King of the Lost World

The Asylum's "King of the Lost World" (2005) is a TV knockoff of Peter Jackson's "King Kong," released one day before that blockbuster during Christmas. While there's a giant ape and an island of colossal creatures, the similarities end there. This has more to do with Arthur Conan Doyle's fantasy/adventure novel "The Lost World" (1912) than "King Kong." The plot revolves around a group of survivors of a plane wreck who search the mysterious island; and clash with the giant creatures & primitive-type people that dwell there.

The movie only cost $1 million and the blurry CGI creatures look it. If you can get past that, there's quite a bit to like here for fans of comic book adventure flicks, especially of the lost on a deserted island variety. Imagine "Mysterious Island" (1961) if it was done on a miniscule budget, like "Planet of the Dinosaurs" (1977), and that's what this is.

The Asylum's "The Land that Time Forgot" (2009) is comparable, but that one had over double the money to spend, as did the 1974 film with Doug McClure. Another point of reference is those cheesy primeval flicks from Hammer back in the day, like "The Lost Continent" (1968) and "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth" (1970).

If you don't appreciate Grade B (or Grade C) adventure fare like this I'd suggest passing but, if you can roll with it, the story and cast are decent, highlighted by curvy Sarah Lieving in form-fitting shorts, not to mention a couple others. The Southern Cal locations feature magnificent coastlines, lush jungles, cool caves and barren landscapes.

The film runs 1 hour, 20 minutes and was shot at Pikake Gardens, Valley Center, and San Diego County, California.

GRADE: C

If your going to produce a special effect movie, at least have the basics with which to carry it off. The Lost World was one of my favourite books as a child and previous translations to the big screen have been OK, at best. However although the acting was certainly acceptable, the budget for the effects must have been raised by a quick whip round of the stars and crew. awful doesn't even come close. The main creature (king Kong who wasn't featured in the original story anyway) looks like and moves like a glove puppet. Anyone over 7 who goes to see this is going to come away extremely disappointed.Bruce Boxleitner has appeared in many Sci-Fi TV series and movies and does his best to carry off this film but he is fighting a losing battle I'm afraid. With the technology thats available today for creating believable CGI effects, it inexcusable to release such a sub standard movies, especially when it seems to be released on the back of the New blockbuster "KING KONG". When low cost TV sci-fi's are being produced now, with quite acceptable visual effects, I fail to understand that those responsible for the graphic effects would deem this movie "Fit for human viewing"

I saw the cover. Obviously a cheep movie that is trying to make some money from the popularity of Peter Jackson's King Kong. Anyway - a huge gorilla in the lost world - cool! I knew it was going to be cheep, but I liked the idea. And the rating was still 5,8 so I thought it will be worth watching. I was wrong. Since it is the Lost World I expected some dinosaurs. Nope. Compared to this movie the TV series "The Lost World" look like a Hollywood blockbuster. No dinosaurs. Just a sloppy CGI giant spider, a couple of sloppy CGI giant scorpions, and a sloppy CGI giant gorilla, which you finally see for a couple of seconds at the end of the movie. I love B-movies, but not B-movies that pretend to be A-movies, if you know what I mean. If this movie was done intentionally stupid just for the fun if would be nice. Now it is just boring. And I guess a couple of days ago it had 5,8 rating because all the guys from the ending credits voted here.

Plane crash survivors in the Amazon battle exceptionally lame CGI critters in this dull, slow-moving tale, which bears absolutely no resemblance to the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story. The Asylum's "War of the Worlds" shows that they are capable of telling a decent story when they want to do so. They must not have wanted to do so here. This film is exceptionally bad. No dinosaurs, just scorpions, spiders, man-eating vines, and a giant gorilla so bad that it fortunate for the audience that we only see it for a few minutes. The special features reveal that this film was a rush job – no doubt to capitalize on the publicity for Peter Jackson's "King Kong." The reason they went with scorpions and such instead of the dinosaurs was because the special effects guy already had them partially created. At eighty-minutes, the movie drags. (Drags is the wrong word. It's like it's daring you to keep watching it. It was quite a battle, but I managed too.) I ultimately found myself wondering who this film was aimed at. There aren't enough monsters for monster movie fans. Not enough action for action movie fans. It was too boring to children, who shouldn't be able to watch it because of the language anyway. It was like an episode of "Lost" without the insightful writing and acting. Literally, the best thing about the film is the jungle location they found in a private garden. For that, I will credit the location manager, not the director, producer or writers, all of whom should be ashamed of themselves.

And don't get me started about the white native tribe in the Amazon…. Oy Vey! Ineptitude, you have a new name. And poor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he's spinning away in his grave somewhere.

I can't say this is the worst movie I have ever seen, but it is definitely in the top 10. The premise of the story is sound enough, and that is what actually attracted me enough to rent this movie. Unfortunately, that is the only redeeming quality in this movie. The actors were given virtually nothing to work with, as the dialogue was absolutely horrible. Some of the lines sound as if they might have been penned by Ed Wood himself, until you consider that Woods' work at least had some naive charm about it. The acting was atrocious. Every single actor in this movie seemed to mail it in at the same time, and it was not all due to the poor writing. Finally, the CGI was extremely poorly done. There was no hint of realism at all with any of the computer work. The effects were cheap and lacked any sort of attention to detail, something the entire movie lacked as a whole. I have to be fair and say that like the previous reviewer, I only watched part of the movie. It turned out that the movie was dirty, and stopped playing after about 45 minutes. I decided it was not worth the time to clean the disc and try to find where it left off. My advice would be to miss this one completely. Don't waste your money renting it, and if it shows up on TV you can certainly find something better to watch.