LOST HORIZON 1973 - The Complete Version (1 Viewer)

[Brian McP]

Many thanks for that link Bob -- an excellent review by Glenn Erickson who knows the movie well -- great stories about working at a theatre during it's premiere season in LA with a Columbia appointed editor 'yanking' out sequences and stuffing the edited film in his pockets....I wonder how much 70mm film one could stuff in pants pockets?

 

[Michael Rogers]

Got the Lost Horizon blu ray and it looks great! This is one of those movies that has built a reputation of being momumentally bad, so much so that the movie seems to have been kept out of circulation until recently. And when you finally see it, it's come off as more a mediocre movie with some enjoyable moments. And it just reminds you how sometimes critics are given to mounds of hyperbole. I know, it has to be considered that Lost Horizon was a high profile, expensive project but still it doesn't strike me quite as it did Judith Crist when she reviewed it for it's first NBC telecast on December 28, 1975 (I happen to have the old TV guide since I like to collect them from time to time) It reads: " The week's other theatrical premiere is of Ross Hunter's 1973 musical remake of Lost Horizon, an $8,000,000 disaster referred to in the trade as "lost Investment." It is a tacky, plastic rehash of the 1937 Frank Capra film, although only James Hilton's popular 1933 novel is listed as the source of the Larry Kramer's hackish script. it offers the embarrassment of good performers---Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, Michael York, Sally Kellerman, Sir John Gielgood, George Kennedy, Bobby Van, Olivia Hussy, James Shigeta---constantly tripped up by tripe; mawkish Hal David lyrics and awful stop-the-action dancing; Burt Bacharach music that is at best derivative and at most spaghetti-Western-symphonic; Jean Louis costuming that could kindly be called comic; and a vision of Shangri-La (arrived at through process shots that would embarrass a junior-high film class) that Archie Bunker might fantasize on the basis of postcards from the Beverly Hills Hotel. the story--- of a group of troubled travelers hijacked and carried off to an ideal society deep in Tibet---may well be dated in it's simplism, but it's romanticism could be made durable. Instead of escape to Utopia, however, we're trapped in Hollywood vulgarity" The movie "close up" was a little more gentle "A musical adaptation of James Hilton's popular novel. In the film, five unlikely travelers--- a diplomat, his younger brother, a magazine correspondent, an embezzler and a song-and-dance man--- are downed in Tibet. What follows are adventure, songs and romance in a land called Shangri-La, a mysterious paradise that offers peace, happiness and the secret of long life. This 1973 movie has it's moments, thanks mostly to the timeless appeal of the story. it despite it's lavish $8 million look---and an ambitious attempt by Burt Bacharach and Hal David to set the story to music---most critics rated this film inferior to Frank Capra's 1937 version" It ran in a three hour time slot

 

[Matt Hough]

Judith Crist could certainly be venal when she wanted to be. She didn't like The Sound of Music either as I recall.

 

[Harry-N]

Originally Posted by Michael Rogers
... but still it doesn't strike me quite as it did Judith Crist when she reviewed it for it's first NBC telecast on December 28, 1975...
It ran in a three hour time slot

Gee, my memory is that yes, it ran in a three-hour time-slot on that Sunday night, but that was only "Part 1." Didn't the network slice it into two halves, either airing the second half on the next night, Monday, or the following Sunday?
Harry

 

[Michael1]

MattH, unless you meant to imply that Crist was being bribed, "venal" is not the word you should have used ;-)

 

[Rob_Ray]

I always found it ironic that Judith Crist despised the film adaptation of The Sound of Music so much, yet the soundtrack album's insert booklet prominently features her paean to the collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein. As I recall, her TV Guide review of the film's television premiere acknowledged the film's huge success and continued with something like, "now from a perspective of eleven years later, we can see the film for what it really is" whereupon she trashed it once again. So it's no surprise that she wasn't too fond of "Lost Horizon" either.

 

[Michael Rogers]

I have to look at the TVGuide again but I think it was all one night. A 3 hr time slot would allow for 30 minutes of commercials if they were showing the roadshow version, which sounds about right. It is possible repeat showings were split up into two nights.

 

[Matt Hough]

Originally Posted by Michael1
MattH, unless you meant to imply that Crist was being bribed, "venal" is not the word you should have used ;-)

Ack! I should have said "vitriolic." Thanks!

 

[Moe Dickstein]

or "virulent"

 

[Harry-N]

My memory tells me that I watched the premiere broadcast on a Sunday night, and it was split into two. I know for sure that a later showing on a New York station split it up into two nights as I tried to record it from the cable. That one was an awful print, nowhere near as nice as NBC's - but of course all of them were pan'n'scan. Harry

 

[Eric Vedowski]

I checked the tv listings. The following night NBC burned off some pilots (including "The Owl and the Pussycat" with Buck Henry and Bernadette Peters). The next Sunday it was back to the regular schedule. Both the NY and Chicago newspaper tv listings have it for one night only.

 

[Harry-N]

Thanks for checking that. It just confirms how faulty our "sure" memories can be. Harry