-famous stop motion special effects where the dinosaurs tear at each other in several scenes (most quite short though). Of course the special effects now seem quite primitive, but during its time it was trailblazing, and some of it still works quite work, and without O'Brien's creative works the movie would never come into fruition.The movie had been subjected to cuts and has only been quite recently restored and re-edited to about 110 minutes of length which is as close as the original version as we could possibly see in the 21st century. The first one-third of the film, where human interests prevail and when the main characters are introduced, are expertly done. The main characters, the irascible Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery), the young, dauntless reporter Malone (Lloyd Hughes), damsel in distress Paula White (Bessie Love) and suave gentleman gamehunter Sir John Roxton (Lewis Stone), could hardly been bettered.Some people might be less interested in adventure and sci fi fantasy and might find the human interest ebb away after the party lands in Brazil and the Amazon. That is when O'Brien's stop motion animation takes over. Admittedly some of them may seem a bit primitive compared to the CGI we see in, say, "Jurassic Park". But taken in the context of the period many of the special effects are still quite amazing, not to say possessing much quaint cuteness to it.Sad to say I watched the older 93 minutes cut of the film but it still made an impression as a silent film classic, particularly the last reel when the Brontosaurus escapes to rampage London, prefiguring the apocalyptic scenes of "King Kong" six years later.

Copyright 24 January 1925 by First National Pictures. New York opening at the Astor: 8 February 1925. U.S. release: 22 June 1925. 10 reels. 9,700 feet = approx. 108 minutes at sound (i.e. 24 frames per second) speed. (Available on a splendid Image/Blackhawk DVD).SYNOPSIS: Professor Challenger claims to have discovered a lost world in South America. This world is full of prehistoric animals and ape-men. Although his colleagues doubt Challenger, an expedition to this supposed lost world is organized. COMMENT: Harry Hoyt's one claim to fame. Yes, he did direct other films. In fact he was still going strong in 1933. He was also active as a screenwriter. But all his other efforts are totally forgotten. Would you believe, a 16mm 5-reel print of this "Lost World" was still circulating among film societies in the 1990s. Such was the film's reputation that a showing was always guaranteed to bring in a full house.Of course it was not the directorial efforts of Harry Hoyt that attracted the crowds. It was Willis O'Brien. And although the technique of animating his model dinosaurs and flying reptiles is still primitive, you can see the genesis of ideas that were later refined for King Kong. The business with the moving eyes for instance and the little touches like the dinosaur licking clean his claws. In fact, many of these scenes – given a halfway decent print and sensitive projection – will still overpower even a modern-day audience audience. Alas, the framing story is less interesting – though it's good to see Wallace Beery in his silent-days prime. However it does serve as the means for a grand climax (which became almost obligatory for films of this genre) in which a brontosaurus runs amok in modern London. I should point out that the original 16mm print in circulation in the 1990's (formerly distributed by Kodak) was condensed to little more than half the movie's original running time. While all the footage of the beasts seemed intact, it was obvious that extensive cuts had been made to the Bessie Love-Lloyd Hughes romance, as well as to Lewis Stone's footage. Comedy relief was also jettisoned. All this re- cutting made Beery the star – well, second to the dinosaurs anyway – whereas formerly Love, Hughes and Stone headed the cast list. And this they certainly do in Image/Blackhawk's splendid, breathtakingly tinted DVD version!

The Lost World is incredibly ahead of its time being a mid 20's silent film with loads of creativity and well done animation. I'm still a little baffled as how the creators managed to make these dinosaurs seem so real on grainy footage. There are a ton of fight scenes between different types of dinosaurs that portrayed them pretty well to their potential ancient characters. The storyline was pretty good, dull at times, I just wish they would have added more dialogue and shortened up the duration of the readings. I found most of the characters unlikeable especially Malone and the professor but they weren't bad enough to make me dislike the film. Going into the movie I thought the plot was going to center around the humans and dinosaurs so I found it interesting and kind of cool to see that they added some buffoon type natives and an evil ape creature. I can definitely see how this movie set up for classics like King Kong and Jurassic Park. If you have the patience for an older silent film I really recommend The Lost World.

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."