I actually went back and reread the novel before starting this review, just to make sure that yes, there was a great story at the base of a string of bad adaptations. That's a pretty good trick, seeing how the original novel was published 1912. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. We've started off with a short voiceover, as Malone, the expedition's reporter, tells us that he's going to recount the entire sordid tale. Well, he also let's us know that somehow he's still trapped alone in the Lost World.
Story starts for real.
Explorer Maple White and his Mongolian sidekick Asbek explore a cave in the Lost World plateau, and discover a nest with a din-style egg in it. Exulting that this is exactly the proof they need, White opens the bubbly and cranks up Beethoven's Fifth on his Victrola. Now, as anyone who knows The Lost World knows, Challenger is a short, powerfully-built man, with the black beard of an Assyrian idol and the bombastic demeanor of a bull. In other words, it's John Rhys-Davies. Apparently this is not the famous Professor George E. Challenger of the novel, but perhaps his lesser-known cousin Lou Challenger.