You'll read countless senior papers and articles about the influence of directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, and even Quentin Tarantino, but there's one man who never gets the credit he deserves - Irwin Allen. Through the filmographies of Roger Corman, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and many, MANY more, you can trace the footsteps of the out-of-this-world escapism of Irwin Allen. The over-the-top sensibilities of a film like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End would be right at home in the way that Irwin Allen viewed the world of cinema, as something meant to give the audience a ride. Spielberg is often credited with the creation of the "big summer movie" with Jaws, but Allen was trying to give his fans the same kind of thrill ride escapism years earlier with films like The Lost World, recently released in a gorgeous special edition from Fox.

The man who would become the "Master of Disaster" with films like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, Irwin Allen remade a 1925 black & white, silent film in 1960 called The Lost World. In the film. Claude Rains brilliantly plays George Edward Challenger, an English zoology professor who returns to civilization with the claim that he's found a plateau in the Amazon that was untouched by evolution. The dinosaurs there didn't die. Challenger organizes an expedition to his "lost world" with playboy Lord Roxton (Michael Rennie), American socialites Jennifer Holmes (Jill St. John) and her brother David (Ray Stricklyn), Ed Malone (David Hedison), and his rival Walter Summerlee (Richard Haydn). After a long set-up getting the group to the island, the truly cheesy 1960 effects kick in and The Lost World becomes a time capsule of the way movies transported viewers to another place almost five decades ago. Watching The Lost World, it makes you wonder how viewers will look back on At World's End five decades from now.

The Special Edition of The Lost World includes a second disc with the entire original first film, which starred Wallace Beery, Bessie Love, Lloyd Hughes, and Lewis Stone. Sadly, that's about it in the way of special features. A from-the-period featurette is included that only runs a couple minutes. Some retrospective or even a filmmaking historian talking about the project would have been nice. The real draw of The Lost World however, besides the fun film itself, will be the transfer. Fox has given The Lost World an anamorphic polish that's stunning to behold. The colors are perfect and the film looks like it could have been made last year. It's proof that even a 47-year-old film can look great on DVD.

The Lost World is far from a perfect film. It doesn't hold up anywhere near the legend of King Kong and Allen himself would go on to make much better flicks in his "Master of Disaster" phase, but it's got its escapist charms. And not only is it fun, but it's a great time capsule of how audiences got their entertainment in 1960, made even more impressive by a perfect video transfer. Irwin Allen went from Lost World into Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants. He was just getting started. Maybe with more excellent DVD special editions like The Lost World, he'll finally start getting the credit he deserves for his influence on both TV and film. Where would Jack Sparrow be without him?