Beginning in the summer of 1891, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began writing about the cases of one Sherlock Holmes in The Strand Magazine. This would continue for the next twenty years and in the process, Sherlock Holmes would become the world’s most famous detective.
Suddenly, in the spring of 1912 he began serializing the adventures of George Edward Challenger and his Amazonian discoveries in The Lost World in the same magazine (later published in book form).
So popular were Challenger’s adventures, that director Harry O. Hoyt adapted Doyle’s 1912 novel for the 1925 silent film classic, The Lost World, starring Wallace Beery as Challenger … special effects were by King Kong’s Willis O'Brien.
In 1960, Irwin Allen (The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno) delivered his own version of The Lost World with Claude Rains as Challenger.
This brings us the very exciting news from The Film Chest this past week, the next production to take on Doyle’s The Lost World was in 1999 when Aussie filmmaker Richard Franklin, who had gained state-side notice with his film releases of Patrick and Road Games — working with producers Jeffery Hayes and Greg Coote — delivered The Lost World, starring Peter McCauley as Challenger.
The film was so good — instead of it being released theatrically as a one-off — it was shopped around as something of a “pilot” for a proposed television series. Once that was secured, Franklin’s film was cut into two parts, which became the first two episodes in the series, The Lost World — “The Journey Begins” and “Stranded.”
On Sept. 27, The Film Chest will release Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World as a 12-disc collection featuring all 66 episodes in the series. As a bonus, the two-part opening has been reassembled into the feature film that everyone raved about.
Professor George Challenger leads an expedition to a remote area in the Amazon, but the hot air balloon that they were using leaves them stranded on an isolated plateau. It is here that they meet another stranded visitor, Veronica Layton (Jennifer O'Dell), who was lost there with her parents some ten years earlier. Her knowledge of the place proves to be life-saving.
Other members of the expedition include Marguerite Krux (Rachel Blakely), Lord John Richard Roxton (William Snow), Professor Arthur Summerlee (Michael Sinelnikoff) and Ned Malone (David Orth). During their adventures in this “Lost World” they encounter a race of lizard people, long extinct dinosaurs (including a T-Rex), warring tribes, a stranded World War I flyer (who doesn’t know the war is over) and more.
It’s one thrill-packed adventure after another … all 66 episodes, which ironically ends with a cliffhanger (a fourth season was envisioned, but financing fell through) … for all we know, Challenger and his group are still there!!!
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