Lost Continent

As I was searching for an image to go with this post, I found a shot of the opening title with some familiar silhouettes in front of it. That should give you an idea about the quality.

Lost Continent doesn't have a bad concept. An experimental missile goes off target and crashes in the ocean. Fearing what would happen if it fell into the Wrong Hands (read: "Russkies"), a mixed team of scientists and Air Force personnel fly out to retrieve the bomb and figure out what went wrong.

They track the missile to a previously undiscovered island (not a "continent" at all, despite what the title would have us believe) that's just lousy with uranium. Ignoring warnings from the natives, the party climbs a huge escarpment (a la Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World and the Weissmuller Tarzan films) and has to avoid a bunch of dinosaurs to find the missile.

The biggest problem with the movie is that the team doesn't get to the top of the escarpment until two-thirds through. They spend too much time getting to the island, and once they're there, there's also a lot of climbing to do. Getting up the escarpment takes way too long. It does build some tension about what's on top of the cliff, but anyone who's seen the movie poster already knows exactly what's on top of that cliff. It's why we wanted to watch the movie in the first place. Making us wait isn't exciting, it's frustrating.

On the positive side, the ensemble of characters is interesting. One of the scientists is a Russian and one of the Air Force pilots (played by Cesar Romero) begins to suspect that maybe he's got ulterior motives for wanting to find the missile. There's also a half-crazy mechanic who continuously talks to his parachute, an engineer who begins to suspect that he's not cut out for this adventure, a likable scientist who may or may not be the target for murder, and Romero's reluctant, but loyal co-pilot.

The dinosaur sequences are cool, but nothing you haven't seen before in a thousand other dinosaur movies from the same period. Without a better story tying them together, they're just not very exciting. We do get some excitement out of the end except that it comes out of nowhere and makes absolutely no sense. I won't spoil it, but only because I think that there are some positive things about the film and there might be a worse way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

I'm sure it's a way better experience watching the Mystery Science Theater version, but as far as I can tell, that episode hasn't been released yet.