Two Lost Worlds (1951) – Review

When it comes to bringing dinosaurs out of prehistory and into the modern age the most common venue for filmmakers was for the protagonists to find themselves stuck in some form of “Lost World” where dinosaurs somehow survived by way of either being on a secluded plateau or in a valley that was cut off from the rest of the world, an idea first made popular by Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, but in 1951 an independent production company cobbled together a film with rather a lacklustre take on this particular premise.

The poster for the Sterling Productions of Two Lost Worlds depicts a couple of titanic dinosaurs battling it out while volcanic explosions erupt behind them but even though those events do, in fact, occur in the film it’s still a bit misleading as the story is more about a love triangle between two dudes and a girl and few nasty pirates than it is about a prehistoric lost world. The movie opens with an American clipper ship sailing to the East Indies when it is attacked by pirates and though they escape the ship’s first mate Kirk Hamilton (James Arness) was wounded during the fight and Captain Tallman (Tom Monroe) decides that their best course of action would be to make port in Australia so that Hamilton’s splintered leg could receive proper medical attention. This is where the romance angle kicks in as Hamilton meets and falls in love with Elaine Jeffries (Kasey Rogers), the fiancée of sheep rancher Martin Shannon (Bill Kennedy), but this love triangle is interrupted by those self-same pirates that attacked the clipper ship earlier and have now decided to raid this Australian farming community. This results in the kidnapping of Elaine and her friend, Nancy Holden (Jane Harlan), and it’s up to our two male leads to set aside their differences and chase after the pirates and rescue the fair maidens.

“Commodore, are there any dinosaurs in that direction?”

When our heroes eventually catch up to the pirates we do get some pretty good swashbuckling action, with sailors and pirates swinging from the rigging as they battle for control while both ships catch fire around them, unfortunately for our heroes, the fire that is caused by the battle rages out of control and only a small group manage to escape via one of the ship’s longboats. It’s at this point that viewers who have been waiting for some dinosaurs will start getting their hopes up as our castaways find themselves marooned on an island inhabited by some prehistoric titans, well, maybe not what any of us would call prehistoric titans but more like two geckos with fins glued to their backs and made to fight each other for our amusement. What’s even more disappointing than this rather uninspiring dinosaur encounter is the fact that it’s not even original footage as it’s just stuff borrowed from the 1940s version One Million Years B.C. that starred Victor Mature and Lon Chaney Jr.

“Dear, I think those dinosaurs are more afraid of us than we are of them.”

Stray Observations:

• The Captain makes a big deal about his first mate wanting to chart a faster course through notoriously pirate-filled waters but then they are attacked even before reaching said waters, so what was the point of that debate?
• A large portion of the film takes place in Australia yet pretty much all the residents have American accents and by the 1820s the Australian accent we know of today had already started to develop.
• Shannon becomes jealous of Hamilton and tells Elaine he wants to announce their engagement right away, his reason being that “Since this Mister Hamilton has come into our lives you’ve changed, I hardly know you” but she had only met Hamilton for the first time that very morning, which means this must have been some massive change to be noticed so rapidly.
• The pirate captain dresses in a black cape and top hat and looks more like Snidely Whiplash than he does anything else.

“Are there any women around here for me to tie to railway tracks?”

Recycled dinosaur footage is the least of this film’s problems as its running time of a meagre 61 minutes allows no time for proper character development or story structure and thus the film relies on a narrator to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to explaining the plot and the romance. The character of Elaine Jefferies comes across as a rather fickle damsel in distress who falls head-over-heels for this American sailor but then dismisses romantic intentions when she learns that it would mean leaving home and sailing off to America, but when her original suitor dies at the film’s conclusion she’s back in the meaty hands of James Arness, so I’m calling it, they should have left her to the volcano. The title of the film is actually more about the two separate worlds inhabited by our lovers while the “lost world” full of dinosaurs is nothing more than a detour to their eventual romantic finale.

“I think if we head in that direction we may find a plot.”

Director Norman Dawn didn’t have much to work with when helming Two Lost Worlds and I’m betting most of the budget was spent on that one cool sea battle and buying that dinosaur footage from United Artists but regardless of his limitation the end result was still nothing more than a shallow drama that was a bit of a genre mishmash and feels more like an extended chapter of a Republic serial than it does an actual movie. When the film does reach its climactic conclusion, with the island’s volcanic erupting because you can’t have a lost world movie without an erupting volcano, most viewers will have mentally checked out long ago and even the novelty of seeing an early career moment for James Arness isn’t worth the trouble. In conclusion, if you come across this film while surfing channels late at night keep surfing and maybe watch an infomercial instead.

“So this is the tale of our castaways. They’re here for a long long time. They’ll have to make the best of things, it’s an uphill climb.”