Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

hfan77 I remember watching a number of Sid and Marty Krofft shows in the 70s, including H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. But one show that had more episodes any of the shows the Krofft brothers produced was Land of the Lost. Whereas the majority of their shows lasted 17 episodes or a little more, Land of the Lost ran for 43 episodes and spawned a revival in the 90s and a movie with Will Ferrell.What I remember the most about the show was the opening theme "Marshall, will and Holly. On a routine expedition." It was an outstanding theme song since it set up the premise that would last for the entire run as the family tried to go back to the present.The one thing that stood out to me was the stop-motion photography on the dinosaurs, especially when they were roaring. In a number of trivia books I have on TV, I inserted a joke credit that said "Rubber Dinosaurs-Themselves." As for the cast, Wesley Eure (known by only his first name in the opening credits) was outstanding as Will. He was also on the network's long-running soap opera Days of Our Lives, so viewers could see him six days a week. There was also Kathy Coleman as Holly and Spencer Milligan as Rick. Milligan left the show after the second season and was replaced by Ron Harper as Uncle Jack.I should also point out that Land of the Lost introduced viewers to a new language, Paku, which was spoken by Cha-ka of the Pakuni tribe. Phillip Paley, who played Cha-Ka had no trouble with the language and played the role well.Basketball fans should also notice a couple of tall guys who played members of the Sleestak tribe. David Greenwood, who played for the Chicago Bulls and Bill Laimbeer, who later played for the World Champion Detroit Pistons.Land of the Lost is a show that will take you back in time to the days of cavemen and dinosaurs. A radical departure from any Krofft show since there are no psychedelic sets and it's more of an adventure show.

Pumpkin_Man After I saw the extremely awesome Land of the Lost movie for a 2nd time, I wanted to see the series that it was based on. I was new to the series, and I thought it was pretty good! They have good plots, cheesy special effects, and much more. On a routine expedition, Marshall, Will, and Holly meet the greatest earthquake ever known. They are transported to the Land of the Lost, and try to find their way back home. Throughout the season they must deal with a T-Rex named Grumpy, befriend a Pakuni named Cha-Ka, escape the Sleestak, seek Enik's help, and meet a friendly dinosaur named Dopey. During the 2nd season the Marshalls are still trying to get home, and throughout the season they must deal with Sleestak, the Zarn, help Cha-Ka steal a dinosaur egg, survive powerful storms, and deal with blackouts. During the third season, Rick Marshall is transported back to Earth due to an earthquake, the same time his brother Jack comes looking for them. The earthquake causes new creatures to awaken. All the Pakuni, except Cha-Ka are gone. Cha-Ka speaks English. Their home in the Land of the Lost is destroyed, and they are forced to find a new place to live. During the course of this season Will turns invisible, the Sleestak tamper with the sunlight, they meet Medusa, go aboard the Flying Dutchman, stop an Abominable Snowman, Cha-Ka turns evil, and much more! I highly recommend LAND OF THE LOST: THE COMPLETE SERIES!!! p.s. When Ifind out about the ticket to see the Land of the Lost movie, I used it, and saw it for a 3rd time on June 23rd! I took my mom, but she didn't like it as much as I did. I got two free LAND OF THE LOST posters. I wanted the one with Rick, Holly, and Will in the raft, with Grumpy behind them, and the people of the theatre also gave the one with Will Ferrell running and Grumpy is busting out of the poster! I already put them up in my room.

smkroh I ran across a marathon of this show on the Sci-Fi Channel today, obviously a tie-in for the new Will Ferrell movie. I was 9 years old in 1974, and my goal on Saturday mornings was to watch kids' shows from breakfast to lunchtime with as few gaps or interruptions as possible. There weren't a lot of options, so I tended to gobble up anything that was on. As I sat through three episodes this morning, all the bad memories came flooding back.This was it--the breaking point! This was the show that was so consistently, irredeemably stupid and boring that I began to think maybe there were ways of spending my time that were preferable to watching TV at any cost. The concept was cool, but there was never a payoff where it mattered--on the screen. Each episode was five minutes of plot stretched over a half hour, filled in with running/hiding from dinosaurs, yammering dialog about trite sibling rivalry, and the repetitive gibberish of the annoying little missing link named Cha-Ka.I turned to the Internet after I could stand no more, wanting to find out if the refugees ever made it home or if some of the arcane motifs were ever explained and/or explored in depth. The answers were no and no, respectively. To my greater disappointment, though, I found that most of the commentary on the Web was singing the praises of this cheap tripe, calling it deep, groundbreaking, well-written, yadda yadda yadda. Don't be fooled! It's garbage.Advocates point to the list of respected sci-fi writers who contributed scripts. Who cares? Again, the quality (if it was there in the scripts at all) didn't make it to the screen. That's all that matters. I don't care if Shakespeare wrote it, junk is junk.These fans also excuse the laughably awful special effects as being pretty good for the time the show was made. Really? This was 1974, for Pete's sake. Star Trek had premiered seven years earlier. Other shows like Space: 1999 and UFO were mesmerizing my young imagination. But, say the fans, this was a Saturday morning kids' show. They couldn't get a decent budget, they did the best they could! Baloney. Look at Dr. Who, for example. Super low budget and plenty of cheese, but variety and inventiveness made it come alive in spite of its limitations. Land of the Lost had no variety and very limited inventiveness.I think the lack of quality can be better explained by the names on the show. As I said, this series was the awakening of my critical judgment as a consumer of entertainment. Before Land of the Lost, I got excited whenever a show was promoted as a product of Sid and Marty Krofft. They were great! How did I know that? The TV told me so, so it must be true. As I began to realize that Land of the Lost was garbage, I looked more closely at their other shows and saw that they were all utter mindless dreck. The Kroffts were ripping me off, turning out goof-ball cheese in vast quantities for a quick buck.Let me give another example of how they skated by on creating big expectations without ever fulfilling them: the opening credit sequence for H.R. Puff'n'Stuff was one of the coolest things I ever saw. A little boy like me! A magic boat that takes him to a strange land, a wild storm, a talking flute! WOW! The show itself? A bunch of dumb gags and low-rent physical comedy done by guys in retarded Muppet ripoff costumes. I kept tuning in wanting to see the story in the credits, but never getting it.The Sleestak looked very cool; their costumes were the only thing that really worked, except maybe sometimes the look of the pylons and the gems. Their hissing and their bug-eyes were genuinely scary, at first. But then I caught on to the fact that they never really seemed to accomplish anything. Ho-hum--it's the Sleestak again! Thanks, I guess, Sid and Marty, for helping me to realize that not everything on TV was great by virtue of simply being there. Now I hope some people can begin to realize that not all nostalgia is good nostalgia, either. Sometimes the passage of time turns coal into a diamond. In this case it reveals it for the manure it always was.

brannentaylor We ordered this on Netflix for our 8 year old who loves dinosaurs. He loved it just as much as we did, back in the day. My nine year old daughter liked it too. Tried doing a lookup on the main character actors - doesn't seem they did much in the way of movies or TV after the show. Can't believe we made our parents watch this - love the special effects now ... how the three of them are in a raft and the size of the river looks to be about 8 inches across, and the bricks slam down on it, then they're in the same jungle scene time after time, and its always dusty ... :D Didn't know that Walter Koenig wrote an episode - his commentary is on the Disc 1 features - kind of funny to here him without a Slovak accent. Brings back some nice memories.