Lost Horizon

I watched this film when I was a young girl in Taipei, Taiwan. I loved the film! From the wonderful cast, to the scenery and the musical scores! It has stuck with me throughout the years as being one of my favorites. My sister and I had the sound track and played it all the time during our teenage years. If I had it today, I would still play it.

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?

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.

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.

Lost Horizon is not nearly as bad as the box office numbers would suggest. Its chief failing is the audience comes to see Shangri-La and sees, well, Burbank. Actually, it looks more like the Huntington Gardens. It would have been better to improve upon the book's shortcomings rather than try to recreate it. Perhaps a "Wizard of Oz"-like plot, where all of the people meet along parallel paths to Shangri-La, only to discover their real sanctuary was where they came from.

I remember getting a preview copy of the album quite some time before the film was released. I loved the music, but would have to agree the vocal performances are a disaster. But, I was looking forward to seeing it in the theater. At nearly 2.5 hours in its roadshow release, I was checking my watch about 45 minutes into the piece. Even when I watch it on DVD today, there are large sections I fast forward through.

As others have noted, why didn't Ross Hunter hire people who could sing in the key roles? Probably studio pressure for "bankable" stars who were "hot" at the time. No doubt someone also observed Bacharach & David are pop song writers, and you don't need to be a very good vocalist to sing pop--right? Well, the more recent musical disaster, the aptly named "Mamma Mia!" ABBA tribute also suffered from dreadful vocal performances. So much for the "anyone can sing pop" theory. Make no mistake, Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan are fine actors, but they should never the be the leads in a musical! Why not cast Glenn Close?

But back to "Lost Horizon," I think the other problem is by the time this was released in 1972, the music and presentation were considered dated or "old school." Similar complaints were leveled at Hunters 1970 film "Airport"--calling it "old fashioned filmmaking."

So, you've got three things working against the film: a dull plot, dated music, and principal vocalists who can't sing. Now some have commented that the Hollywood musical was dead by 1972. There were some other big features that only had mediocre results at this time, but just 6 years later, "Grease," with a budget of just $6 million, earned almost $400 million at the box office. No doubt it was helped by a couple of hit singles, but there was certainly some audience interest still out there.

Disney seems to have found a formula that appeals to a new generation with its "High School Musical" series and its forthcoming "Teen Beach Musical." Several of the studio's animated musical features have been remade into successful Broadway musicals. Time will tell if there is a revival of interest in big budget, big screen musicals with principals who can actually sing.