Land Of The Lost - The Movie!

I wrote the review below soon after the lamentable movie Land of the Lost was released in theaters way back in 2009. As you will see, I didn't much like the movie then. After taking a look at that old review, I'll give you my more modern opinion of this TV adaptation.  

Like many, I have an abiding affection for the original TV series. It was at once charming, smart, and compelling TV. The kids learned to act (a bit) before our very eyes, and the special effects were just good enough to keep it all buzzing. The first season is a wonder of intelligent design, a remarkable TV show that seemed to know where it was going. In the 70's a most novel notion. The second and third seasons lose a bit of the magic, especially the more fantasy-driven third season, but still the elusive charm clings. It doesn't cling to the modern movie remake. 

I finally got around to seeing at the discount cinema yesterday. My daughter and I went (she's an adult who hasn't seen a single episode, so you can imagine her confusion right away) and it began well enough. The problem is an obvious one. Will Farrell can be hilarious, but he's woefully miscast in this movie as Rick Marshall, a scientist belittled for his theories of time travel. A beautiful grad student named Holly comes to him and lures him to follow his dream and they meet a goof named Will and soon find themselves in the "Land of the Lost", a time garbage disposal of sorts that seems to be especially locked in on Earth. 

The science is garbled and difficult to decipher, so it fails on that front. The special effects are neatly done, though really great dinosaurs aren't the wonder to see they were even a decade ago. The Sleestak are fun though not as scary as I expected. All of that would be okay if the movie didn't just grind to a halt from time to time as Farrell does some of his shtick. This is truly a movie that fights itself. Maybe they needed a big Hollywood star to get it made. I understand that and all, but treating this stuff in parody doesn't really succeed. The fanboys like me see the stuff they need, but then see it handled quite roughly in places. The new viewers must be mystified. My daughter was. 

It's a movie that's neither fish nor fowl. It's a comedy that is sometimes funny, though often with unfortunate costs to the tone and feel of the adventure. And it's an adventure flick that lacks the most essential element of such tales, dramatic tension. There's really no sense of danger to lead characters, as they blunder around an illogical mishmash environment. Land of the Lost is a really disappointing movie, and it's no wonder that it bombed. Stay away, unless you're morbidly curious like me. 

That was then. What about now? 

My negative opinion has softened over the years. Watching this film again a few weeks ago, I was struck so much by my shock and dismay at it's approach to material I hold dear, but rather just how funny it was in many of its scenes. I'm still convinced that some scenes go too far, and those seem to be the ones in which the actors are let go to improvise, but the overall tone of humor is more comfortable to me. I detected more a sense of adventure that I'd recollected and that was heartening. It's still not the Land of the Lost movie I'd have made but it is one that has its redeeming aspects. Wouldn't mind one that tries it again sometime, without the gags. But I dobut that will ever be. 

 Rip Off

Lands Of The Lost!

Mankind's fascination with unknown territories is the very stuff of myth and legend and adventure. We are a species not content to live within our established habitats, we have constantly sought out the mysteries of hidden lands and then converted them. if possible, to our use. We even imagine it is our right to do so as the dominant species on this planet, either by dint of a god's imprimatur or

seeming evolutionary superiority. With our globe largely settled now (at least the terrestrial parts) we feel an impulse to push into space or beneath the waves to find yet more "lands of the lost". What we will find in these hidden territories we don't really know, but as often as not thanks to our popular literature we suspect we'll find dinosaurs.

Land of the Lost was a terrifically entertaining television show by Sid and Marty Krofft productions. It hails from those halcyon days of the 1970's, an era much put upon by modern opinion the days. 
the show concerned itself with a family of a father, a son and a daughter who fall into a strange land by a means unexplained and have to not only survive but use their wits and strengths to solve the abounding mysteries so that perhaps one day they can return home. And they do find dinosaurs. It was a very entertaining show in a cascade of Saturday morning fair that had often lost its luster in the 70's. It was also a show that had some fascinating science fiction at its core, a commodity all too common in popular entertainment today but rare and of great price back then.  So look for a Land of the Lost review each Saturday this month. 

Hanna-Barbera got in on this kind of story with Valley of the Dinosaurs. This cartoon series was about yet another family which became stranded in a prehistoric world. Given the freedom of animation and a lighter tone we get a different kind of interaction. Also, the prehistoric people in this one are bit more designed along traditional caveman tropes. There was also a Charlton Comics series developed from this show. 

Another Saturday morning offering about a Stone-Age family was Korg:70,000 B.C. which was live action despite also being a Hanna-Barbera offering. This was a surprisingly relaxed and serious presentation which attempted to show a Neanderthal family dealing with the rigors of their dangerous world. The narration by Burgess Meredith is warm and friendly and does much to make the show enjoyable. Bronson Canyon gets showcased in this TV effort. Charlton Comics produced some dandy work by Pat Boyette in support of his show as well. 

Pellucidar was the creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs and a magnificent world it is. It's at the center of the Earth and operates with entirely different physics than does the world we live in here on the surface. David Innes in At The Earth's Core went to Pellucidar by means of an iron mole and found there the love of his life, the vivacious Dian. DC adapted some of these stories when the picked up the license for ERB's creations in the early 70's. 

Burroughs also created Caspak, another strange land in which evolution is explored with some startling differences. Caspak was presented in a trio of novels beginning with The Land that Time Forgot. Later Russ Manning had Tarzan himself visit the bizarre island in two beautiful adventures. 

One of the earliest Burroughs efforts is a strange story originally titled The Eternal Lover. Given the more robust title of The Eternal Savage it and its companion story Nu of the Neocene tell how an ancient caveman came to live in modern times on the Tarzan estate in Africa. 

More Tarzan thrills as I wrap up my look at Burne Hogarth's spin on the Lord of the Jungle. We'll look at his final comic strips as well as the lush 70's work he did on the Ape Man. 

Skull the Slayer is an oddball little item from Marvel's hectic Bronze Age. It's a vintage lost world story with the obligatory dinosaurs but loaded up with much more, including aliens, deadly Incans, and the Black Knight to boot. 

One of my favorite Indy books was Mark Schultz's Xenozoic Tales (also known as Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) for Kitchen Sink. This black and white beauty showcased Schultz's developing art and takes the reader on a grand tour of a world which has survived an apocalypse but with some startling changes. 

And dinosaurs are also on the schedule for Showcase Presents: The War that Time Forgot. This series became a mainstay of Star-Spangled War Stories with many tales of dumfounded G.I.s battling an astonishing array of prehistoric monstrosities. This volume doesn't quite have all of the stories, but it has quite a lot. Catch it in this month's "Showcase Corner". 

And The War that Time Forgot was too good a concept to ignore and so DC has brushed it off and brought it forward a few more times over the decades, often blending it with their other creations. In this version by Bruce Jones we see a clutch of DC's vintage heroes from many periods of time come together to stand up to the dinosaur menace. 

And no look at lost worlds would be complete without including Turok Son of Stone who with his staunch ally Andar was stranded in the Lost Valley fighting cavemen and "Honkers" for several decades in those Dell and Gold Key classics. "Sundays of Stone" will return this month. 

All this and even more exciting prehistoric ephemera in this first full month of Spring. Keep your head on a swivel for deadly dinosaurs amigos. 

Rip Off 

A Banjo For Sleestak!

Banjo music is often the butt of jokes, but personally I like it pretty well.


Other than classic Bluegrass tunes though, the few times banjo music has broken into the mainstream is when Steve Martin plays it on stage, or the old Delivance movie tune "Dueling Banjos" which dominated the AM airwaves for several months in the 70's.


The third instance of banjo music is the theme song for Land of the Lost, the Sid and Marty Krofft television classic.


I'm on record as loathing the Will Farrell-vehicle remake of the the classic television series, but my completist soul still wanted a copy if only for the Sleestak scenes. I finally found a copy cheap enough in a discount bin to justify my buying it.

Listening director Brad Silberling's commentary revealed a lot to me about how this regrettable movie came to be. First off, I found I enjoyed parts of it more this time since I've let go of the expectation it would give us a large-screen quasi-serious treatment of the themes in the original show. Knowing it was a farce, freed me to take it on its own merits. I have to say that Danny McBride is pretty funny at times.

And listening to the director it's clear that it was meant to be a farce from the get-go. What I knew to be true watching the movie was confirmed when certain scenes turned out to be improvisations, and despite sometimes being funny, it's these very scenes which bring the movie to a grinding halt in terms of plot. The director apparently the found the show a kitsch-laden hoot from his childhood and intentionally wanted to riff on the images which had attached to his memory.


Another movie which apparently inspired the remake was Beneath the Planet of the Apes and this can be seen in the rugged landscapes fused with bits and pieces of modern society as well as the graphic treatments used for the fonts of the logos and end titles. I will confess the movie looks great at times, especially when the cast is running away from the dinos across the bleak landscape.

Silberling did reveal though that the banjo theme song had a real intriguing and possibly disturbing origin given that we are talking about a kid's show. It seems as revealed by one of the Krofft brothers, that it was in fact the movie Deliverance and its music which inspired the banjo theme for the TV show.

So now we know that two of the most infamous river rides in cinematic and television history are linked not only by the happenstance of time, but by the enthralling and memorable nature of their musical identities.

Here is "Dueling Banjos" from Deliverance.



And here is the memorable theme song from Land of the Lost.



And here is Steve Martin playing "Dueling Banjos" with the Muppets. Why not?




Rip Off

Land Of The Lost!

Like many, I have an abiding affection for the original TV series. It was at once charming, smart, and compelling TV. The kids learned to act (a bit) before our very eyes, and the special effects were just good enough to keep it all buzzing. The first season is a wonder of intelligent design, a remarkable TV show that seemed to know where it was going. In the 70's a most novel notion. The second and third seasons lose a bit of the magic, especially the more fantasy-driven third season, but still the elusive charm clings.

It doesn't cling to the modern movie remake. I finally got around to seeing at the discount cinema yesterday. My daughter and I went (she's an adult who hasn't seen a single episode, so you can imagine her confusion right away) and it began well enough. The problem is an obvious one. Will Farrell can be hilarious, but he's woefully miscast in this movies as Rick Marshall, a scientist belittled for his theories of time travel. A beautiful grad student named Holly comes to him and lures him to follow his dream and they meet a goof named Will and soon find themselves in the "Land of the Lost", a time garbage disposal of sorts that seems to be especially locked in on Earth. The science is garbled and difficult to decipher, so it fails on that front. The special effects are neatly done, though really great dinosaurs aren't the wonder to see they were even a decade ago. The Sleestak are fun though not as scary as I expected. All of that would be okay if the movie didn't just grind to a halt from time to time as Farrell does some of his shtick. This is truly a movie that fights itself.

Maybe they needed a star to get it done. I understand that, but treating this stuff in parody doesn't really succeed. The fanboys like me see the stuff they need, but then see it handled quite roughly in places. The new viewers must be mystified. My daughter was. It's a movie that's neither fish nor fowl. It's a comedy that is sometimes funny, though often with unfortunate costs to the tone and feel of the adventure. And it's an adventure flick that lacks the most essential element of such tales, dramatic tension. There's really no sense of danger to lead characters, as they blunder around an illogical mishmash environment.

Land of the Lost is a really disappointing movie, and it's no wonder that it bombed. Stay away, unless you're morbidly curious like me.

Rip Off