Lost Continent (1951)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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.

Boy is there rock climbing in this 1951 dinosaur adventure movie. Climbing, climbing, and more climbing. That is, when there isn't trudging through jungle, jungle and more jungle on screen. They sure knew how to fill up a movie in those days...Cesar Romero (Yaaay!) leads an expedition to, er basically find a missing rocket's black box or something. That's about all the plot there is; though genre fans can savour the sight of John Hoyt (the original Doctor in a Star Trek pilot, Whit Bissel, and Aquanetta looking to pay the bills. I have a soft spot for Mr Bissel, who always showed dignity in these sorts of movies, no matter how silly they were.There are a few stop-motion dinosaurs on show - but they look to me horribly over-exposed and are probably stock footage from other movies - the actors never interact with them on camera, which is a dead give-away. Still, this movie, while full of soporific filler, is not quite in the turkey class, has a pretty decent ending, and with a better script and better defined characters might have made a decent flick. The budget probably defeated it....

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.

I don't quite understand the reviews for Lost Continent on IMDb. Most of the users who have taken the time to write a review have rated the movie a 5 or better. Huh? What did I miss? Sure, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen, but come on! Lost Continent is about as exciting as watching grass grow or watching paint dry or any other tired, old cliché you can think of. It's deathly dull! It seems that at least half of the movie is devoted to watching the characters either climb a mountain or just walk around. As a viewer, you get to watch all six characters going over the same boulder - and doing so very slowly - and without any tension or suspense - and often without any background music. And when our group of intrepid explorers isn't climbing over the same stage-bound rock for the fourth time, they're walking through a fake looking jungle. Actually, they're not really walking as it seems each time the camera cuts to them they're taking a fifteen minute break. How exciting is that! They don't do much and nothing much happens to them. Two-thirds of the movie is over before the first dinosaur makes an appearance. I realize that Lost Continent was made with a very small budget, but these dinosaurs are terrible. Movies made 20 years previous had better looking stop motion special effects.But as I wrote earlier, Lost Continent is far from the worst movie I've seen. The acting alone keeps this thing from being a total waste of time. The name actors in Lost Continent are Cesar Romero and Hugh Beaumont. Both do a decent enough job, but they're not given much to stretch their acting abilities. Also present, as he was in seemingly everything made in the 50s and 60s, is Whit Bissell. The name might not be recognizable, but most fans of older films would be familiar with the face and voice.