For the ebullient ten year old, there is nothing greater than the imagining of a large brontosaurus trodding through a major metropolis, gobbling up cosmopolitanites.

This Friday's Late Night Public Domain Science Fiction film is The Lost World, the 1925 sci-fi film that put the whole giant monsters genre on the map.

While I love Arthur Conan Doyle and Professor Challenger, this film is famous for one reason and one reason only: the ultimate scene in which a carnivorous stop-motion brontosaurus (animated by Willis O'Brien, the genius pioneer behind King Kong who would become the mentor to the famed Ray Harryhausen) stomps through London, chewing any brown-toothed Brits in its path.

It's still a wonderful film and, even today, stop-motion dinosaurs look far better and more interesting than the Jurassic Park CGI variety (which are admirably wrought in and of themselves). This is worth a visit for any sci-fi or horror fan.

The Lost World (1925) [Google Video]