The Lost World + Return to the Lost World (1992)

The Lost World + Return to the Lost World (1992)

Dir. Timothy Bond

One of my favourite books as a child was a 1981 Ladybird Children's Classics edition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912).

It was a small hardcover edition, heavily abridged (52 pp) with storybook illustrations by Martin Aitchison throughout. I must've read it at least 40 times over the years. The edition I had came with an audio cassette of someone reading the book aloud, with music and sound FX at appropriate times - meaning everyone in the household could 'enjoy' my reading of it, too.

It didn't birth a lifelong love of dinosaurs, which is something that many kids from my generation have, but it did contribute to a lifelong love of books and of storytelling, in general.

That in itself is reason enough for me to want to feature the story on the blog in some capacity.  I chose a movie version, for reasons. And for additional reasons, it was the 1992 version.

01. Junior reporter Edward Malone (Eric McCormack) is eager to score the 'big assignment' that'll make his name within his chosen field. To humour him, and get him out of their office as quickly as possible, his superiors send him to see a brash professor by the name of George Challenger (John Rhys-Davies), a man who doesn't suffer fools gladly, as the saying goes.

Challenger believes that dinosaurs may still roam within a remote part of "darkest" Africa, but without funding to mount an expedition he can't prove the theory. It'd be a short movie if that's where things ended. Luckily, they don't. Funding becomes available, but he's forced to take a couple of others along with him, including one of his most vocal critics, Professor Summerlee (David Warner), creating a source of conflict before the journey even begins.

The remainder of the movie documents the journey to the 'lost world' of the title and the trials that the ill-matched team must overcome to get there, and to subsequently get back out.

It benefits from being set in the early 20th Century (1912), and in having its creatures be practical effects, not cheap TV Movie CGI, even if they sometimes look more endearing than menacing. But the best part is the two professors, or rather the two men who bring them to life, Rhys-Davies and Warner; their rivalry adds a buoyancy to the story that it might not have had otherwise, delivering the kind of 'Saturday afternoon' adventure that I was hoping for.

02. Return to the Lost World takes place two years later, picking up a conveniently left thread from the previous movie. It has a similar light-heartedness underpinning much of it, but on the surface it's a little darker in tone.

The team must return to the same location to fulfil a promise, which puts them in opposition to an entitled, arrogant industrialist who wants to exploit the land for profit. He has no interest in preservation, or even in human rights.

I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the first movie, perhaps in part because the returning characters are there for reasons other than exploration, resulting in less of an 'adventure' characteristic. But there's some fun to be had watching the two professors butting heads once again.