Possibly a bit of a museum piece these days - more interesting for what it represents than as a piece of immersive entertainment in its own right.

Absolutely fascinating, though. You could almost be peering through a time-travel nickelodeon machine into the Victorian age - although I have to admit a big part of that effect is how beaten up and stodgy the print looks. Not sure if there is a scrubbed up version doing the rounds but the one on Amazon Prime is rough as guts. It serves, though - my advice is to switch off the shithouse soundtrack and just listen to your own music while this is on - one of the delights of silent films for me is they allow me to catch up on music I want to listen to at the same time as watching and absorbing a film.

Although the stop motion will look pretty jerky to our 21st century eyes, it's still totally watchable. Some sequences are pulled off better than others but, I tell you what, some of the better ones (like the brontosaurus falling off the plateau and then showing signs of life after the fall) must have dumbfounded audiences back in 1925. Surely this film blew some minds, right? Hey, people learn quick, and it had been some years since the famous panic caused by the film of the train coming in to the station, but folks must have been wondering what the hell they were seeing here. Without knowing a single thing about stop motion animation - that it even exists and is possible, because many people probably didn't fully understand how film worked - seeing these dinosaurs walking around and acting realistically must have been one hell of a trip. Movie magic, folks.

Speaking of King Kong, I'm sure the makers of that film had one eye over their shoulder learning from this one - they sure as hell perfected the techniques experimented with here, particularly in the evocation of place. The jungle and plateau effects here feel decidedly two-dimensional, which the latter film turned into a production design miracle.

Overall, though, and especially considering the breezy 69 minute running time, The Lost World is definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of films like this, and pretty essential if you're a student of film history.