Lost Horizon

The musical remake of 'Lost Horizon' has been almost uniformly panned over the years and has long been unavailable on home video. So is it really that bad? Comparisons with the 1937 Ronald Colman classic aside, this Bacharach-David musical starts as an adventure story and only moves into song and dance fantasy about 45 minutes into the film, when the mixed bag of plane crash survivors (Peter Finch, Michael York, Sally Kellerman, George Kennedy, Bobby Van) discover Shangri-La, led by Oxford graduate Chang (John Gielgud) and the High Lama (Charles Boyer).

So the cast looks strong - and in Shangri-La is boosted by wimpy Olivia Hussey and pouty Liv Ullmann. But aside from Van there's no one with experience of musicals. More of that later.

The songs are not that memorable, aside from the melody which first introduces the fantasy village up in the mountains. The staging of musical numbers, by Fred Astaire's associate Hermes Pan, aren't that fascinating. However, there is still enough here to keep you watching: but whether it is from the impulse to watch a real turkey unfolding or from a need to watch the story to the end, I'm not sure.

I wouldn't really class this as a musical; there are too few songs. And Finch in particular is wasted in this although he plays his part dead straight.

The remake of Lost Horizon is a misfire, but not completely awful. Some criticisms of this film are justified, but by no means all. Give it a go and make up your own mind.

This movie is one on the forgotten musicals. The Burt Bacharach-Hal David music alone is worth the price of the film. Almost all reviewers say it is a bomb, but after seeing it three times it grows on you. The music is TERIFFIC!

As Bette Midler used to say, "I never miss a Liv Ullman musical". Here is a film which attempts to inspire and uplift, and I guess it succeeds, if for reasons quite different from those intended.

Unless they attempt a musical version of "Schindler's List" this will probably be the all time champion in the "Play it straight" stakes. James Hilton's novella, heaven knows, was a piece of fluff which tantalised rather than explored its themes. The 1937 film was a winner because, hey, what Frank Capra film in the '30s wasn't?

But if we had to have a musical version, wouldn't it have been a good idea to hire a couple of musical stars?! Okay, at a push Bobby Van passes muster, and thank God that he's meant to be that annoying, because after five minutes the idea of him being lost in a snowdrift seemed eminently satisfying. But as for the rest - George Kennedy, Peter Finch, Sally Kellermann, John Gielgud, Olivia Hussey - well we aren't going to see them in a revival of "42nd Street" now are we? My favourite definitely has to be Kellermann and Hussey thumping around a library, the former looking bored, the latter very pregnant, singing what seems to be a 70s New Age version of the "Green Acres" theme.

But its Liv who suffers most. Swinging those bovine limbs of hers, singing some nonsense about the world being a circle which never ends - an apt description of the song - she seems light years away from Bergman. Actually she bears a striking resemblance to Bill Clinton in some of her long shots.

Only Michael York emerges with any credibilty. And that's mainly because his character keeps nagging everybody to run away. And who could blame him?

Usually when a film is hailed as the above description, it has to be considered watchable enough to enjoy the film's ineptitude. Some films like this are bad, but to watch them would be asking a whole lot of the viewer. LOST HORIZON certainly does not fit that last description because while CITIZEN KANE it is not, it certainly does not deserve to be trashed.

By the time LOST HORIZON came along, the movie musical was already considered a dead genre, save for the occasional import from Broadway that actually turned out well (OLIVER! & CABARET come immediately to mind). However, the age of the musical where songs were written especially for the movie had long been buried. That did not matter to producer Ross Hunter, who always was a safeguard of Old Hollywood even after the advent of the MPAA allowed for movies to be made of subjects that the studios would not have touched with a ten-foot pole. Hunter may have succeeded in bringing back old-fashioned soap operas with the Douglas Sirk movies, but as THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE showed with its original songs that paled in comparison to the classics it stood alongside (well, almost), the musical was perhaps not a genre in need of a revival.

You certainly could have fooled Hunter, who went full-steam ahead with his musicalization of a property that should have been left alone to begin with. Casting actors with little to no musical training & badly dubbing them was bad enough, but choosing a project that worked best in its original format was double trouble. That is certainly not to fault Burt Bacharach & Hal David's music, which is fine enough, though certainly not up to par with their Dionne Warwick spectaculars. But you get the idea that maybe even they were doubtful of this project's bankability. Supposedly the film led to the break-up of their previously infallible partnership, as well as Hunter's film career (he mostly worked for TV afterwards).

Apparently, Hollywood likes to keep its megaflops very secret because LOST HORIZON has not been seen much since its theatrical debut, and has not even made it onto VHS, let alone DVD in the U.S. (I found my copy courtesy of eBay). But if even Ed Wood's hilariously bad movies can be released & enjoyed by people even for all the wrong reasons, then certainly LOST HORIZON can. So I hope that Columbia Pictures can find it in their hearts to bring this movie back into circulation so we can enjoy it (even genuinely because it appears some people actually did). Heck, if only for the camp value, it would be a surefire hit. With CHICAGO & MOULIN ROUGE having indicated the musical is making a comeback, then it would be good to have LOST HORIZON out on the market again to educate people in how not to make one. But it sure is hell of a lot of fun along the way.

I have a confession to make.....in August 1974 I re-opened an old cinema and this was the premiere attraction. The sound gargled away from behind the flabby screen and the invited audience sat on the lumpy seats. I looked like Top Cat in a tuxedo, and this film unfolded across the joins on our cinemascope presentation. What a night! Unforgettable in its mangy charm and an intro into the glamorous world of second rate showbiz to which I am still magnetized today. As a result I have a special place in my heart for this gloriously awful musical. All I can say was that the opening night crowd fled into the darkness after the last reel flapped off the projector. Some even promised to return and asked what was on next week: "MAME ...with Lucy" I grinned as I locked the door. Somehow the business survived and I even got to showcase AT LONG LAST LOVE the next year. LOST HORIZON was quite successful in Australia and was first released in Sydney as presented in 70mm for 13 weeks.... families liked it and for a while it was considered the sort of Brady Bunch family sort of musical. I just wanted to open my crummy seaside cinema with something nice. So I did and thank Neptune the locals forgave me. I deliciously look forward to the DVD release with the infamous deleted scenes, especially the legendary diaper dance with the guys swinging teapots and extended versions of Bobby Van leaping about with Liv Ullman. Am I correct in believing this was Ross Hunter's last production?