50 years Ago: THE LOST CONTINENT (1968)

50 years ago today, I spent the afternoon in the welcoming dark of my beloved Plaza Theater with one of my all-time favorite Saturday matinee experiences - so good, I went back the next day to enjoy a double dip! Meanwhile, across town at the 20th Century, it seems that attendance was disappointing for arthouse Poe, and a switch of program was already in the cards after only three days of play. Philistines!

I was so thoroughly entertained by THE LOST CONTINENT that, after that second viewing, I worked up the courage to ask the theater's manager if I could buy, or perhaps have, the poster for the film when they were done playing it. (As I recall, the poster for PLANET OF THE APES was already spoken for.) He kindly let me have it for the princely sum of 75 cents, and, when I was 13, this one-sheet was displayed for awhile on the wall of my room. Everywhere I have moved since then, it has come along with me but it has spent most if not all that time folded and in storage. Realizing that it's actually been 50 years today since my first encounter with this underrated Hammer production - and that I still own this artifact from the theater where I saw it (and most of the films I saw through my early teens) - I couldn't resist showing it the respect it deserves by popping it into a frame - an enduring tactile connection to a memory and place from half a century ago.

(c) 2019 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.