This was Willis O’Brien’s final monster movie.
In fact, he would work on only one more film before his death, providing the out of control ladder truck for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
And frankly I find it rather sad that this was the swan song for King Kong‘s creator. He deserved better than getting stuck making a “lizards with fins stuck on them” dinosaur movie.
He doesn’t seem to have done much, though, as 20th Century Fox took one look at the price for his effects and decided that they liked lizards better. But then, they were still hurting from the disaster that was Cleopatra. I’ve heard that someone actually told O’B that blown up lizards looked better. Which I suppose is true, if you have to foot the bill. However, I found that the lizards did a better job of “acting” than they did in most of these films. But I doubt if O’Brien had anything to do with that.
This is also one of Irwin Allen’s films — his first SF film, in fact– made long before he started making all those disaster films. And it feels a lot like an Irwin Allen film — one could easily imagine it as an episode of The Time Tunnel or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, even without the presence of David Hedison (who would eventually end up on the Seaview thanks to his work on this one).
Claude Rains does a marvelous job playing a nicely cantankerous Professor Challenger, and Michael Rennie gives an good, laid back performance as the glamorous big game hunter and explorer, Lord Roxton. In my review of Cyborg 2087, I mistakenly identified it and Assignment Terror as the only two SF films he’d made after The Day the Earth Stood Still. Well, that was wrong. As I missed The Power as well, I have to wonder if there aren’t any others.
But at least this time he isn’t playing Klaatu again.
For once,
This isn’t a bad film. It doesn’t have much to do with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel, but that hardly comes as a surprise. None of the film versions do. It is seriously aggravating that it insists on identifying a lizard with attached fins — which basically looks like a lizard with fins stuck on it — as a specific and instantly familiar dinosaur like a Brontosaurus or a T-Rex. After all, all it would have taken would have been some comment about how they were unique species, only found in the Lost World. But then, I have a sneaking suspicion that principal photography might have been done by the time Fox decided not to pay for something better. However, the giant dinosaur ribcage is a nice touch, even if it should have burned up with all that lava around!
One does have to wonder, though, whether even the screenwriters were getting pretty tired of the hackneyed old plot where the lost tribe threatens to kill our heroes and they are saved by the native girl they’ve befriended.
Oh, well. it’s a pleasant enough film, with a few good moments, a bit of adventure and a reasonably good cast. It offers a jungle movie thrill or two, some giant lizard fights, and a great location for the final battle (which was, yes, borrowed from Journey to the Center of the Earth).
Still, it would have been miles better with Willis O’Brien’s dinosaurs
rivets on the poster 
I’ve always loved this movie since being blown away by a theatrical viewing at the age of six. The lizards may not make convincing dinosaurs but they’re impressive monsters in their own right. However, I doubt their use was motivated by economics. More was spent on the fight scene alone than the entire effects budget for O’Brien’s GIANT BEHEMOTH. Allen made no bones about admitting that waiting for ANIMAL WORLD’s stop motion footage to trickle in a few feet at a time drove him crazy, and I suspect that was the main reason for choosing live lizards for his next prehistoric opus.
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LOL, that does sound plausible! Of course, O’B did come up with some clever tricks for Behemoth — Even when I’m looking for it I have a very hard time spotting the buildings that are just blown up photographs!
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