Reviews

For me, this movie rates a "9 out of 10" and I'll tell you why. I have a great nostalgic feel for "Lost World." I saw it in July of 1960 when I was 8 years old. It was 20th Century-Fox's big Summer release. It had a fine cast, a workable script, excellent cinematography and a fabulous musical score. It has already been mentioned (by just about every reviewer) that the "dinosaurs" were dressed-up lizards and they were......BUT, to an 8 year old kid seeing that film in the CinemaScope (widescreen) process in a single-screen theater (remember them?) in stereo and that marvelous-looking (when it was new) Deluxe color, not only were those "dressed-up lizards" dinosaurs, but the whole thing was a "boys-adventure-come-true." And it was all wrapped up in about 97 minutes. I would LOVE to see this film released to home-video DVD in it's proper aspect-ratio and 4-track stereo sound. Be honest with yourselves now, all you armchair-critics, would you REALLY rather see "Jurassic Park" which, in the end, only had CGI dinosaurs going for it (it was really quite boring wasn't it?) or a "Lost World" which makes no pretentious political statements and just says to the viewer (to quote Sir Arthur) "I have wrought my simple plan, if I give one hour of joy, to the boy who's half a man, or the man who's half a boy." "Lost World" is a wonderful film which doesn't deserve the bad rap that it's gotten.

I also saw this movie when I was young on TV in Los Angeles. It has not shown up anywhere that I'm aware of for nearly 40 years.

"China's Little Devils" is a Monogram Picture. Monogram became Allied Artists in the early 50's. They were bought by Lorimar in (I believe) the 80's. The Lorimar catalog was purchased by (again, I believe) Turner Entertainment which was itself acquired by Warners. I hope I've got the "line of authority" straight! But I'm certain that Warners now owns "China's Little Devils" and hopefully we may one day see a video release of this basically forgotten gem from WWII. Warners has released other Monogram titles, so hope is there.