Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

If you noticed the year immediately after the titles of this article instead of after the “by” line, that’s the code that lets you know there’s more than one of these babies. Or at least there’s a few remakes of “Land”, not so much “People”.

No, these are not just some more one-off monster flicks cranked out on conveyor belt in the 50s through 70s. They’re actually based on the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs of the same titles. Considering Burroughs’ contribution to film and literature, I think we can forgive him for using “that” in place of the more appropriate “whom” in regards to “The People” but you’re skating on thin ice, mister!

The Land that Time Forgot was remade by some penniless enthusiast in 2009 and again by another penniless enthusiast in 2025. Or perhaps the same penniless enthusiast. I’m not sure and I don’t care to look it up. I’ve watched the trailers for these later versions and the production value doesn’t appear to go up much from one to the next. I’d even venture to guess that more money was spent on the 1974 version than any later version even without considering inflation.

This is not to say the 1974 version is really any better than the others. I’ve read they (gnomes) used hand puppets to represent the dinosaurs instead of the more common stop-motion animation because they wanted a more fluid motion. Well, they got fluid motion. Also the dinosaurs look like hand puppets; so you can see the trade off. I can’t say as I blame them. The only other thing crazier than the insanely tedious art of stop-motion animation is paying someone to create it.

The first film stars Doug McClure, one of two actors serving as the namesake for the character Troy McClure from The Simpsons. The other being Troy Donahue. Seeing Doug in action (and well versed in action he was), one can easily see why Troy McClure shares a name with this guy.

This is basically Dinotopia but instead of dinosaurs and an advanced and diverse civilization, the castaways find dinosaurs and hostile cavemen. This leads us directly into the sequel where we’re dealing with those same cavemen who seek to sacrifice girly-girl to their volcano deity.

The best part of any of this is seeing David Prowse as the Executioner in “People”. This 1977 production puts it immediately after Star Wars: A New Hope. Hard to believe this came after Star Wars. It’s just so campy and low budget.

Burroughs’ Tarzan still stands as one of the most portrayed-in-film characters in literature. He’s right up there with Dracula and Sherlock Holmes. Edgar should be proud. I loved John Carter (2012) which is basically Tarzan in space, though I think it was a mistake to not call it ERB’s original title “John Carter of Mars”. His Mars series is amazing and still has potential for film in my opinion.

I’ve not read the “Time Forgot” books but I wonder if these stories could hold their own against the Jurassic Parks if ever done right. Frankly, I doubt it. Might get a decent comedy out of them. Even film productions of Dinotopia, which starts out very similar as these, have been lackluster. Although, if Dinotopia got the budget and the effects, I’d be interested to see it in theaters. Sorry Edgar, I’m afraid these stories either don’t translate well to film or maybe they’re just not very good.

Oddly enough, there appears to be a few decently successful lines of comics based on Time Forgot. I admit, it does look half-way interesting.