Until the arrival of the first Jurassic Park movie, the most incredible dinosaurs the majority of us had ever seen “lived” in the Saturday Morning series Land of the Lost. With a new movie coming out, the entire Land of the Lost series created by Sid and Marty Krofft has been released on DVD and nicely packaged in a Retro ‘70’s metal lunchbox.
We loved Land of the Lost, couldn’t wait to see what would happen next in this series that blended, time travel, space travel, monsters, evolution, ancient cultures and dinosaurs, with the real-life relationships and trials of a motherless family lost in the wilderness.
It was high adventure, with stories written by veteran science fiction authors such as David Gerrold and Larry Niven, exploring not only an alien landscape, but the whole space/time continuum issue. One memorable episode Holly meets her future self, and the travels of Enik are a continuing mystery, and just what are the mysterious pylons and how do their crystals work.
Meeting perhaps the missing link between apes and homo sapiens, befriending Cha-ka (Philip Pauley) and the Pakuni provided much to the Marshall family in terms of how to survive in their new home. Boundaries of good and evil blurred, as a dinosaur attack saved the Marshalls from the much more malevolent sleestak. These sentient lizard people were really scary.
Not only did they hiss in a frightening manner, they also seemed to hate the humans. This behavior was so abominable, that the younger members of our family considered it the worst insult they could give a person to call them “nothing but a sleestak.” There were humorous moments too, as Holly (Kathy Coleman) and her brother Will (Wesley Eure) bickered and teased each other in true sibling behavior.
Dad Rick (Spencer Milligan) usually stepped in with some authority or wisdom, but also saw the fun in some of the situations. It was actually a surprise to me that there was a third season.
In our viewing area we only saw two seasons, and so the third with Uncle Jack (Ron Harper) taking the place of Rick, who was either lost in time again, or made it back home through a mysterious portal was great fun to watch.
Land of the Lost set has three cases illustrated with stills from the series, and has seven discs with all three season episodes. There is a slight dragging or blip in a couple of the episodes in Season one. I tried playing these on several different machines, and it was always in the same place.
This should be minor enough to not be a bother to either fans or those just discovering the series. The embossed metal Land of the Lost lunch box is really cool! I plan to carry my bento box lunch in it for a good while, and see what conversations it generates at work! A nice special feature on disc two of season three is a sneak peek at the new movie which involves an interview with Sid and Marty Krofft by the new movie’s director Brad Silberling.
There are answers to some of the questions many of us have had in the back of our minds for thirty-plus years. This is a great way to usher in the new movie, which Silberling is quick to say has respect for the earlier series. In honor of the series, I for one may take my new lunchbox and go to the new movie on the opening day.
Land of the Lost: Complete Series (Limited Edition Gift Set) is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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