The Lost World

An expedition led by the bombastic Professor Challenger ventures to a remote South American plateau where dinosaurs still roam. The film adapts Arthur Conan Doyle's novel and is most remembered today for Willis O'Brien's stop-motion animation, a direct ancestor of his work on King Kong (1933). The brontosaurus rampaging through London at the climax is the sequence everyone cites. Wallace Beery glowers his way through the lead, and the supporting cast includes Bessie Love and Lewis Stone. The effects were astonishing for 1925 and remain a key milestone in the history of visual effects. Published in 1925, it is in the public domain in the United States.