RETURN TO THE LOST WORLD (1992)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*

RETURN was, unsurprisingly, filmed back-to-back with THE LOST WORLD, using the same actors, shooting locales, and waxy looking dinosaurs (few though there are of them). Given that the script has to cobble together a reason to bring all the principals back together as efficiently as possible, the story is independent of the Conan Doyle novel from which the first DTV movie was drawn. 

It's two years after the events of the previous film, and though everyone knows about the prehistoric plateau in Brazil, the Brazilian government has managed to keep almost everyone away from the Lost World. The big exception is a Belgian entrepreneur, rendered "Heyman" in the subtitles. He and a handful of henchmen land a plane on the plateau and begin drilling for crude oil, as well as enslaving the locals as a labor force. (With just one plane, how was Heyman going to transport any oil containers for sale elsewhere?) A tribsesman escapes to relay the story of the depredations to Malu (Natania Stanford), who's still hanging around one of the tribes neighboring the plateau. She doesn't contact the Brazilian government for help, but puts out the call to the Professor Challenger group.

Reporter Malone and photographer Jenny (Eric McCormack, Tamara Gorski) have forged a working relationship but their potential romance has never got off the ground. They seek out Challenger and Summerlee in England, but the two biologists are feuding again, so they (along with the useless kid, now working as Challenger's valet) hoax the stubborn fellows into going on the expedition, without either man knowing his rival's along for the ride until there's no turning back. Not surprisingly, the big reveal is the movie's best scene, with John Rhys-Davies and David Warner playing the conflict for its full comical value.

Most of the film after that bogs down in minor activities to delay until the big finish. Heyman's drilling operation has awakened a dormant volcano that has destroyed the Belgian's plane (stranding all the malcontents on the plateau). Providentially, Challenger just happens to have invented, and brought along, a radical new explosive with which he can cap the unruly magma-flow.

Since I didn't expect any good dino-action, I knew that RETURN would just be more low-energy confrontations between the heroes and the villains. The story is thoroughly ordinary, but director Timothy Bond still makes the locales and the actors look pretty good. The aforementioned romance between Jenny and Malone is jump-started by their adventure, not least because it's quite evident, in two separate scenes, that Malone is still very turned on by Malu. She in contrast to the first film doesn't show any feelings for him, and that's clearly to keep clear the romance-path for the two Brits. Malu doesn't get any action scenes this time but in one scene she does threaten to slit Heyman's throat if he gives her any trouble.