Humpday Horribleness: ‘King of the Lost World’

One of the great features over at the Internet Movie Database is the Bottom 100. Based on ratings viewers of the site give to various films, the worst of the worst films get put on this list. Some of them are on and off in a matter of days. Others stick around for the long haul, showing just how much suckage they truly emit.

It’s time to look at these movies and determine where they stand. Do they deserve to be on the Bottom 100 list? Are they not as bad as everyone says? Will they be off the list any time soon?

Here’s the breakdown for this week’s film:

Title: ‘King of the Lost World’

Release Date: December 13, 2005

Ranking on Bottom 100 (as of 7/15/2009): # 90 (based on 986 votes)

Why it’s Here: Is it any surprise a film from The Asylum would end up on IMDB’s Bottom 100 list? The film is “based” on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic adventure-fantasy novel. The story follows four survivors of a plane that crashes in a remote jungle who must trek through the unknown thickets and terrain to reach the cockpit of the destroyed plane with hopes that the radio still functions. Along their journey, they discover the hidden truth of this lost world that time forgot and the endless dangers that inhabit these deadly jungles.

Sounds cool, right? Ah, but if it were, it wouldn’t be featured on Humpday Horribleness, now would it? ‘King of the Lost World’ was directed by Leigh Scott, something of a company man for The Asylum, having gone on to direct ‘Pirates of Treasure Island’ and ‘Transmorphers’. He’s also done some work directing Sci-Fi Channel movies. Are you starting to see a trend? It’s like what Vivid and other high-end big(ger) budget adult movie companies do with popular film titles except, without the sex… a la ‘Forest Hump’. Nope. These films are anything but eye candy.

‘King of the Lost World’ stars Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5) and Steve Railsback, who in the trailer for ‘King of the Lost World’ is credited as having been in ‘The Devils Rejects’ even though he is uncredited in the film as playing Sheriff Ken Dwyer. The [fake] Kong makes his first appearance in the first ten minutes, taking a poor female crash survivor stuck in a tree for a snack. Enjoy it as best you can, because this is the last time you’ll see [fake] Kong until the very end of the film. Fairly disappointing for a movie that obviously wanted to bank on Peter Jackson’s ‘King Kong’ that released the same year.

Lowest of the Low Moments: While the lowest moments of these movies are generally related to acting, directing or special effects, one of the lowest things about ‘King of the Lost World’ is the audio. Atrocious! I’ve never had such a difficult time listening to a movie in my life. The audio is so up and down, disproportionate to what’s happening in the movie and often nearly inaudible, resulting in my constant need to wear out the volume keys on my remote. Normally if this sort of thing occurs, I flip on the subtitles and just make do… oh, wait, the DVD has no subtitles. Great!

While I’m on a kick with the technical side of the film, I have to take a moment to congratulate the filmmaker’s on having won two very prestigious awards aside from the worst audio… Most Excessive Use of Lame Blue Filter Day-For-Night Photography and also Most Blatant Case of Putting a Fog Machine to Use Every Chance Possible. Depending on how you look at it, the only good thing ‘King of the Lost World’ had going for it were the primitive tribal lesbian cave-women.

Woman: “Oh my God! It’s a snake!”
Man: “No, that’s not a snake.” (He says this so calmly, right before being yanked up off the ground by a killer jungle tree vine.)

The above quote is just one of many examples of the writing/acting collaboration on this film. There’s a reason there are no “memorable quotes” listed on the IMDB page for ‘King of the Lost World’. B-movies are often still fun because they’re so silly, but that silly fun is completely lost when such a bad movie as this takes itself so seriously. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t blame the writer, seeing as I couldn’t freaking hear half of the dialogue to begin with! Sorry audio dudes, but you did a truly lousy job on this one.

Of course, the special FX guys picked up your slack, right? Hmm… I don’t think so. Aside from the lame, and very brief encounters with [fake] Kong, we get a badly rendered CGI giant spider and a brood of equally bad CGI giant scorpions that are apparently mortally afraid of a camera flash. That’s it. Yeah, I know… ‘King of the Lost World’ needs dinosaurs, right? Apparently not, according to The Asylum. However, there are some really cheesy CGI dragons swarming around [fake] Kong at the end, for no apparent reason. Disappointing indeed.

Will it Ever Get Off the List: Sure. “King of the Lost World’ is already pretty low on the list as it is. While the film is far from perfect, in fact… OK, yeah, it’s bad, but it’s no worse than your average run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi Channel Original movie, so long as you can stay awake. So, we’d be seeing tons of these films on the list if they were truly considered bad enough to earn a permanent place in the hall of infamy. Heck, you could take all the Sci-Fi Channel movies and the entire archive collection from The Asylum and have no more room left for others on the IMDB Bottom 100, but that would just be greedy! Long story short, this movie is boring!