THE LOST CITY (1935)
(Serial)
(a.k.a. THE LOST CITY OF THE LIGURIANS)
Article #584 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-20-2002
Posting date: 3-15-2003

The center of Africa seems to be the source of bizarre natural disasters, and a team is sent out to investigate the cause. They discover strange experiments being performed in an underground city.

Now this is some serial; I spent the first couple of episodes giggling over the ripeness of both the script and the acting (William “Stage” Boyd practically steals the movie as the main villain), and then settled down for the rest of the serial to just enjoy the story. Despite the fact that a certain amount of cheating does come into play into resolving some of the cliffhangers, it’s handled in such a clever way that I didn’t feel cheated in seeing how the heroes escaped their perils. In fact, there’s an immense sense of fun and energy in this one, and I sense for the first time really just what many of the other serials I’ve seen seem to be missing. Not only that, but there are plenty of science fiction and horror elements this time around, rather than a single one that barely comes into play at all. This may be my favorite serial to date.