Lost Continent (1951)

So much average

Absolutely Brilliant!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Copyright 15 August 1951 by Tom Productions, Inc. U.S. release through Lippert Pictures. No recorded New York opening. San Francisco world premiere at the Paramount: 19 July 1951. U.S. release: 17 August 1951. 7,533 feet. 82 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Hunting for a lost rocket, a small party of scientists crash-lands on an unknown Pacific island. NOTES: Shooting from 13 April to 24 April 1951 COMMENT: By the humble standards of both Mr Lippert and the Neufeld Brothers, this is not too trying a little offering. On the debit side (in no particular order) are Mr Sid Melton who labors painfully to garner a few laughs from trite material; animated monsters that look like drawing-board rejects from The Lost World (1925); and a mountain peak that is obviously rooted on a film studio floor. We could also add Hillary Brooke to this side of the ledger. One of our favorite stars, Miss Brooke is treated shamefully here. True, she looks lovely, but she has only one scene. Count it! One! I'll assign Cesar Romero to neither debit nor credit. He's competent enough, but I can take him or leave him. However, I like Chick Chandler and John Hoyt, and it's always good to see Whit Bissell making out as a scientist type. Although the monsters are pretty crummy, at least three or four of the excitements are grippingly presented by director Newfield and I very much the idea of presenting all the top-of-the-mountain footage on green-tinted stock.

I first saw this film courtesy of MST3K, and for years only knew of it from that hilarious episode. Years later I picked up the Image DVD and quickly found it to be an addictive little film with replay value. As a lover of both classic and trashy prehistoric cinema, "Lost Continent" may not necessarily be a good movie, but I feel it has plenty of entertainment value. The stop-motion is not on the level of Harryhausen or O'Brien, but it is solid and I enjoy the fact that only herbivorous dinosaurs are seen (certainly the result of the low budget). I can't help but love the macho characters; the nearly all-male cast is very much of that time period: these tough men climb a mountain and explore a vast lost world, with ample smoke breaks and reminders to the audience that these men are men, and American to the bone. The green tinted-footage is an interesting, if simple, visual effect. I am giving this a high rating for its entertainment value; it's not nearly as bad as some have suggested with their reviews, and better than MST3K may lead you to believe.

Lippert Pictures Lost Continent is an interesting and better product than normally you might get out of this low budget studio. Basically it's a version of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World updated with the plot to include the Cold War. It also is a film that glorifies our brand new United States Air Force only a few years old at the time.Scientists John Hoyt, Whit Bissell, and Hugh Beaumont are testing a new rocket, modifying those V-2s that the Nazis introduced before World War II ended. The thing goes completely haywire and disappears somewhere in the South Pacific.This part of the plot completely lost me. After all the fighting in the Pacific over various islands and decisions which ones to fight for and which ones to bypass, you'd think there would be no lost islands by 1951. But apparently we and the Japanese missed this one and it's a beaut. It's got more uranium per square yard than any place on earth and a big mountain with a prehistoric plateau on which a lot of prehistoric flora and fauna still exist. And a few large dinosaurs as well. Cesar Romero, Chick Chandler, and Sid Melton are Air Force men who take our scientists to look for the rocket and get the data from it. All six have the usual encounters with prehistoric life that one associates with films like these. It looks a whole lot like the Jurassic Park that Richard Attenborough created. The prehistoric sequences are photographed in a sepia toned green, the rest of the film is standard black and white.When I was a kid I saw this on television in the Fifties and I still remember Sid Melton getting gored by a triceratops. Lost Continent was an exciting film back then and kids who are the age I was back then might still like this film. It's better than a lot of Lippert products, but still very hokey.

I hold great nostalgic affection for this film. Yes, it is no "King Kong" regarding its special effects and story, but the film's real strength is in the characters' clever bantering throughout. Some of the banter is not PC (calling women "dames", cracks about marriage, much smoking as if a cigarette company bankrolled the film) but it's still great fun. The dinosaurs don't come off well in ways more than movement. They look like cute toys. Possible SPOILER*** here. To all wondering about the missing scene with Sid Melton, it is intact in the DVD version with Cesar Romero and Hugh Beaumont sharing the cover with two battling triceratops in the background. The cover is also green. This is a great film to watch on a lazy weekend afternoon especially if the weather is bad.