This is the best film version of a wonderful book. Both were nearly lost to history - the movie through a series of bizarre accidents, the novel through neglect: Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous character seems to have made the reading world impervious to his ghost and adventure stories, which I think (and he agreed) are generally better written and more interesting than the detective stuff.<br /><br />Okay, sure, they reduced the tribe of evil Neanderthals to a single specimen with a chimpanzee accomplice - but he's pretty scary. And yeah, that means they abandoned the gag about Professor Challenger looking like one of them. And yes, the aboriginal tribe is entirely absent. But then again, they gave us a Brontosaurus leaping from Tower Bridge, and a carnivorous biped that seems determined to depopulate the entire plateau by himself: this Allosaurus eats a Triceratops, a Pterodactyl, and a couple of things I couldn't identify, and even tries his luck on a Brontosaurus before it falls off a cliff. The animation isn't exactly KING KONG caliber - some of the dinosaurs look like rough clay, with no scale tone to the flesh, and some of them are remarkably stick-like, but it was early yet, and much of it is very good. Plus there is more actual saurian conflict than in any other dinosaur movie I've ever seen. And I've seen a few.<br /><br />Wallace Beery is a Challenger for the ages, seeming to have strutted directly from Doyle's novels - there's no need for sound when the performances are this gigantic. Bessie Love gives her usual embodiment of demure sweetness, Lloyd Hughes is a fine if somewhat stiff male ingénue, and the great Bull Montana prepares for his FLASH GORDON Monkey Man role by here playing, um, Ape Man. Unfortunately for posterity, the movie contains a blackface performance of a comically cowardly character named - yes - Zambo. Zambo's best friend is a Rhesus monkey. Hey, it was 1925. At least this version, unlike Irwin Allen's later disaster, didn't kill any lizards... although a couple of bears do tear each other up for our amusement.<br /><br />Also features Lewis Stone, perhaps the only old man to actually die of a heart attack while yelling at kids to get off his lawn.