User reviews

A decent cast is wasted in this low-budget film, hastily put together to compete with "Rocketship X-M", which wasn't all that good of a movie either. However, that movie at least attempts to convey some profound message, this film is satisfied with just being a typical "action" film. Unfortunately, very little action actually occurs as approximately two-thirds of the film is devoted to a search party making slow progress up a mountain.

Although, it should be noted that the film actually tries to avoid stereotypes with the German/Russian guy. For that, I think, the film deserves a little praise.

A synopsis of this film and a list of the cast members is bound to raise false hopes. Sad to say, it sounds much better than it looks.

An atomic rocket crashes atop a lofty plateau on a South Sea island, a plateau where dinosaurs still survive. Three military men and three scientists climb to the top of the plateau and struggle through the savage environment to recover important data from the rocket. The cast consists of B-movie sci-fi veterans: Cesar Romero ("The Jungle"), John Hoyt ("Attack of the Puppet People"), Hugh Beaumont ("The Mole People"), White Bissell ("The Time Machine" and others), Hillary Brooke ("Invaders from Mars"), Sid Melton ("Captain Midnight"), and a bit part by Acquanetta ("Captive Wild Woman").

The jungle sets and tabletop miniatures bear a pleasing resemblance to a poor-man's Skull Island (misty and surrealistic). The special effects during the climactic earthquake are nicely done. The cast does a fair job with Richard Landau's script. Admirable music by Paul Dunlap. Directed by Sam Newfield.

In spite of these assets, the film is defeated by a low budget and the poorly done animation (the credits do not name the animator). Only two triceratops, one brontosaurus, and one pterodactyl are shown. The dinosaur models lack detail. "The Lost Continent" came out early in the sci-fi craze of the 1950s, before any of Harryhausen's movies. The producers didn't realize how hungry the public was for rampaging stop-motion monsters.

This film features three elements commonly found in science fiction movies; rockets, dinosaurs and radiation, although the latter plays only a minor part in the proceedings. It is interesting that this Lippert production features both rockets and dinosaurs since the original treatment for Lipperts ROCKET SHIP XM, made the previous year, the Martian explorers were originally supposed to find a dinosaur inhabited Mars, not the nuclear bomb destroyed Mars found in the finished film.

I first saw this film when I was a pre-schooler in the early sixties on a weekly saturday morning show called "Super Adventure Theater". Because I saw this film at a very young age, it's probably the only reason why I recall this film with fondness. Viewed as an adult, THE LOST CONTINENT is a fairly standard science fiction movie. The film moves along a good pace, except for the overly long rock climbing sequence mentioned several times in this forum by the films detractors. The stop motion dinosaurs are only moderately interesting. The effects seem to have been done by effects men who lacked experience in employing this technique. Note how the dinosaurs in most scenes only move one limb at a time and appear not to have been anchored down tight enough. However, despite the faults in the stop motion animation in this film, I will give the films producers credit for at least employing this technique instead giving us tired looking, put upon photographically enlarged lizards.

The films cast is acceptable, but no one gives a performance that would win any major awards either. Hillary Brooke was given top billing in the films ads, but her role here is minor, so minor that her scenes are often cut from many of the TV prints I have seen. Whit Bissel, who soon become a stalwart in fifties science fiction movies, is cast in a superfluous role as a scientist who falls off the mountain (in a surprisingly effective scene where he falls into a mist) before our band of merry mountain climbers encounter the dinosaurs. John Hoyt has the best part a the Russian exile scientist who becomes the films hero, in that it is rather unusual for a fifties film to have a Russian as a hero. However, all the characters except for Hoyt's, are stereotypes, but the not kind that was typically found in fifties science fiction movies. Thats because the typical fifties science fiction movie characters had not yet been invented. Instead, THE LOST CONTINENT features the kind of stereotype characters found in war movies.

The best part of THE LOST CONTINENT is use of green tinting in the scenes when the explorers are on the dinosaur inhabited mountain top. I had to chance to see the tinted version and thought it to give the film an interesting look. Its a shame so many black and white films that included tinting or colour sequences are shown only in black and white today.

THE LOST CONTINENT isn't a bad film really, I can't really sight anything, except for the overly long rock climbing sequence, thats done all that bad that would make someone dislike it, nor does anything stand out as exceptionally well done to make this film anyones favorite either. Its simply undistinguished. It is just another film, I don't think anyone back in 1951 saw this film and raved about it to their friends, but I don't think anyone walked out on this film demanding their money back either. THE LOST CONTINENT is like a great number of movies, the kind one sits through with only mild interest and enthusiasm.

Sam Newfield was one of the, if not THE, most prolific directors in American film history. Counting features and two-reelers, Newfield racked up close to 300 films in a career that started shortly after the turn of the century and ended in 1958. Newfield churned out movies so quickly and on such a regular basis that one studio he worked for, PRC (owned by his brother, Sigmund), tacked the names "Sherman Scott" and "Peter Stewart" on much of Newfield's output so it wouldn't look like one man was making almost all of PRC's product. As can be expected, much of Newfield's work is of little or no importance (his Buster Crabbe westerns for PRC in the '40s are especially worthless), but every so often something would happen and Newfield would turn out a film that was coherent, professional-looking and even (gasp!) entertaining. He was assigned by producer Sam Katzman to the Tim McCoy series of westerns for Puritan in the mid-1930s, and some of them are actually tidy little gems--tight, humorous, well-staged little examples of the best of the B-western. "The Lost Continent" is among Newfield's best work--in fact, it probably IS Newfield's best work. Working with a larger budget than he was usually accustomed to (even given the fact that it was a cheapo Lippert production), and given a stronger cast than he got in many of his films, Newfield manages to do quite a good job with what he is given. The story (an Air Force plane trying to recover a lost missile that has landed in what turns out to be a prehistoric jungle, complete with dinosaurs) is nothing much, but Newfield's pacing is quite steady, the dialogue isn't as mind-numbing as the usual Newfield extravaganza, and he actually manages to generate some suspense (a first for him) with the Russian character played by John Hoyt (is he or isn't he a Commie spy?). The crude stop-motion dinosaurs are cheesy and badly done, but since they seem to have been thrown in at the last minute, they don't really detract from the film all that much. If you're familiar with Sam Newfield's work, this will be a revelation to you. If you're not, check it out to see what is the best film in an otherwise almost completely undistinguished career.

I usually enjoy movies where scientists with guns find some lost world where dinosaurs exist.I have seen a ton of them and they are usually good.This is the exact opposite.The most exciting thing about this movie is that Hugh Beaumont is in it, another old sitcom star that I have never seen in a movie.But his barely noticeable appearance is not enough to save this movie.It's literally so boring that I bet most people won't be able to make it to when they get to the "Lost Continent".There's so much non-sense,unintelligible babble and straight out lying that it's not easy to understand what's going on.Don't waste your time with this.Go watch it done right in The Land Unknown.

I saw this flick first on MST3k, but I have since seen it in its original splendor. Lemme tell ya, it really didn't change all that much. I mean, *sure*, it wasn't as funny without the shadows at the bottom of the screen, but the film really does make fun of itself.

Honestly, if I'd wanted to see a documentary about rock climbing (especially the climbing of the same styrofoam rock set shot from different angles) I'd turn on the discovery channel. This film is obviously one of those intended for the 50's drive-in couples that weren't there to watch the movie anyway.

A bona fide atomic age film. A group of military men and scientists go looking for a missing rocket, soon find themselves making their way up onto a mountain where dinosaurs still roam. Alright, so it's The Lost World with an atomic rocket, but the characters are well-thought-out, the film is highly entertaining, the green tint was an original idea and there are interesting and thought-provoking pieces of atomic age tension. The bonus is that this film differs from a lot of monster movies of the fifties in that the dinosaurs are stop-motion rather than photo-enlarged lizards. Well worth seeing if you're a fan of dinosaur films, or sci-fi in general.

"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!

A riveting adventure filled with joy, Lost Continent is probably best remembered for one thing: rock climbing.

In one of the most amazing shows of padding out a film, this 83 minute feature contains about 20 minutes of pure mountaineering. Doesn't sound too bad until you realize that almost nothing happens during those 20 minutes than a bunch of guys walking from rock to rock.

So what is this film? It starts as a political-military flick filled with disjointed semi-back-stories and speeches, runs right into the boring uncut mountaineering and finally ends up as it was advertised, as a fantasy-adventure.

A good fantasy-adventure? Nope, not really, but it's not bad either. It contains all the flat one-dimensional characters and bad effects and filming of the 50's, but it's no worse than any of those. If you're really into these classic adventure flicks, the movie is worth watching once they're done rock climbing.

In its day this film probably did appeal to teenagers looking for some vicarious adventure. "Lost Continent" is your typical 1950's Saturday afternoon matinée movie. With all that walking and climbing the characters do, there's anticipation of what they might find, and that anticipation probably lent some tension to the plot for viewers back then. Furthermore, no one could have foreseen CGI. The film's dinosaurs thus were probably quite impressive to kids in those days.

But, by current standards, "Lost Continent" is bland, unimaginative, slow, and hopelessly cheap looking. The story, about scientists who go in search of a downed rocket, is razor thin. It's really just a rehash of "The Lost World" (1925), except that in "Lost Continent", WWII rocket technology is the rationale for the exploration.

The action takes forever to get going. There's lots of back story and routine human drama scenes, all of which could have been edited out. But in that case, the film's run time would have only been about thirty minutes.

In addition to the thin story, another problem is the cinematography. In the many, many rock climbing scenes, there are too many close-up shots. Some distance shots would have provided at least some sense of vertigo, and therefore could have heightened the tension and suspense.

As cinema entertainment, "Lost Continent" cannot compete with more recent sci-fi. The film now is little more than a historic relic of a bygone era when viewers were much easier to please.

Some pretty big hollywood names in this one! Hugh Beaumont from Leave it to Beaver; Cesar Romero was in plenty of films, but was GREAT in Skidoo.. and of course the Batman series. Sid Melton.. for those old enough to remember, he played Alf Monroe on Green Acres! Here, he's Sergeant Willie, part of the crew that crash lands on an island. Story line is pretty acceptable, but it still got mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000. and check out "Acquanetta"... born Mildred Davenport. she's listed as "Native Girl", a part she pretty much played for about ten years. always the exotic south seas girl. It's all silly, but entertaining. Directed by Sam Newfield; he and his brother were studio bigshots in hollywood for years, making their own offbeat films.

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.

The director of this film really loved rock climbing. In fact, I rock climbing couldn't get enough of the 25 minutes of scaling a studio mountain set. Everyone is miserable rock climbing in this film. It rock climbing looks like the actors really regretted signing up. See authentic natives marvel at the ways rock climbing of the white men. There's rock climbing a giant lizard in the film but I think it was just some guy tripping out rock climbing because it's never heard again. It's also amazing that rock climbing in this village, there are rock climbing only two natives to be seen (more would've put the film over budget). Rock climbing. You will see lots of super imposing, foam rocks, bad acting, rock climbing, claymation dinosaurs causing mayhem, fat guy getting picked up from his butt (see Hugh Beaumont cracking up in that scene). All in all rock climbing, a very rock climbing bad film rock climbing to doze off to.

Did I mention there's rock climbing?

Although Hillary Brooke shares top billing with Cesar Romero - and would have provided him with a robust travelling companion - she's actually there just to provide Romero with a quick squeeze before the main action actually starts.

Unfortunately it then takes half the film's running time for the expedition even to arrive at the promised lost continent; at which point at least a little visual interest is provided when the picture suddenly turns green - a phenomenon accounted for by one of the expedition members as maybe "Somebody got lonesome for some soft light and put a green bulb in the socket!"

'Samuel' Newfeld's direction is competent with a nice use of lateral tracks, and the production design is satisfactory in a 'Star Trek' kind of way. Although we only ever see one brontosaurus footprint the characters always refer to "them", just as we never see more than more than one brontosaurus itself, and always at a distance. The kids might find the two battling ceratopsians kinda cute since they resemble two puppies fooling around; but when one of the expedition spies a pterodactyl and his immediate response is "I wonder if a piece of that big buzzard would make good eatin'" he plainly gets what he deserves.

I've watched this before MST3K latched on and it is brutal. I wondered for years if someone actually read this script and said, "Hey, 50 pages of rock climbing! That will lock people in their seats!" Just a really dull, horrible film. Then MST3K got ahold of it. It's still brutal, but now it's brutally funny. The crew really gives it no mercy. Jones of every kind tear this movie apart. Really, the absolute only way to watch this: the MST3K version. If you do the original... Well, you've been warned.

The first and last time I saw this movie was the early 1960's, if not before then. So I saw it through the eyes of a young person. I enjoyed this movie and once in a while would give it a thought that I would like to see it again. It was neat seeing Sid Melton in this movie as he was one of my favorite characters on the TV series CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT, where he played Ichabod Mudd. If I saw it today I might think it was hokey, but back then the special effects to me were very good.

I gave it a 6 rating.

I am surprised this has a rating as high as 3.0, as I have found this as one of the most boring movies of the entire 1950's. This was a time where every bad movie had a giant monster or something and this technically no exception. We get to see dinosaurs! Except that the dinosaurs are horribly animated in stop motion. The herbivores try to eat humans for no reason. Well, maybe they were just trying to maul them? I mean, hippos are really aggressive. It doesn't make sense either way.

The movie features a group of guys who find, well, a lost continent. They meet some people there, and climb up a mountain for what seems like half of the movie. That's the main flaw with this reason is that it's so TEDIOUS. I had no idea that rock climbing could be so boring. Even when the finally get to the land of the dinosaurs or whatever, very little happens. In the end, the entire journey is mostly pointless. Whereas most monster movies at least has stuff going on, this is just too boring to care about. *