I like the lizards
Dspite what people thought of the dinosaurs in this film,I liked them, and the film. They just look good to me
despite the "brontasaurus" being an iguana action figure?
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Personally I thought the lizards were rediculous. I just found a copy of the 1925 version of the film. It's a silent movie, but the dinosaurs are MUCH better in it. In fact, I'd say it was a better movie in most respects. But thats just me.
shareback when studios could afford MONTHS of stop motion work, this was feasible.
The scenes were already written when the budget cuts came down, ALLEN was forced to use lizards;
after all he didn't hire Willis O'brien for the prestige of it, since few of the masses knew who he was back then
Allen apparently did originally intend to have O'Brien animate dinosaur models for him (he'd used him and Ray Harryhausen on The Animal World in 1956), and it would have been interesting to see extensive use of dino models in color.
But one reason Fox cut the budget and forced the use of lizards was that they had worked well in Journey to the Center of the Earth the year before, and the brains in the front office figured they'd do so again. The problem of course was that the lizards in that film portrayed one kind of dinosaur, a Dimetrodon, which with the addition of a few frills they could be made to reasonably resemble. JTTCOTE is generally considered to be the best (maybe the only decent) use of lizards-as-dinosaurs in any movie, but it was still obvious they were just lizards. (There were other lizards used later in the film that went unnamed, just "monsters".) But by trying to get away with calling obvious lizards specific dinosaurs which they plainly didn't resemble in the slightest, The Lost World completely destroyed any semblance of reality.
Even the low-budget 1951 film Lost Continent managed to have a few animated dinosaurs, which were handled fairly well considering the movie's limitations, so I really don't buy the notion that animated models were out of the question even with the budget cuts. If Fox had sprung for a few good animated models, the film would have been more than passable, even with the usual Irwin Allen inanities (like Jill St. John lugging her poodle to the Amazon, for starters).
Interesting. I always wondered why they went with lizards and other reptiles which I found it ridiculous. And a bit cruel, like the fight between the two 'monsters' (dressed-up monitor lizard and small caiman) that ended up falling down a cliff.
Just one thing, Dimetrodons are not dinosaurs. They were Synapsids that went extinct during the Permian, several millions of years before the first dinosaurs appeared.
Oh, okay, I thought Dimetrodons were dinosaurs, never heard of their more nuanced origins, so thanks for the information. Nonetheless, that's what the lizards were portraying in Journey to the Center of the Earth.
shareWhat the hell is an "iguana action figure"? (Ignoring the fact that the lizard being passed of as a "brontosaurus" wasn't even an iguana).
shareNot only isn't the lizard an iguana, the other one isn't even a lizard-- it's a dimestore alligator. I agree they were better than animation figures-- they were really fighting, after all. I doubt very much if they were hurt by it, even less by the fall.
There are myriad versions of "lost world" scenarios in movies, through the ages. This one is about the slowest and talkiest I've ever seen-- another reason the lizard and alligator stole the show.
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