THE LOST WORLD was the first feature length film teleased to theaters that used stop-motion animation to tell it's story.  Co-incidentally, it was the first film to be shown to passengers on an airplane. It was not the first feature length film made using stop-motion. That honor belongs to THE GHOST OF SLUMBER MOUNTAIN. Unfortunately, THE GHOST OF SLUMBER MOUNTAIN was butchered by it's distributer who also claimed credit for everything in the film.  SLUMBER MOUNTAIN originally ran about 100 minutes but was cut to pieces and reduced to a 10 minute short subject.  Both THE LOST WORLD and THE GHOST OF SLUMBER MOUNTAIN stop-motion effects were executed by Willis O'Brien.

 THE LOST WORLD tells the story of Professor Challenger, who assembles an expedition to South America where he wants to discover what happened to a collegue. Along with the Professor are a newpaper reporter, a fellow scientist and the daughter of the man he is looking for. Deep in the jungles of the Amazon, they discover a mysterious plateau and climb it. They are forced to make a bridge over a ravine and upon crossing it find that a brontosaurus has destroyed the bridge and they cannot return to their encampment.  

The plateau is inhabited by dinosaurs who endanger every move of the party and the land itself is unstable, much as the world was at the dawn of time. They discover that the man they are seeking has meet his death on this very plateau shortly before a volcano erupts setting the plateau on fire. A Tyranosaurus and brontosaurus fight with the T-Rex forcing the brontosaurus off the ledge of the plateau. hey have discovered a possible escape route through a cave and a man-made ladder. Finally they are safe from the dangers of the plateau. The brontosaurus has lived and is trapped in a mud pit. Challenger decides to take the beast back to London alive to prove their adventure.

 In London, the Brontosaurus escapes to terrorize the people and destroy everything in it's path until it finally reaches the London bridge which collapses under the weight of the beast. Now in water, the creature instictually heads back to it's South American home.

Like THE GHOST OF SLUMBER MOUNTAIN, this film started undergoing cuts in it after it's initial release. The complete film is still consered lost although attempts at restoring it have been partially successful. It remains a milestone in stop-motion history, not because it was the first but because it established the possibilities of making a prosperous film using this type of effect. It was the first stop-motion film to combine live actors in the scenes with the dinosaurs and it was the direct result of O'Brien's experimentation.

While modern audiences my find the animation sequences inferior, one must remember that this film was the first.  KING KONG would follow 8 years later and by that time O'Brien had further perfected the medium. THE LOST WORLD also set a precedent for this type of film, it's basic storyline has been copied repeatedly in many films. While the modern veiwer who is unable to fully understand or relate to film made in these times, audiences who saw the original release were amazed, some even argued that they were real dinosaurs.

THE LOST WORLD deserves it's classic status and all of the attention going into a restoration of the film.  It has been remade for theaters and television but it has yet to receive the epic treatment it did in the original.

THE LOST WORLD

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