Long before a fictional theme park opened its prehistoric maw and swallowed the dinosaur cinematic genre whole, the moviegoing public caught this silent feature based on a 1912 novel by Sherlock’s creator (and biggest hater) Arthur Conan Doyle. A reclusive explorer, whose claims that dinos still roam the earth in remote South America – aka the border between Peru, Brazil, and Colombia – get him laughed out of ye olde top hat-wearing science halls, agrees to let a newspaper cover his expedition as long as they also fund it. With him come several goofy characters, including a “sportsman,” the daughter of a lost explorer, and a reporter desperate to impress his fiancée. Though any non-Anglo Saxon characters get painted with the ethnic stereotype brush, what makes the picture worth preservation is the incredible stop-motion effects – the first-ever featured in a U.S. feature film and made by Willis H. O’Brien of landmark saurian short The Ghost of Slumber Mountain. – James Scott
