THE LOST WORLD

d. Harry O. Hoyt
USA, 1925

THE LOST WORLD is, if not the very first, certainly a primary examplar of lost world tropes which have bubbled up in various media like so much crimson-tinted lava all the years since. Here on a tropical plateau isolated in time, we have all the vulcanism, caverns, jungle foliage, hanging vines, missing links, skeletal remains of previous explorers, and of course dinosaurs which are associated with the genre.

Entire sequences are templates for later works. A canoe ride upriver cuts between shots of exotic animals on the shore and the dazzled faces of the canoe's passengers. Another sequence has the explorers crossing a chasm by inching along a felled tree.

It's hard for a film of this sort - even if it is the first of its kind - to stand on its own merit. THE LOST WORLD is generally considered a dry run for KING KONG. But KING KONG has such a potency of its own that it takes an effort to recognize it as a member of the Lost World subgenre. Recognition comes, of course, once you count the similarities between the films - all the elements listed above appear in KONG as well - but then again KONG is also something much more. KONG cannot be confused with any other film; THE LOST WORLD has a fuzzier identity.

4 January 2010