The Lost World (1925)
Directed by: Harry O. Hoyt
Starring: Bessie Love, Lewis Stone, Wallace Berry, Lloyd Hughes
Length: 106 min.
Genre: Adventure / Fantasy
Based On: "The Lost World" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1912 Novel)
Willis O'Brian obviously did not invent stop-motion animation, but the techniques and items he created made him the most well known pioneer of stop motion. He created ball socket armatures and crated materials to use as skin. A film he worked on in 1916 called Nippy's Nightmare was the first movie to have scenes with live actors and stop motion at the same time.
Willis O'Brian's creative use of stop-motion is pretty much the only reason to see this movie.
Professor Challenger has claimed to have found real dinosaurs deep in the Amazon, and will take anyone who will go to see them. The last time he went, one of his men was left behind, so a newspaper pays for the expedition for the exclusive to the story, both of the dinosaurs and of the rescue of the missing man.
As they head to the plateau where the man was last seen, a brontosaurus knocks down a tree they used as a bridge, trapping them. From there, they continue to look for the lost man while having to dodge encounters with the dinosaurs.
The movie switches between following the explorers and a showcase of O'Brian's claymation. The claymation scenes are very interesting. For one of the first uses of the technique in a feature length film, I was pretty impressed. It actually makes me wonder why stop-motion looks the way it does in movies from the 70s and 80s. With how it looks in a 1925 movie, you'd think it would have progressed a lot more, but some of the stop-motion I've seen in movies that are relatively recent didn't look really all that much better than in this movie.
Entertainment wise, the movie was "bleh". I pretty much hated all of the characters. But I would definitely recommend this for those who want to see what cutting edge special effects were like in 1925.
Entertainment Rating: 5/10
Historical Rating: 8/10