though experts long claimed that O’Brien had no assistants on THE LOST WORLD animation chores. Clearly, a subject for further research, which the honorable Scott MacQueen may be putting his pen to in the future. Definitive, wish-fulfillment extra features aside,
it is highly unlikely that we will ever see a truly authentic restoration of THE LOST WORLD. It is unfortunate that issues of propriety attached to 75-year-old film elements prevented the complete access to all existing elements necessary for a more archivally ideal restoration of the film... but such is life and the vagaries of the film preserva­ tion and restoration business. For now, let us give thanks to David Shepard
and Serge Bromberg for what they have accom­ plished: a full-blooded, substantially-intact recre­ ation of the long-lost LOST WORLD. Gentlemen, thank you.
_____________NOTES_____________
1 For more on O’Brien’s early effects projects, Doyle’s 1922 stunt, Herbert Dawley, and the production of th e LOST WORLD, see “Willis O Brien—Creator of the Impossible ’’ by Don Shay, CI NE F EX #7, January, 1982, pp. 9-22; WILLIS O’BRIEN: SPECIAL EFFECTS GENIOS by Steve Archer, McFarland, 1993, pp. 3-13; THE ANNOTATED LOST WORLD, ed. by Pilot and Rodin, pp. 241-246; and Scott MacQueen ’s oft- plundered articles “THE LOST WORLD: Merely Misplaced,’’ AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER, Voi. 73, Ho. 6, 1991, pp. 37-44 (summarized in Scott ’s extensive annotations for the Lumivision laserdisc and DVD edition of THE LOST WORLD), “Cinematic Archeology,” CINEFEX #55, 1993,
pp. 123-124, and THE LOST WORLD—Found!” CINEFEX #70, June 1997, pp. 143-44, 149-50, 166. The latter offers a detailed account of the Czech print’s discovery, and is particularly rel­ evant to the current restoration; special thanks to Scott MacQueen for proof-reading and offer­ ing corrections to my own article.
2 Ivan T. Sanderson, “First Photos of Bigfoot, ’ California’s Legendary ‘Abominable Snow­ man,” ’ ARGOSY MAGAZINE, February, 1968; re­ printed as “Wandering Woodspersons” in MORE “THINGS,” Pyramid Books, 1969, pp. 74-75. This brings to mind director Ken Russell ’s in­
flated memories of the British monster movie SECRET OF THE LOCH, which sent him fleeing
from the theater when its Loch Hess monster appeared onscreen. In his autobiography, Russell recalls it as a live plucked chicken; in reality, it
was just another iguana pressed into duty as a cinematic dinosaur (see Russell, A BRITISH PIC­ TURE, Mandarin (UK), 1989, pp. 6-7).
3 Kinnard, THE LOST WORLD OF WILLIS OBRIEN, McFarland, 1993, pg. xiv.
4 Stratmann interviewed by Grace L. Houghton and Phil Serling, “Restoring THE LOST WORLD: An Interview with Ed Stratmann, ” Restoring THE LOST WORLD. Emprise Publishing/Syra- cuse Cinéphile Society, 1998, pg. 9.
5 Stratmann/Houghton, Ibid., pg. 15.
6 The best and most complete prints of the O Brien Edison shorts on video appear on WILLIS O BRIEN FILMS (1915-1931)from LSVideo, Inc., reviewed in VW 55:20.
7 The best available video version of Me Cay’s THE PET—the archetype of all giant monster movies to follow—appears on Milestone ’s ANI­ MATION LEGEND: WINSOR McCAY, originally released on laserdisc and DVD by Lumivision, and still available on DVD from Slingshot/ Lumivision.
8 In fact, O Brien ’s devotion to Knight ’s art for his own cinematic reconstructions of prehistoric life are evident from THE GHOST OF SLUMBER MOUNTAIN and after, including KING KONG Working under O ’Brien’s supewision, Marcel Delgado ’s THE LOST WORLD animation models of Stegosaurus (strikingly close to Knight ’s paint­ ing of same from McCLURE’S magazine, 1897, which he sculpted two years later for the Ameri­ can Museum of Natural History), Agathaumas (sporting a wholly fictional skull, speculatively reconstructed at the direction of paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope from fragmentary fossil evidence and utterly unique to Knight ’s body of work), and the rest are mawelously detailed recreations of Knight’s pioneer dinosaur art, not Lankester’s. See DINOSAURS, MAMMOTHS AND CAVEMEN: THE ART OF CHARLES R. KNIGHT by Sylvia Massey Czerkas and Donald F . Glut, E.P. Dutton, Inc., 1982.
9 Though I finally found a watchable video copy of THE LOST WHIRL from a private collector after almost two decades of searching, the only gen­ erally available excerpt appears on Don Glut ’s compilation video documentary DINOSAURS! (1993, Simitar; screen title: DINOSAUR MOV­
IES). Glut ’s lively, entertaining compilation and chronology of choice cinematic dinosaur mate­ rial is recommended; it also features a complete print of THE DINOSAUR AND THE MISSING L/TYA^ as an extra.
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