Although many Willis O'Brien fans are aware of the Eastman House restoration of the 1925 dinosaur classic The Lost World that promises to restore a great deal of footage thought lost for seventy years, few know that there are serious allegations that Eastman House omitted several minutes of priceless dinosaur animation from the restored film.

Although I had seen his lecture on Ray Harryhausen's early films years before, I first met David Massaro at the Monster Bash Convention in Pittsburgh this summer. It was there that he made me aware of this situation and his concerns over it. Mr. Massaro is one of the world's leading students and historians of stop-motion animation films. His area of specialty is the works of Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen and I really have never met anyone as knowledgeable in these areas--with the possible exception of Harryhausen himself.

Follow the link below to read Mr. Massaro's letter to Hugh Heffner who was the primary financial contributor to the Eastman House's restoration efforts for The Lost World. In it, he describes exactly which areas of the film Eastman House omitted from their restoration, even though we know the footage exists.

Read David Massaro's letter here

Read The Eastman House response here

My concern in this is that the Eastman House, as a non-profit corporation, operates as an institution of the public trust and raises money from the public (myself included) to further their work as they describe it. And the description of their work in raising money for the restoration of The Lost World was that they would include all known animation footage--which they apparently haven't done.

In fairness to the Eastman House, I have invited them to respond to this section of my web page and as soon as I get some sort of reply from them I will make it available on the web so that interested readers may see Mr. Massarro's letter along with Eastman's reply.

My hope is that Eastman House will either be able to show that Mr. Massarro is wrong in his assertion that they left out animation footage or that they will be able to use his letter as a guide to folding this material into their work before they print copies of the film or transfer it to video formats. At this point, I'm assuming that everyone involved has the same goal: to present as complete a version of the original 1925 film as possible and that it includes all the surviving stop-motion (which took such labors to produce) so that future generations may enjoy and appreciate it.