Lost City, The
Entry updated 1 July 2024. Tagged: Film.
US Serial Film (1935). Super Serial Productions Inc.. Directed by Harry Revier. Written by Zelma Carroll, Robert Dillon, Eddie Granemann, Geo M Merrick, Perley Sheehan and Leon D'Usseau. Cast includes Sam Baker, Billy Bletcher, William "Stage" Boyd, Gino Corrado, Claudia Dell, Margot D'Use, Eddie Fetherston, George F Hayes, Kane Richmond and Josef Swickard. Twelve 17-28 minute chapters. Black and white.
A series of electrical storms causes global Disasters and there is concern the world might be ending. Scientists are baffled as to the cause ... bar one: young, handsome Bruce Gordon (Richmond) whose detector (see Inventions) locates the source of the storms in Africa, just "south of the equator" (he points to a region north of the equator). This area is unexplored territory and an expedition led by Bruce is immediately approved; on arrival they hear reports of giants (see Great and Small) kidnapping the locals and taking them to a nearby "magnetic mountain".
We cut to a "Lost City" at that mountain, ruled by Zolok (Boyd), a Mad Scientist and the last of the Ligurians (see Lost Race), who is "carrying on the electro-magnetic traditions of my people", with the assistance of his hunch-backed assistant Gorzo (Bletcher). Here a giant laboratory full of Technology is centred on a "cosmic condenser", the cause of the disasters. It was built by Dr Manyus (Swickard), who designed it to benefit mankind, but – as Zolok holds his daughter Natcha (Dell) hostage – is forced to use the condenser for evil. Zolok is responsible for kidnapping the locals: first using a "brain destroyer" to make them obedient, then an Enlarger to turn them into giant "living dead men" (see Zombies), the main one being Hugo (Baker). When Zolok's distance viewer shows the expedition approaching he traps them by persuading Natcha to scream for help: "That sounds like a white girl's voice," says their guide Jerry Delaney (Fetherston). However, by the end of the third chapter they manage to escape into the jungle.
Matters are complicated by two of the expedition being crooked scientists looking after their own interests (both dead are by the end of chapter 5), and by Butterfield (Hayes), a local trader who believes he could create an army to rule Africa if he had the secret of making giants. An Arab Slave trader, Ben Ali (Corrado), has the same idea. Eventually the four surviving members of the expedition – Bruce, Natcha, Manyus and Jerry – escape, only to run into a white tribe who worship giant spiders (see Religion). These natives had once been black, but prior to being captured by Zolok, Dr Manyus had injected them with a serum turning them white (see Race in SF) – earlier the doctor had said his "discoveries were made to benefit these natives", this being an example – and one who had missed out before begs to be turned white and gets his wish. Bruce later calls this "the greatest scientific discovery yet".
Queen Rama (D'Use), the daughter of an Arabian slave trader who rules an African tribe, now arrives at Butterfield's encampment to investigate why her subjects are being kidnapped: when he tells her of the Enlarger, Rama sees a means to rule Africa – however she does not want to use the brain destroyer on her people. She also falls for Bruce, but he rejects her advances because of his attraction to Natcha; so she spikes his drink, making him blind, and throws Natcha in a lion pit. However. both inconveniences are quickly resolved next episode, after which Rama is poisoned by one of Butterfield's servants and Butterfield has an unconvincing redemption arc when Dr Manyus saves his life. At the end of chapter 11 the main characters are back in Zolok's city and Zolok tests his new Death Ray on Bruce. Once he gets out of that predicament the final chapter is anticlimactic, with the cackling Zolok blowing up himself and the mountain after everyone else has left.
For the middle seven chapters the sf element is mainly Dr Manyus as the McGuffin which the various factions try to acquire, though there are also cutbacks to Zolok in the city, the occasional use of Ray Guns (both freezing and paralysing) and the white tribe. This middle stretch is the usual cycle of capture and escape common to serials (see Clichés), but is enlivened by the regular introduction of new characters to do the capturing. There is also a machine that can photograph thoughts.
Unfortunately this serial cannot be enjoyed for its absurdity – the cliffhangers, melodramatic acting, lazy plotting, trapdoors, tigers in Africa and so forth – as it is a very explicit example of the racist attitudes which Hollywood and other media of the era were instilling and condoning with their portrayal of Africans. Even leaving aside the brain-dead giants, Africans are made out to be craven, child-like and unintelligent, uttering infantile war cries and subservient to the whites, and casually killed without a second thought. This is particularly so with those working for Butterfield – relatively speaking, Rama's tribesmen are allowed stiffer backbones, one of them overruling Butterfield at one point. Probably the worst are the tribe who have been turned from black to white, played without restraint by white actors: it turns out that Gorzo was a member of this tribe – though unlike the others he is usually well-spoken and intelligent, but there seems to be no intended message to be drawn from this. At one point, Bruce complains of Butterfield's behaviour, remarking that he is "supposed to be a white man".
Though managing to fight off a tiger, Natcha otherwise does little more than fill the damsel-in-distress role (see Women in SF). Some sources refer to the Ligurians as Lemurians, but along with Zolok's own words, the novelization of the film confirms the former. Over the years the series has been edited into four films: two in 1935, both called The Lost City, with the first only using the early episodes and a tacked-on ending, while the second omits most of the middle chapters; another in 1940 titled City of Lost Men (there are some references to its also being called The Lost City of the Ligurians); then in the 1970s, possibly only for Television, the first The Lost City film with the series' final chapter added, this also called City of Lost Men. Hayes would later star in many Westerns, using his nickname Gabby; Bletcher was a renowned cartoon voice actor, particularly for the Walt Disney Company. [SP]
links
- Internet Movie Database
- Internet Movie Database – City of Lost Men (1940)
- Wikipedia episode list
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