The Lost World (1925)

My Review

In the 1925 silent film “The Lost World,” eccentric Professor George Challenger journeys to a remote area of South America to prove his theory that dinosaurs still exist. He is accompanied by a reporter, a big game hunter, a woman who father was lost on a previous expedition to the area, and three others. Director Harry O. Hoyt put together an exciting film with amazing special effects for the time and a thrilling storyline with lots of action, for the 1920’s. Marian Fairfax wrote the screenplay, adapted from the 1912 novel of the same name by Arthur Conan Doyle, famous for creating the Sherlock Holmes stories.

The cast includes Wallace Beery as Prof. Challenger, Bessie Love as Paula White, Lewis Stone as the hunter, Lloyd Hughes as the reporter, Arthur Hoyt as skeptical Prof. Summerlee, Jules Cowles as Zambo, Francis Finch-Smiles as the butler, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as himself in the frontispiece of the film, missing from some prints. The watchable “The Lost World” was popular at the box office for First National Pictures, which was bought out by Warner Bros. Pictures in 1929.

Note: Some features of silent films unfamiliar to modern-day movie-goers includes the dialogue on title cards, organ music in the background, over-acting by some cast members, and a yellowish tint to some silent films.