The first full length film to feature stop-motion dinosaurs (there had been shorts, including The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1915), R.F.D. 10,000 B.C. (1917) and The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1918), all directed by Willis H. O’Brien who handled the effects here too) is also the film that established the mould from which every subsequent lost film world was cast. Directed by Harry O. Hoyt, it remains a staggering achievement, an epic adventure film that looks all the more impressive in the 2016 reconstruction from Lobster Films.

An unusual opening sequence has Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the original novel, relaxing in his garden with his dog before we join Professor Challenger (Wallace Beery) in London where he’s visited by Paula White (Bessie Love) bearing the journal of her father, explorer Maple White, who has disappeared while exploring remote parts of South America. The journal features sketches of what appear to be dinosaurs and an excitable Challenger risks public ridicule by announcing that dinosaurs have survived and are still alive deep in the jungle. The Zoological Society humiliate him at their meeting and Challenger is forced to reluctantly accepts finance from a newspaper to mount an expedition to find White. Challenger, Paula, hunter Sir John Roxton (Lewis Stone), reporter Edward Malone (Lloyd Hughes), sceptical Professor Summerlee (Arthur Hoyt), his servant Zambo (Jules Cowles), and Challenger’s butler Austin (Francis Finch-Smiles) set out for South America. They’re soon on the plateau discovered by White, being attacked by an ape man (Bull Montana) and astonished by the presence of living saurians. After many life and death adventures, the expedition escapes the plateau as a volcano erupts, taking with them a Brontosaurus that they rescue from being trapped in mud. They return the creature to London as proof of their story, but it inevitably gets free, wreaking havoc at The British Museum and destroying Tower Bridge before it swims out to sea.

It might be easy now for people to scoff at some of the relative crudity of the effects but give yourself over to the film and they still impress. And in their day, they would have had the same effect on audiences as Jurassic Park (1993)’s digital dinosaurs would have decades later. Even before the film rights had officially been purchased, Doyle was attending a meeting of the American Society of Magicians in June 1922, showing off a “proof of concept” show reel that featured some of the dinosaurs that would turn up in the finished film. By the end of the evening, the attending illusionists, among them none other than Harry Houdini were baffled, unable to explain how the “trick” had been performed. The effect on the general public would be no less bracing.

The dinosaurs have more personality, despite their low-tech origins, than any of those CGI creation that all seem to be pulled from the same digital models. These dinosaurs snarl, show fear and exhibit pain in a way that few have done since. Yes, some of the close-ups might expose the crudity of the models and the animation lacks some of the polish of later work by O’Brien on King Kong (1933) but given that this is a film that didn’t even have the technology to capture sound, it’s extraordinary that O’Brien and his team were able to pull off anything as accomplished as this at all. Not that everyone entirely understood what they were seeing. Although naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson, was impressed by the monsters, he firmly believed that the effects were created using “skilfully constructed ‘suits’ made by a man who had a degree in palaeontology, and were fitted over live chickens!” as recorded in an article he wrote for Argosy magazine as late as February 1968.

There are some oddities that don’t stand up so well today. The idea that Malone’s girlfriend won’t marry him until he’s faced death seems remarkably quaint today and Challenger’s subsequent violent assault of him, inherited from the novel, is simply weird. And modern audiences used to lightning-fast plots and epilepsy-inducing editing might find the leisurely pace something of a challenge – it takes a good while to get to the lost world itself, but the time passes in the eccentric company of the bullish Challenger who, in the guise of actor Wallace Beery, often comes across as entirely unhinged. It’s a hugely enjoyable, larger-than-life performance, the best in the film and will keep you perfectly well entertained in the “down time” between dinosaur rampages.

Annoyingly, once we reach the plateau, Challenger is rather side-lined for a while in favour of a developing love triangle, but when the dinosaurs turn up, we give up caring much about the humans anyway. O’Brien creates an impressive bestiary of pre-historic creatures, using the artwork of noted paleo artist Charles R. Knight as his guide. When the irate Brontosaurus escapes its captivity and rampages around London it inspired so many other giant terrors – from Kong to Godzilla and beyond – to do the same. Equally, the scenes of dinosaurs fighting each other – there are plenty – would be replicated across the decades, perhaps with more technical polish but rarely with such raw savagery.

For many years, The Lost World existed only compromised versions that sold the film considerably short. An original running time of anywhere between 104 and 110 minutes has been reported but the various restorations over the years haven’t been able to restore everything. The 2016 restoration by Serge Bromberg’s Lobster Films (released on disc by Flicker Alley the following year) runs to 103 minutes, making it the closest to the original and it may well be the best version we can hope for after all these years.

It’s a film that deserves to be enjoyed in the most complete and best-preserved version possible (the Flicker Alley disc is hard to beat). Even if you think you’re not a fan of silent cinema, if you think it’s all slow, melodramatic and crude (you’d be wrong on all three points), try The Lost World for its importance if nothing else – without it there’s a chance we never have had King Kong. Chances are you’ll soon fall under its spell and revel in its action, marvel at its technical complexity and simply fall in love with its animated menagerie.