Monster Movie of the Week: The Lost World Jurassic Park (1997)

THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK
Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Survival/Adventure

THE MOVIE

After the global phenomenon that was Jurassic Park, author Michael Crichton was pressed to write a sequel to his smash novel, on which the 1993 Steven Spielberg movie was loosely based. Crichton's sequel, "The Lost World" introduces us to Isla Sorna, or Site B, where the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were created before being transported to John Hammond's theme park. It turns out that most of the labs and hatcheries on the park were just for show and the real dirty work of cloning dinosaurs was conducted on Site B.

"The Lost World" novel is a sequel to Crichton's book, not the Spielberg movie and and it does have an edgier tone and functions as a dark commentary on science and technology more than an as an awe-inspiring fun ride. That said, it does bring back Ian Malcolm who had been pretty much pronounced dead at the end of the "Jurassic Park" novel (after a long and rambling morphine trip). While the first book was concerned with how chaos theory predicted the collapse of the ambitious system that was Isla Nublar, "The Lost World" is preoccupied with extinction theory and the behavior of these animals which have been allowed to develop on their own for many years.

The movie adaptation is pretty loose and juxtaposes a lot of characters and relationships and even adds in some material from the first book, which was too technically difficult to achieve at the dawn of the digital age. It's a pretty light movie and has even less scientific commentary than its predecessor.

As in the book, the movie focuses on Ian Malcolm's return to the island, although this is the more cuddly Jeff Goldblum version of the character. His motivation for going back in the movie is to rescue his paleontologist girlfriend who has already gone to the island on a secret documentary exposition. He even has an annoying tween daughter who stows away in the equipment. Much like the movie's T-Rex, The Lost World is very much about showing that Ian Malcolm can be a responsible and nurturing parent and mate. Both were sort of unpleasant and roguish in the first movie, and are reformed by the end of this one. That parallel is a nice emotional throughline in the movie.

Malcolm's team is competing with a group from another wing of InGen who are there to capture dinosaurs to display in a scaled-down San Diego version of Jurassic Park. Soon both teams are forced to work together to survive the island and its ferocious inhabitants. Perhaps the most notable addition to the original story is the last act, which features a T-Rex running loose in San Diego. This bit is a nice homage to classic monster movies and even features a group of Japanese business men running for their lives.


THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

Probably one of the appealing aspects of doing this movie for someone like Spielberg (who had already won an Academy Award by this point) was to play around with his cool toys some more. Jurassic Park pushed special effects technology to the breaking point, and there were still plenty of things that they were unable to do in that movie. The Lost World, no doubt, offered the opportunity to take advantage of the advances that were made in the intervening four years and make a bigger and more spectacular movie with more dinosaurs and set pieces.

The movie features not one, but three T-Rexes. There are two adults and one infant. Sadly, there is very little difference between the adults. It would have been nice to see a little sexual dimorphism, which was alluded to in the book. The infant is mainly seen injured and is realized by an animatronic, and later CGI. The male Rex even gets a scene which was cut from the original novel, in which a Rex attempts to snatch some people from behind a waterfall, complete with dino tongue.

The first dinos we see are a herd of Stegasaurs, including adults and juveniles. It's almost as though someone had a checklist of popular dinosaurs that didn't make it into Jurassic Park. They achieve something you didn't see in the first movie: a good medium shot of a bunch of large CGI dinosaurs. They look really great in this movie. There is even a baby, which seems like a nice nod to the baby Triceratops cut scene from the first movie.

Speaking of Trikes, we get to actually see on in motion in this movie. If you remember, the only Triceratops in Jurassic Park was the big prone one with a tummy ache. Here we get to see one go all Cretaceous on the InGen camp.

There is also a "round up" scene, straight out of The Valley of Gwangi which features lots of sauropods and hadrosaurs. There are even some dome-headed Pachycephalosaurs. There is a wonderful scene during the round up in which we follow a motorcycle as it drives under the belly of sauropod, which is one of my all time favorite dinosaur moments.

The Lost World also introduces us to Compies, which are small chicken-sized dinosaurs which travel in packs, picking off weak animals. Compies were present in Michael Crichton's first novel and even had the privilege of finishing off that version of John Hammond. Here, they have a similar scene in which they gang up on one of the the hunters brought to the island by InGen.



Jurassic Park's most memorable dinos, the Velociraptors are back and get a large action sequence in the movie's third act to themselves. The raptors chase Malcolm, and his girlfriend and daughter into an abandoned InGen facility, which has a cool Life After People vibe. There is even a follow-up to a series of shots in the kitchen scene from the first movie in which Spielberg juxtaposes human hands and raptor claws. Sadly these raptors are vanquished by a combination of their own foul tempers and tween gymnastics.



MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

The dino round up is a really exciting piece of filmmaking, and probably Spielberg's whole reason for wanting to do the movie.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Widely available in many different DVD configurations. The whole trilogy is rumored to be out on BluRay in the near future.

TRAILER






Patrick Garone
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Monster Movie of the Week: King Kong (2005)

KING KONG (2005)
Director: Peter Jackson
Genre: Adventure/Tearjerker

THE MOVIE:

King Kong has been around the block a few times. He starred in the classic 1933 movie and its sequel, a couple of Japanese movies (including one in which he fought Godzilla and in another he fights Mechanikong) and a 1976 remake and its sequel. And let’s not forget all of the giant ape copycat movies that Kong inspired. One could have been forgiven for thinking that the 2005 remake was less than necessary (especially after the disappointing Godzilla remake in 1998).However, when you have a filmmaker like Peter Jackson-who was at the height of his creative powers having just finished the Lord of the Rings Trilogy-it changes the equation a bit.


The most important factor was that Peter Jackson absolutely loves and respects the original 1933 movie. One has to only see the extras on the DVD of the original King Kong in which Jackson painstakingly recreates the lost Spider Pit sequence using only 30’s era technology. You can clearly see that this is the lucky guy who loves what he is doing.Again, I have to go back to Emerlich and Devlin’s Godzilla remake. Here were two guys who were given a brand and were told they could do what they wanted with it. They had no particular love or interest in the original series and decided to do a remake that had almost nothing to do with the original Godzilla movies. In contrast, Jackson took the original movie, knew there were things he could do to better realize it, and made a movie that might have been very similar to what the original filmmakers would have done if they had the 2005 technology at their disposal.We all know the story of Kong. We all know how it ends. But what really works in this version is the relationship between Anne Darrow (Naomi Watts) and Kong (mo-cap by Andy Sirkis, who did similar duty on Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.) Really, the whole movie hinges on this relationship. In past versions of the story there is an element that is, shall we say…creepy…about this pairing. I think the previous versions of Kong have been informed by an idea that he represents a sort of primitive Third-World sexuality focused on this white blond woman, whereas, Peter Jackson’s Kong behaves more like a real gorilla. He is presented as being isolated on Skull Island and is the last of his kind in a hostile environment. Anne is equally isolated and afraid to reach out to anyone. The fact that these two are able to form such an important connection is very beautiful and touching and gives the movie its center, and makes this version of King Kong the great unconventional love story it was always meant to be. Respect for Watts and Sirkis for being able to bring this relationship to the forefront despite several layers of technology. Peter Jackson once again shows that he can make a big budget special effects movie that focuses on character, relationships and emotion.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

The greatest special effects application is the use of motion capture which allows Kong to be inhabited by actor Andy Sirkis resulting in an actual performance and not just an animation. This is part of the reason that the film is so successful and heartbreaking because you really feel invested in Kong as a character and not a guy in a monkey suit, a stop motion puppet, or a giant animatronic head.


There are a lot of special effects in this movie, from the obvious creature effects to the more subtle effects used to create or enhance environments. There’s nothing necessarily groundbreaking but all the effects are well executed.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

Skull Island is crawling with monsters. There are dozens of dinosaurs, from T-Rex and Raptor analogues to larger sauropods. There are bugs galore, including giant man-eating wetas. There are some creatures that defy description such as one that I can only call the “Foreskin monster.”

Much like James Cameron's Avatar four years later, King Kong attempts to create an ecosystem (although an impossible one; Skull Island would have to be huge to support all of those dinosaurs). There is even a great companion book to the movie, The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, which is book of concept art for the movie disguised as a guide book to the flora and fauna of the island. The main idea behind Jackson's concept for Skull Island is that it is a place where prehistoric animals never went extinct and continued to evolve for the last 65 million years, so they are not exactly as we know them from the fossil record (hence the V-Rex being slightly different from its extinct ancestors).

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

V-Rex Fight. Kong fights three V-Rexes, on a cliff, suspended on vines and on the ground, mostly while holding on to Anne. And the absolutely heartbreaking end of the movie.

DVD AVAILABILITY:

There have been several releases on DVD. The Extended Edition restores about 22 minutes of footage, including the river raft sequence that features an giant fish that resembles Giger’s Alien more than a little bit. Although, the movie does take its time getting going so the extra 22 minutes might be a dealbreaker for some people. There are plenty of other documentaries and extras.

Most, if not all, of these features are available on the Bluray version of the movie, which features both the theatrical and extended cuts. Like many Blurays, the featurettes and other supplemental materials are only available as branching features while watching the movie. What the hell is up with that anyway?

SEQUELS:

None planned or needed.

SEE ALSO:

King Kong* (1933), King Kong (1976)

TRAILER:




*The 2005 Collector’s Edition of the 1933 movie features extensive interviews with Peter Jackson in which he talks about his love for the movie. It also features a very interesting documentary in which Jackson’s 2005 Kong crew attempts to recreate the infamous and lost “Spider Pit” sequence using technology available in the 30’s. The documentary takes you through the whole process and you get to see the final recreation of that scene.

Monster Movie of the Week: The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969)

Director: Jim Connelly

Genre: Monster of the loose/Western

THE MOVIE

The Valley of Gwangi is first and foremost notable for being a unique genre mash-up that combines elements of a cowboy picture with that of a classic “Lost World” style adventure movie, complete with dinosaurs and other prehistoric fauna. Gwangi was the brainchild of Willis O’Brien, the famed special effects artist who brought King Kong to life in his original 1933 movie. The movie was originally to have been produced in 1942 but was later shelved. O’Brian’s pupil, Ray Harryhousen, picked up the project in the 1960’s, updated it, and it was finally released in 1969. The Valley of Gwangi is something of a classic among dinosaur movies and was a staple of syndicated TV monster movie shows during the 1970’s and 80’s. Myself, I remember seeing it as a small child on the old “Son of Svengoulie” show that used to broadcast here in Chicago. Gwangi is also one of the great examples of realistic stop-motion dinosaur animation in movie history and it was a big influence on the Jurassic Park movies which featured whole sequences inspired by Valley of Gwangi such as the T-Rex ambush of the Gallimimus and the dino round up sequence from The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

Gwangi is set in Mexico around the turn of the last century, in the Wild West. A cowgirl named T.J. Breckenridge runs a failing stunt show and circus. Through some local gypsies (Yes, there are gypsies in Latin America), she comes into possession of a mysterious prehistoric horse-like creature called an Eohippus. With the help of a sneaky paleontologist, a faction of the gypsies try to return the creature to where it was found for fear of retribution from an entity called Gwangi. T.J.’s fiancé tracks the little horse down to a forbidden valley filled with prehistoric creatures, the largest and meanest of which is the Allosaurus, Gwangi. Lots of lassoing and Western high jinks ensue and Gwangi is ultimately knocked unconscious by a series of improbable events and taken back to the circus in an impressive but hastily made wooden cage. Gwangi is put on display ala King Kong and you can guess what happens next. Needless to say, it is a Harryhousen movie, so an elephant dies.

Can you find and circle the bad idea in this picture?.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

There are several creatures featured in this movie, but the titular monster is the Allosaurus, Gwangi who is fancifully colored in lavender. For an old-school dino, Gwangi is fairly realistically animated. While he isn’t animated with the back/ground parallelism we would find in a modern dinosaur movie, he doesn’t drag his tail on the ground either. He is also animated with the characteristic Harryhousen attention to detail and character and there are many little moments where you witness the creature “behaving” in a very lifelike way.

What happened in Ray Harryhousen's youth to make him hate elephants so much?

Gwangi is notable for the high quality of its visual effects and the wonderful way that the animated shots are composited with the live-action footage, resulting in a very seamless integration of the two. This is most evident in the famous “lassoing scene” in which several live actors on horses appear to lasso this dinosaur around its neck and are struggling to pull the creature in different directions. The motions of the little puppet are matched perfectly to those of the footage of the actors on horseback. Or in the truly magical little scene in which a live horse briefly interacts with it’s tiny stop motion ancestor.

MONSTERS FEATURED

Eohippus

Gwangi

Styrakasaurus

Pteranodon

Ornithomimus

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

There are quite a few great sequences in this movie but I like the Gwangi’s stalking our heroes in a giant cathedral, which seems to be a vague inspiration for the Velociraptor kitchen scene from Jurassic Park.

Gwangi’s demise is particularly hellish.

"I love you, you love me..."

DVD AVAILABILITY

Widely available and on Netflix. Has an interview with Harryhousen and a featurette as well as trailers for other Harryhousen movies.

SEQUELS

None

SEE ALSO

King Kong 1933 The Beast of Hollow Mountain 1956

The series of bad decisions starts when these cowboys decide to poke this dinosaur with a sharp stick.

THE TRAILER

TRIVIA

O’Brien originally realized his idea as the 1956 movie, The Beast of Hollow Mountain.

Bonus Monster Movie of the Week: Jurassic Park (1993)

JURASSIC PARK (1993)

Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Science Fiction/Adventure/Survival

THE MOVIE:

Where would monster movies be without Jurassic Park? Although, not strictly speaking, a “monster movie” (Spielberg was very conscious of making his dinosaurs animals and not movie monsters,) Jurassic Park helped usher in a new era of creature features and for the first time applied CGI to the task of creating photorealistic creatures. Over the next few years when this technology became cheaper and easier to use it helped usher in a whole wave of CGI-aided monster movies such as Anaconda (1997), The Relic (1997), Mimic (1997), Deep Rising (1998), Deep Blue Sea (1999,) Eight-Legged Freaks (2002) and a whole slew of others. Jurassic Park took a B-movie premise and gave it a respectful presentation, with an A-List director.


Jurassic Park is a distilled version of the late Michael Crichton’s blockbuster novel (and one of my favorite books) about an island theme park featuring dinosaurs cloned from amber-preserved DNA. This clever premise skirts actual science just enough to be plausible. With the unprecedented realism of its visual effects, Jurassic Park has the feel of credible speculative fiction. Although, how cool would it have been if Spielberg had chosen to realize it as a faux documentary? If this movie ever gets remade (and there is good reason to do it) this is the route that they should go. It also launched Crichton-mania in the mid to late 1990's with (among others) adaptions of Congo, Sphere, and Disclosure rushing into production in Jurassic Park's wake as well as the Crichton-developed TV series E.R..

The movie removes some of the Crichton’s interesting subplots (such as the dinosaurs escaping the island,) features less dinos and waters down the novel’s commentary about science and responsibility but the main story is essentially the same. A small group of scientists are recruited to evaluate the island prior to its public unveiling when a combination of a tropical storm and industrial espionage take out the park’s security systems causing the dinosaurs to escape their enclosures and overrun the island. The heroes must then do everything they can to escape the island.

Jurassic Park was a pop cultural phenomenon when it was released. It was a movie whose sheer size and visuals had to been seen (not to mention heard) in a theater to be done justice. Even people who don’t normally go in for big summer special effects movies wanted to get a glimpse of Spielberg’s dinosaurs. One could actually make the ironic argument that the CGI technology used to bring the dinosaurs to life for the movie was a bit like Hammond’s technology to bring his dinosaurs to life in the story. It was a bit of a circus atmosphere: pay your $6 at the door and get a glimpse of the most realistic dinosaurs you’ll ever see. I vividly remember going to see it with a couple of high school buddies. June 11, 1993. Regardless, until Titanic was released, Jurassic Park enjoyed a four-year reign as the all-time box office champ.


THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

The effects have held up nicely over the last sixteen years and feature a seamless blend between CGI, animatronics, and even some suitmation. At some points (such as the raptor kitchen chase) the three techniques are so deftly blended together that it is next to impossible to tell where one ends and the next begins.

The filmmakers were pushing technology to its limits when they made this movie so some of the more demanding sequences from the book were probably cut from the movie (such as the T-rex river chase) for technical and financial reasons and scenes like the annoying car-in-the-tree sequence were probably added as “filler.” Of course, they more than made up for this in the two sequels which featured an orgy of dinosaurs.

The sound design must also be given credit. As amazing as the visual effects were, the sound effects and vocalizations created for the dinosaurs are equally impressive. Who can ever forget the earsplitting roar of the T-Rex? The same is true for the more avian and unnerving raptor calls and screeches. Not to mention the distinctive Dilophosaur hiss. I don’t think hissing has ever been done better. Not even by my cat.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

Tyrannosaurus Rex
Dilophosaurus
Brachiosaurus
Tricerotops (lying down only)
Velociraptors – Introduced the word velociraptor into common speech.
Parasaur
Gallimimus


MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

There are many amazing sequences in this movie but my personal favorite is a quick shot right after Grant and all land on the island. After you see the first Brachiosaurs there is a beautiful long shot of a herd of dinosaurs bathing in the lake in the golden sunlight. They should make a poster of this:


DVD AVAILABILITY:

Widely available on DVD, either on its own or in a reasonably priced three-pack with its sequels. Back in the waning days of the VCR, Jurassic Park was the movie with which you showed off your home theater system. The most recent trilogy boxed set, the Jurassic Park Adventure Pack, does not include all of the extras of the previous set.

Sadly, no Blu-Ray as of yet.



SEQUELS:
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Jurassic Park III (2001), and a third sequel is currently in development hell.

MINORITY REPORT:

First casualty: A Costa Rican worker (probably played by a Mexican) gets munched on by a caged raptor.

The only black character of consequence is a pre-Pulp Fiction Samuel L. Jackson, who makes a novice minority-character-in-a-horror-movie mistake: He leaves the group to turn the lights on. No! If you are black and in a monster movie, you never leave a group of white people!

Minority Survival Threshold: 26%

Annoying-Ass Kid Survival Threshold: 100%

SEE ALSO:


King Kong (2005)

READ ALSO:

Check out The Science of Jurassic Park by Rob Desalle and David Lindley. And also Crichton's novel.

Not that I condone reading.



THE TRAILER:




TRIVIA:

Actual velociraptors were only the size of a turkey. They would still mess you up.

Interestingly, around the time of the movie's release a related species was discovered that closely resembled the velociraptors in the movie.

Believe it or not, the kids were actually much more annoying in the book.