Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Hulkeasexo it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

Zach Klinefelter I first saw this film courtesy of MST3K, and for years only knew of it from that hilarious episode. Years later I picked up the Image DVD and quickly found it to be an addictive little film with replay value. As a lover of both classic and trashy prehistoric cinema, "Lost Continent" may not necessarily be a good movie, but I feel it has plenty of entertainment value. The stop-motion is not on the level of Harryhausen or O'Brien, but it is solid and I enjoy the fact that only herbivorous dinosaurs are seen (certainly the result of the low budget). I can't help but love the macho characters; the nearly all-male cast is very much of that time period: these tough men climb a mountain and explore a vast lost world, with ample smoke breaks and reminders to the audience that these men are men, and American to the bone. The green tinted-footage is an interesting, if simple, visual effect. I am giving this a high rating for its entertainment value; it's not nearly as bad as some have suggested with their reviews, and better than MST3K may lead you to believe.

William Samuel Lost Continent, which stars Caesar Romero and the dad from Leave it to Beaver, is one of the most boring movies I have ever seen. Most of it can be described as filler, and not very good filler at that. It begins, as did so many low-budget movies from the '50s, with stock footage of a rocket launch. The rocket soon crashes in some unnamed county (I think it's in South America, but it might be the South Pacific, or Africa) and a team of scientists and military types are sent to retrieve it. No points for guessing that their plane immediately crashes in the middle of wherever it is they are.They find out from the few remaining natives that the rocket landed on a nearby plateau, which they proceed to climb. Once on top, they discover a lost world where dinosaurs roam and uranium paves the streets, so to speak. Dinosaurs, jungles, treacherous climbs, and even a massive unexplained cataclysm at the end- this is the kind of material that pulp magazines and B-movies thrive on. Lost Continent has all the ingredients of a dumb but exciting adventure movie. You wouldn't expect this to be Oscar material, but you'd think there'd be a lot of action.Alas, Lost Continent fails to meet even these minimal expectations. Most shots involve the team members making small talk, slogging through jungles, or climbing. Oh how they climb. The movie is only 80 minutes long, and a full thirty minutes of that is spent getting up the cliffs. This could have been dangerous, or exciting, but that would have taken too much money. So instead we get the Captain Video effect, in which the actors climb the same fake ledges over and over again, while the cameras studiously avoid any breathtaking vertical shots which would reveal that they're actually at ground level. Even when someone falls to his death, we only see the reaction of the companion who failed to save him.You'd think the dinosaurs would spice things up a bit, but no. We get cheap Claymation dinos that are less detailed than the ones in King Kong, filmed twenty years earlier. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that the scenes with the dinosaurs are yet more stock footage lifted from other films. This would explain why we never see the dinos and the actors in the same frame, even through rear projection. And the Brontosaurus looks suspiciously like the one in 1925's The Lost World. So no, there isn't a single bit of excitement generated by the dinosaur attacks.The movie is further hampered by the lack of any real acting. True, I wasn't expecting the actors to be convincing, but I thought there might be some campy over-acting. Instead the cast performs as if they were on downers. Every line sounds like they were reading it off the script while fighting drowsiness. These guys are more wooden than a cigar store Indian. They get over their colleague's death in less than a minute, and pronouncements that they're running out of food and may never get home alive are delivered with no more urgency than if they were missing an episode of House. I suspect this is a reflection of the cast's total apathy. I also suspect that Lost Continent was made just so the distributors would have something to show on the bottom of a double-bill.If you've read many of my previous reviews, you've probably guessed by now that I cheated and watched the MST3K version. I was pretty good, as Joel and the 'bots had a field day pointing out the utter lack of action. This version is worth checking out for a few laughs. The original is worthless, except as a sleep aid.

spk07 Rock climbing. Those words will forever send a chill down my spine. The reason for that is I endured a so-called "adventure" film about a group exploring sent to a distant island to investigate a rocket crash. In order to get there, they have to climb a mountain. And that's it. 80% of the film is just rock climbing. Just rock climbing. Oh, and they run into some dinosaurs along the way but they have a total of 3 minutes of screen time. So the star of this movie is basically a mountain. God help us all.And to top it off, when they finally do reach the rocket, the most annoying character is finally killed off, a volcano starts to erupt, and they scale back down the mountain in TWO MINUTES!!!! Then they get on a rowboat and smoke some cigarettes. And that's it. That is how the film ends. WTF??!!! I just cannot express how much I hate this movie. The dinosaurs are a cruel insult because not only do they not do anything but remind me of better things I could be watching. The introductory sequences are so pointless; the characters become cardboard cutouts the minute they land on the island and the acting is so bland. Even the MST 3K boys had trouble enduring this one. I just don't see what can be gained from writing about this garbage further. If you watch the MST 3K version, do so at your own risk.Rock Climbing :shudder:

ferbs54 "Lost Continent" (1951) is a film that I used to love as a kid, but hadn't seen in over 40 years. I still remembered parts of it vividly, however, especially the gripping image of a man falling to his doom through a covering of cloud, and wondered if it would hold up all these years later. The answer: well, partly. In this one, the prototype of an atomic rocket crashlands on a mountain plateau in the South Pacific, and Air Force pilot Cesar Romero is called on to ferry scientists Whit Bissell, John Hoyt and Hugh Beaumont (six years pre-"Beaver") to the site, along with a few others. After a protracted but nonetheless suspenseful climb up the steep mountainside, which the band accomplishes with only ropes (and no pitons or carabiners!)--a climb that takes up more than 1/3 of the picture--our heroes make it to the top and discover a suddenly green-tinted world, populated with prehistoric critters. Although the switch from B&W to that greenish hue IS pretty nifty, it must be said that these dinosaurs are brought to life by the filmmakers using what might be the lamest stop-motion photography ever committed to film; 1925's "The Lost World" did a better job at this! Still, cheaply put together as it is, "Lost Continent" is mighty fun to watch, mainly because the leads are so appealing and convincing. The presences of yummy '50s gals Hillary Brooke and Acquanetta in bit roles doesn't hurt, either. Although the dinosaurs-on-an-island bit had been better handled three years earlier in "Unknown Island," and the notion of going after a crashlanded rocket over dangerous terrain would be dealt with infinitely better in 1968's "Ice Station Zebra" (and even in the 1963 Bob Hope comedy "Call Me Bwana"), this film still has a pulpy appeal that manages to strike a chord in me 40 years later. Watch it with the kiddies one night. Oh...nice-looking print on the DVD that I just watched, too!