The Lost World

MOVIE #1,354 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 02.07.24 Today marks a very special day in the history of this website: I am embarking on “My Kaiju Decade.” I have long been intrigued by the world of Godzilla and all his friends and because I am ever the completionist, I will attempt to watch EVERY movie featuring a giant monster ever made. I am going off of this list chronologically which — while seemingly exhaustive at 273 movies — is probably still ‘incomplete’ and/or erroneous (is the new TMNT cartoon movie really part of this canon? for example). I will do my best to cross-reference as I go and adapt as I keep my eyes peeled for a more accurate resource. 1925’s silent feature The Lost World is already a strange place to start. Are dinosaur movies really kaiju films? Why isn’t every film on this list also on the giant monster list? (and why is Mrs. Doubtfire on the former??). But I have no problem stretching the definition as long as I can within the futile framework of this site’s mission: watch every movie ever made.

What I do have a problem, however, is blackface. Especially when it pops up in something otherwise so benign as this. What a bummer…


That this character is also super horny for the white woman is doubly bad. (I know it’s 1925 bla bla bla but I just did not expect this.)

However, you simply can’t argue with the early stop-motion and this, in fact, is considered the first full-length film to make use of the medium. Every shot with a dinosaur, and there are many, is charming and excellent. Especially when the brontosaurus arrives in London to eff things up at the end…


This is a legendary picture that I would love to give a 9/10 to but it loses two points for “unexpected blackface.” I’m sorry but these are the rules.

This series will run every other week on Wednesday for at least the next ten years so long as I am still alive and well. Thanks for checking out this website.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,353 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,355 ⫸

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The Lost World is a 1925 American silent fantasy giant monster adventure film directed by Harry O. Hoyt and written by Marion Fairfax, adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name. Produced and distributed by First National Pictures, a major Hollywood studio at the time, the film stars Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger and features pioneering stop motion special effects by Willis O'Brien, a forerunner of his work on King Kong (1933). Doyle appears in a frontispiece to the film, absent from some extant prints. In 1998, The Lost World was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Due to its age, the film is now in the public domain. It was released on February 2, 1925.