My latest movie marathon was all about The Lost World. First I read the original novel by Conan Doyle (yes, the same guy who created Sherlock Holmes) and then watched six adaptations for the screen.
At the end of the 19th century, Sir H. Rider Haggard was the king of stories about lost worlds, with books like The People of the Mist (about a lost tribe in Africa) and Heart of the World (about a lost Mayan city in Mexico). But the genre got it’s masterpiece in 1912, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle unleashed The Lost World. Explorers venturing to mysterious, uncharted lands teeming with prehistoric creatures? That’s the stuff that launched a thousand jungle expeditions, both literal and fictional. But while the book was groundbreaking, it wasn’t without its wobbles, especially the racist overtones and imperialist assumptions. Still, it’s hard to overstate its impact. Without The Lost World, we might not have had Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Land That Time Forgot, or King Kong, or even Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.
The first crack at bringing Doyle’s tale to the silver screen, The Lost World (Harry O. Hoyt, 1925), was a silent masterpiece – and “masterpiece’ isn’t an exaggeration. Faithfulness to the novel? Decent enough. Professor Challenger and his team head to South America, find a plateau full of dinosaurs, and bring one back to London. Sure, liberties were taken (like adding a romance subplot), but the spirit was intact. The cinematography was beautiful for the time (I watched the tinted version restored in 2016), but the real star was the stop-motion wizardry of Willis O’Brien. Those dinosaurs were revolutionary, decades before CGI. O’Brien’s work on The Lost World paved the way for King Kong in 1933, which was like this movie’s rebellious teen cousin. Plot holes and pacing issues aside, the 1925 version remains a classic, with Challenger (played by Wallace Beery) as a brash, bearded and mustachioed force of nature.
With The Lost World (Irwin Allen, 1960), we enter B-movie territory. This adaptation swaps out Doyle’s intelligent, scientifically minded tale for lizards with glued-on horns. Yes, instead of lovingly crafted stop-motion dinosaurs, we get iguanas and crocodiles dressed in drag to look vaguely prehistoric. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds. The plot diverges wildly too. Gone is the novel’s thought-provoking narrative about science versus nature. Instead, we get melodrama, generic villains, and some dubious jungle antics. On the upside, the cast is stacked: Michael Rennie (The Day the Earth Stood Still) as Lord Roxton, Claude Rains (Casablanca) as Professor Challenger, and Jill St. John (who would later be the Bond Girl in Diamonds Are Forever) adding some glamour. But the sheer campiness of the production makes this one for die-hard dinosaur completists only.
Another thirty years and we got not one but two new adaptations, The Lost World (Timothy Bond, 1992) and its sequel Return to the Lost World (Timothy Bond, 1992). This version took some odd liberties. Instead of Doyle’s South American plateau, we’re now in Africa. Why? Probably because someone found an African savanna more budget-friendly than a South American rainforest. Lord Roxton is swapped for a new female character, Jenny Nielson (Tamara Gorski), in what feels like a half-hearted attempt at modernization. The rest of the cast is not bad: John Rhys-Davies (from the Indiana Jones movies) as Professor Challenger, David Warner (Jack the Ripper in Time After Time) as Professor Summerlee, and Eric McCormack (before becoming famous for Will & Grace) as Edward Malone. The special effects? Quite weak, even for a tv production, and definitely nothing you’d brag about at a paleontology conference. The dinosaurs really look like puppets. While they tried to retain some of the novel’s spirit, both films felt more like Saturday matinee fillers than genuine adaptations.
The next version of The Lost World (Bob Keen, 1998) is even worse. Only loosely based on the original novel, the action now happens in Mongolia. And the story is so much changed that only two members of the expedition return to London. Patrick Bergin plays Professor Challenger, in what may be the worst movie of his career. Dinosaurs? Not many, and several years after Jurassic Park none of them look impressive. Characters? Forgettable. Is it worth watching? Only if you enjoy movies that feel like they were cobbled together over a long weekend to cash in on a trend.
A few years later we got a new tv adaptation, The Lost World (Stuart Orme, 2001), with the advantage of having 145 minutes to tell the story (it was first broadcast in two 75 minutes episodes). They followed the story fairly closely (and even returning to the original setting in South America), but added a few new elements. Besides the romantic subplot that every adaptation insisted in including, there was also a detour about a religious fanatic trying to keep the lost world a secret because it could support Darwin’s theory of evolution and weaken the creationist dogma. Bob Hoskins as Professor Challenger was a great choice, and James Fox as Professor Summerlee is also a good contribution. The CGI dinosaurs are fine, nothing to get very excited about but not embarrassingly bad. What this film lacks in spectacle, it tries to make up for in earnestness, and there’s something endearing about that.
Which adaptation reigns supreme? If we consider them in the context of their time, the 1925 silent film is the winner. It’s not just a great adaptation, it’s a landmark in cinematic history, with Willis O’Brien’s dinosaurs setting a high standard for generations. Best special effects dinosaurs? Again, the 1925 version. No iguana cosplay here, just pure artistry. Best Professor Challenger? Bob Hoskins in 2001 nails the character’s mix of gruffness and charm. Best Lord Roxton? Michael Rennie from the 1960 version is hard to beat, even if the movie itself is a dud. Edward Malone, however, is such a dull character that he is forgetabble in all versions.
All the adaptations, whether faithful or not, wrestle with the clash between humanity and nature. Doyle’s novel asks whether we have the right to dominate nature, and that question lingers in every adaptation (even the ones with the lizards-in-costume nonsense). Each version also grapples with adventure and exploration, though often in ways that reflect the era of their production: awe in the 1920s, kitsch in the 1960s, and commercialism in the 1990s. At its heart, The Lost World remains a tale about discovery, danger, and our never-ending fascination with dinosaurs. Some adaptations soar, others stumble. But like the dinosaurs themselves, the story endures — an ancient, lumbering giant that refuses to go extinct.