King Kong and Godzilla's Ancestor

Usually the kaiju genre is associated with Japanese giant creature features, especially the Godzilla franchise, and even when broadened internationally the origins often don't go any further back than "King Kong" (1933), but the elements for these films was already present in "The Lost World." Indeed, Willis O'Brien, the genius behind the stop-motion animation here, created similar dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures in his earlier work, including "The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy" (1915), "R.F.D. 10,000 B.C.: A Mannikin Comedy" (1917) and "The Ghost of Slumber Mountain" (1918), and one could bring up Winsor McCay cartoons, from "Gertie the Dinosaur" (1914) to "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet" (1921). All the basic elements associated with the giant monster-on-the-loose type of movies are present in "The Lost World" in a way they had not been before.

We got the geopolitical and racialized lens through which the fantasy world is viewed--in this case, a bunch of colonialist adventurers, as in "King Kong." The creature is mediated reflexively as both disaster and show through other media--newspapers and public lecturing here, as well as a well-timed marquee advertising another film (Frank Lloyd's "The Sea Hawk" (1924), not coincidentally also brought to you by First National Pictures). The love triangle reflects the picture's erasure between the boundaries of fantasy and reality. The spectacle of the visual effects--the combination of live action and stop-motion animation--is top notch for its day. And, most importantly, a brontosaurus gets loose for a rampage through the streets of London, which at least is something of a comeuppance for the adventurers' transgression in trespassing through another world.

The only big drawback besides some, perhaps, narrative sloppiness, which may be explained by missing footage even after the 2017 restoration of the film, anyways, and generally childish comic relief is that it features a white actor in blackface as a servant, with white writers offensively affecting supposed black speech in the intertitles included. This is bad enough, but it also occurs beside scenes of another actor dressed up as a hideous ape-like "missing link." The juxtaposition of both characters being portrayed by white actors in heavy make-up is quite incriminating of the picture. Clearly, the filmmakers didn't entirely learn their lesson regarding colonialist attitudes from the misadventure of their characters.

Otherwise, the restoration presented on home video and streaming through Flicker Alley is wonderfully tinted/toned, with even a bit of hand-coloring when a torch is thrown at the Allosaurus. It's an adventure from Arthur Conan Doyle, who is depicted at the beginning introducing the story. The cast is well stocked with the likes of Wallace Beery, Bessie Love and Lewis Stone--all of whom would go on to be at least nominated for Oscars. The fantasy settings are good, with plenty of action of dinosaurs attacking each other, and the visual effects even include an erupting volcano--and that's all before the matte work, miniature and stop-motion animation work that goes into the Brontosaurus knocking over statues, buildings and bridges in London. It's certainly a classic silent film adventure fantasy that's worth watching and was rightly included on the U.S. National Film Registry as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."