--- title: "Lost World (1925)" subtitle: "Dinosaurs in the Amazon" author: Seth publish_date: 2025-07-02 08:00 date: 2025-07-02 08:00 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: film-1600x800.webp show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: culture tag: [ movie, cinema, review ] --- In an effort to keep better track of what movies I've seen, I'm taking notes on what I watch. This post contains some major spoilers about **The Lost World** (1925). The short version of the post is this: It's a great adventure film, with amazing shots, leaps and bounds in film technology, and a compelling plot right out of ar Arthur Conan Doyle dime novel. ## Plot An explorer has returned from the Amazon claiming to have discovered dinosaurs living in a land that time has forgotten. He has no evidence to support this claim, and in fact one of the men on his team is stranded there and needs rescuing. A London paper decides to finance the rescue mission as a human interest story, sending a reporter along for the ride. When the rescue party arrives, they're assaulted by dinosaurs, apes, and misfortune. Can they find the missing team member and get back to civilisation alive? ## Triassic park Bearing in mind that this movie was released in 1925, this movie is an absolute masterpiece of special effects. There's cell animation for a flying pterodactyl, stop motion animation for dinosaurs, and masking for shots combining life action with stop motion animation. It'll make you do several double-takes as your brain tries to resolve how you can possibly be seeing dinosaurs on screen when cinema itself had only been around for 25 years when the movie was made. It's just too cool. Luckily, the movie doesn't just ride on its special effects. The script is very strong, in no small part for its clarity and simplicity. Nearly everything in the story serves the one reason you're watching it in the first place: To see dinosaurs. There are title cards for additional context and flavour, but honestly the story is so clear that only half are actually required. You get the idea pretty early on. Dinosaurs are real, dude's missing, gotta go find him. Once you understand that, you can kick back and just enjoy the show. After the rescue team is in the Amazon, most of the action is avoiding dinosaurs and looking for the missing explorers. Until, that is, everybody goes back to the city with a captive dinosaur. Yes, they bring a dinosaur back with them to prove their discovery to the skeptical public. Obviously the dinosaur escapes and rampages through the city, tearing down buildings, and sending London into a panic. You might detect that the outline of this story bears some similarities to **King Kong**, which would come out a decade later. On the whole, this is tamer than Kong, but I think that's down to technological limitations. Taking it one step at a time, I think it was probably hard enough to figure out how to bring dinosaurs to life. I think it's fair to wait another 10 years to have those dinosaurs mangle people onscreen. ## Quirky love stories Included as a little bonus plot in **Lost World** is a little romance story involving the reporter Ed (Lloyd Hughes) and Paula (Bessie Love). It's a funny gag that I guess I won't spoil here, and it really is the perfect model of a sub-plot. It doesn't interfere with the main story, and instead it fits nicely and neatly around it. ## Great movie This is a classic adventure movie, and in fact even contains footage of Arthur Conan Doyle himself at the beginning of the picture. What's maybe surprising is that it's not a classic just for _trying_. It's a classic because it succeeds at telling a simple story in an astounding (and incidentally groundbreaking) way. Great acting, great effects, great script. The one thing it lacks is a great soundtrack, but you can [supply your own](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/culture_how-to-watch-silent-movies).

Lead photo by Anika De Klerk on Unsplash