THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT
As with Kevin Connor’s other adventures based on the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land that Time Forgot is low-budget and crammed with tons of really awful special effects. In 1925, Harry Hoyt and Marion Fairfax’s silent film version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World became the first “lost world” movie, and it was said at the time that the special effects work of Willis O’Brien (who would later go on to do the effects for the original King Kong) were so good that audiences at the time would be completely fooled into thinking the film was a documentary with actual footage of actual living dinosaurs. I don’t know how many people did believe the dinosaurs were real, but it’s safe to say that the effects in 1925 were far better than the effects we see in 1975. The Land that Time Forgot isn’t quite as bad as, say, Mighty Gorga bad, but they are pretty terrible.
#1 by hman on June 30, 2008 - 5:29 am
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As a young kid, I found the early U-Boat scenes a tough slog. When I taped the movie on television as a teenager, they were a lot more interesting.
#2 by The Rev. D.D. on June 30, 2008 - 9:15 am
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First seeing it when I was a bit older probably helped, as I was able to enjoy the U-Boat scenes as well as what I’d come to see, the dinosaurs. (I also thought I was getting a hot cave chick, but the people that put out my VHS had a shot on the back taken from the [i]sequel[/i], as I later found out watching [b]People[/b]. At least I got Susan Penhaligon…)
I do remember making a mental catalog of all the things wrong with the dinosaurs from a scientific standpoint, though. I think it’s a credit to the movie that I enjoyed it even as I did that. Hell, I even got a little choked up for that poor styracosaurus. He was just a peaceful vegetarian, and you just went and blew his head apart in front of his wife, you rat bastards! *shakes fist*
I think that goofy-ass pterodactyl attack is one of my all-time favorite monster movie scenes. It’s so stunningly, charmingly inept in so many ways that I can’t do anything but feel great affection for it.
Well, that and a little sadness for poor Ahm…
#3 by hman on June 30, 2008 - 11:36 am
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I’ve ranted about this before (probably here and other places) but I feel gyped for not getting my laster-shooting manta ray and giant octopus (well, not so much after seeing it in “Warlords of Atlantis”).