If you like Journey to the Center of the Earth....

A movie that's been back in the FXM rotation recently is the 1960 version of The Lost World (not to be confused with the entry in the Jurassi Park series that has a similar title).

Claude Rains plays Prof. Challenger, who at the beginning of the movie is just getting back from an expedition to the Amazon and has to deal with journalists mobbing him on the steps down the plane (so although this is based on a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, it's set in contemporary times). One of those journalists is Ed Malone (David Hedison), who although he doesn't get the story from the professor on the tarmac, is planning to go to the professor's lecture at the Zoological Society.

Challenger's revelation at the Society is startling: he claims to have been to a part of the Amazon where the rest of the world's evolution never reached and, as such, there are creatures surprisingly similar to mankind's perception of dinosaurs on that plateau. Unfortunately, when challenged by Prof. Summerlee (Richard Haydn), Challenger admits that his cameras and all his other evidence is at the bottom of the Amazon thanks to some boat accidents.

And that's part of the reason why Challenger is giving his lecture: he wants to raise the funds for a second expedition to prove that there are actually dinosaurs still in existence. He needs both money, and people. One guy who could fill both functions is the wealthy playboy and hunter Lord Roxton (Michael Rennie), who actually has ulterior motives for wanting to go on the expedition. Malone's boss, being a newspaper publisher, is also willing to put up money in exchange for Malone being on the expedition, implying that Malone will get a scoop at the end of the expedition. The publisher's daughter Jennifer (Jill St. John) also wants to go, but Challenger says no to the idea of there being any woman on the expedition.

Eventually the men get everything they need for the expedition and set off for the upper reaches of the Amazon, where they find... Jennifer and her brother David (Ray Stricklyn) have already beaten them to the base camp! And Jennifer is dumb enough to wear impractical clothing and bring her purse-sized dog, which to me confirmed Challenger's otherwise sexist logic in not wanting a woman on the expedition. (The dog seems to serve the same purpose -- if there is one -- as the duck in Journey to the Center of the Earth did.) There's a guide Manuel (Fernando Lamas), who isn't too happy about flying the people up to the plateau, although as we'll see he has reasonable justification for not wanting to be a part of it.

Since the plateau is considered unreachable by foot, the party had to take a helicopter up there, one that looks surprisingly roomy on the inside considering that the outside shots don't look like it would hold more than about three people, never mind their equipment. And on the first night, one of the dinosaur-like creatures comes and destroys the helicopter, leaving the expedition stranded!

Worse, it turns out that they're not the only people on the plateau. There's a band of indigenous people who have somehow managed to survive up there all this time, and they're pissed about having the white man encroach on their territory. Somehow, they've managed to escape the dinosaurs all this time. Eventually they capture our white heroes, which means certain doom... or does it?

The Lost World is one of those movies that's more than entertaining as long as you don't do any actual thinking while watching it. If you do, you'll find yourself thinking about all the plot holes and things that wouldn't work in real life. And believe me, there are a lot of them, well beyond what I mentioned regarding Jennifer. One other problem the movie has is that its budget got cut thanks to Fox needing all the money it could get its hands on for the Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra. Irwin Allen produced and directed, and as we'd see in the 1970s, when he had a big enough budget he could create quite the spectacle.

Still, what Allen was able to create works as long as all you want to do is be entertained. So sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch The Lost World. And if you want to laugh at the plot holes, go ahead and do that to.

One other note is that the print FXM ran was panned-and-scanned from the Cinemascope ratio down to 16:9. The reviews I read suggest that the DVD is in the Cinemascope ratio, but I don't have the DVD.