Just watched Irwin Allen's THE LOST WORLD (1960) for the first time since I was a kid and saw it on one of the network primetime movies (I think it was "NBC Sunday Night At The Movies").
Claude Rains makes a great Professor Challenger in this version of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle classic dinosaur adventure. Jill St. John, Michael Rennie, David Hedison, Richard Haydn, Jay Novello, and Fernando Lamas also star.
As usual, substituting iguanas with fins glued onto them for dinosaurs just looks lame. I still prefer the 1925 silent version with stop-motion animated dinosaurs by Willis O'Brien, who would do the SPFX for "King Kong" eight years later.
This version is less about the dinosaurs and more about the hazardous jungle expedition, the various interpersonal conflicts, and a third act consisting mainly of the group navigating an underground tunnel filled with lava.
During this time they're kept busy staying one step ahead of bloodthirsty cannibals as they try to find a subterranean escape route from the prehistoric jungle plateau on which they've been trapped before an impending earthquake brings the whole place down around them.
Director Irwin Allen handled this sort of material well, and the production looks like it had a fairly generous budget.
Ultimately, though, it's only sporadically entertaining, with Claude Rains' blustery performance and Jill St. John's lighthearted sex appeal providing most of the interest.
The thing I found most interesting about the Allen lOST WORLD is the inclusion of a sexy young native girl, even though there's almost no romance in the film (or none I recall).
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