Lost Horizon (1973)

When you think about movies that have had a major influence over the history of film, there are a few titles that immediately come to mind. As problematic as it is and always was, The Birth of a Nation was the first major movie to not be a serial. The Jazz Singer, another problematic movie, brought synchronized sound to major motion pictures. Jaws and Star Wars are seen as two of the most important movies to the rise of blockbuster filmmaking. Then there was Iron Man, which started the whole “build a universe” thing in movies.

One movie that people see as influential, but doesn’t get quite enough recognition for how influential it was, is The Wizard of Oz. It had Somewhere Over the Rainbow. It had the switch from black-and-white to colour. It had the sequel, Return to Oz, and the re-imagining, The Wiz. Just as important as any of those aspects, however, were the story structure and the character types. That may, in fact, be the biggest inspiring piece of The Wizard of Oz for other filmmakers.

Numerous movies have taken the idea of The Wizard of Oz and crafted their own stories around it. Four characters, sometimes five, are put into a situation together where they must find some part of them they never knew they had. The Scarecrow only wanted a brain. The Tin Man only wanted a heart. The Cowardly Lion only wanted courage. And Dorothy wanted to go home. The other part of the story was the journey into some never-before-seen world, ending with a trip home. If you think about it, there are a lot of movies that share this structure and the character types with The Wizard of Oz.

There are two movies I want to touch upon. One of them will be this week’s movie. However, I first want to discuss another movie, one that’s surely better known, just to show it’s not only this week’s movie that fit the mould. I want to get into how Jurassic Park fit into the structure of The Wizard of Oz. Or how the structure of The Wizard of Oz fit into Jurassic Park. Whatever one makes more sense.

You might be thinking to yourself right now, “Jurassic Park? Really?” Yes. Yes, really. Jurassic Park had all the elements of The Wizard of Oz. The difference was that they were packaged in a science fiction horror story and directed by Steven Spielberg. It had the characters going into another world before going home. It had the character archetypes. It even had the characters following a road that they thought would be easy and safe, only to discover threats later on. All the elements were there.

Why don’t we begin with the basic journey of The Wizard of Oz? You need that to truly understand how the story of Jurassic Park matched that. Dorothy was a farm girl in Kansas. A freak tornado took her on a journey to the land of Oz. Once there, she would journey down the Yellow Brick Road, picking up some walking companions along the way. They would head to the Emerald City to find The Wizard, who would help Dorothy get home by the end of the movie.

Now let’s get into the story of Jurassic Park. John Hammond built a new theme park on a tropical island. He invited a group of four people to the island to see what they thought. They discovered that John Hammond brought dinosaurs back to life, hoping to monetize the spectacle and allow people to visit this prehistoric zoo. Things took a turn for the worst when tech guy Dennis Nedry turned off some of the security. Dinosaurs broke free and threatened the lives of everyone on the island.

At face value, that wouldn’t sound that similar to The Wizard of Oz. There weren’t any dinosaurs hunting people down in The Wizard of Oz. But the basics were quite similar. A group of people were brought out of their normal lives to a place where fantastical things happened. Instead of Dorothy travelling to Oz and seeing living scarecrows and tin men, it was Ellie, Allen, Ian, and a lawyer travelling to Jurassic Park to see dinosaurs that were brought to life. The moment they saw the living, breathing dinosaurs was like the moment when Dorothy opened her front door and stepped into the land of Oz. They were sent on a tour of the park, in some jeeps that followed a track without veering from it. It was their Yellow Brick Road. In the end, they wanted nothing more than to go back home, much like Dorothy’s mantra of “There’s no place like home.”

These might not seem like the biggest similarities, and here’s where the rest comes into play. The primary characters were, in their own way, translations of the characters from The Wizard of Oz. Ellie was the Dorothy of the story. When things at the park turned sour, she was the one who did the job nobody else could. She went out and reset the power so they could get the phone back and call for help. This was similar to Dorothy trying to get home and helping defeat the Wicked Witch of the West, which nobody was able to do up to that point. This is the weakest connection. Alan was The Tin Man, finding the heart that was inside of him as he got the children to safety. Ian found his courage, much like The Cowardly Lion, as he distracted the T-Rex at the wrecked jeeps. The only one of the four travelling companions who didn’t have a counterpart was the lawyer. I don’t remember anyone from The Wizard of Oz being a little shit who died on a toilet.

John Hammond, the man running Jurassic Park, was kind of a mixture of The Scarecrow and The Wizard. The comparison between him and The Wizard was clear. He presented the park to these people in a certain light, hoping that they would confirm it was a good idea. He hid the dangers behind a curtain, much like The Wizard hid himself behind a curtain. There was also a similarity in how he left the park and how The Wizard left Oz. Helicopter and hot air balloon. Flying vehicles. Anyway, I say he’s also partially The Scarecrow because the entire movie was about opening John Hammond’s eyes to the trouble he created. He had the smarts to build the park. He just needed to use them to truly see how dangerous it was.

So, yeah, I’d say that Jurassic Park was inspired by The Wizard of Oz. Going from normal life to the fantastical foreign land was there. The wonder that came with going through a door, or going through the giant gates of Jurassic Park, was there. The voyage down a set road, the character archetypes, and the desire to go home were all there. Obviously, there were major changes. But I don’t think the story would have been what it was without The Wizard of Oz being such a big hit fifty years earlier.

That’s not the only movie I want to compare to The Wizard of Oz in this post. Jurassic Park wasn’t this week’s movie. That’s a good movie. This isn’t Sunday “Good” Movies. It’s Sunday “Bad” Movies. I watch things that aren’t typically seen as good. So here comes one more movie, the one I watched that led to this week’s post.

Lost Horizon was a 1973 remake of a 1937 flick, or a readaptation of the book. One of the two, however you choose to define it. Richard Conway (Peter Finch), Sally Hughes (Sally Kellerman), Sam Cornelius (George Kennedy), George Conway (Michael York), and Harry Lovett (Bobby Van) were on a flight out of, I think, Vietnam. Their plane was hijacked and crashed in the Himalayan Mountains. They were found by some people who took them to Shangri-La, a monastery hidden in a paradisical valley within the mountains. The leaders of Shangri-La, Chang (John Gielgud) and The High Lama (Charles Boyer), slowly convinced each of the five rescued people to stay and live in Shangri-La.

This one was a much more obvious result of The Wizard of Oz, thanks to the structure. The characters, of course, went to a fantastic land that they never could have imagined. After twenty to thirty minutes of hijacking drama, the characters stepped through an icy cave and into a temperate environment. It was very much that opening of the front door into the colourful world of Oz. The landscape wasn’t the only thing that changed in that moment, though. Much like the technical transition from black-and-white to colour, Lost Horizon had a change in what the movie was. Once the characters got to Shangri-La, the movie became a musical. People began breaking into song. That only happened in Shangri-La, like how colour only happened in Oz.

It didn’t stop there, though. Of course, there were the character types thrown in there. The characters weren’t exactly one-to-one, but they were learning the same lessons. Richard Conway was the Dorothy of Lost Horizon. He was the leader of the group. It was Richard who tried to lead everybody home before urging them to stay. Of course, he would venture home with his brother, George, who only wanted to leave the paradise and go home. I guess that desire to go home made the entire Conway family a Dorothy surrogate. The leader and the character who wanted to go home.

The other characters were a little more direct. They were the brain, the heart, and the courage. Sam Cornelius was a disgraced engineer. He essentially was the head of an unintentional Ponzi scheme sort of thing before coming to Shangri-La. When he found gold in the water at Shangri-La, he considered smuggling it before being persuaded to use his brains to help instead of taking for himself. That’s the brain of The Scarecrow. Harry Lovett was a failed comedian who found an audience in the children of Shangri-La. He wanted to stay and teach them how to find happiness through art. He wanted to share his love of song and dance. That was the heart of The Tin Man. Then there was Sally Hughes, a drug addict who almost killed herself because of withdrawal. She was shown how to build the courage to take down her disease. She was The Cowardly Lion.

No movie inspired by The Wizard of Oz is complete without a translated version of The Wizard. That’s what Lost Horizon gave with The High Lama. He was a hidden figure that nobody really knew a lot about. The characters were introduced to the idea of him through legend. He stayed out of sight. And he was, for all intents and purposes, in charge of Shangri-La, like The Wizard oversaw the Emerald City. The main difference was that The High Lama was not a fraud. The things that he said could happen in Shangri-La would happen. People lived longer and kept their youthful looks. The society was a betterment of humankind, rather than the violent, evil society of the outside world. He was a cult leader leading a commune, except it actually seemed like it was a good place for people. I still don’t trust communes, though.

Of course, there was also the musical aspect, which I quickly touched upon earlier. It wouldn’t be a complete analysis of the similarities between Lost Horizon and The Wizard of Oz without mentioning they were both musicals. The Wizard of Oz was a musical both before the trip to Oz and during the trip to Oz. Lost Horizon was only a musical when the characters were in Shangri-La. They both had musical numbers, however, so that was a similarity that Jurassic Park didn’t have with them.

With Jurassic Park and Lost Horizon, you can see the influence that The Wizard of Oz passed on through the generations. Each of the movies couldn’t have been structured the way they were without the people behind them having seen The Wizard of Oz before. The way the stories played out shared many similarities with how the story played out in that 1939 classic. The characters shared emotional arcs, learning more about themselves and how they had the qualities they thought they lacked. Writers are always told to write what they know. These filmmakers certainly knew The Wizard of Oz when writing and directing their movies.

There are certain movies that you could pinpoint as influencing many others that followed. It could be a technical feat like telling a complete story, creating a montage, inter-mixing different times, adding sound, adding colour, or changing an aspect ratio. People could be inspired by the story and have a desire to tell a similar story in their own way. Movies like The Birth of a Nation, The Jazz Singer, Jaws, Star Wars, and Iron Man did just this. They changed the way people saw movies. They changed the way people made movies. And there are many other movies that did the same.

As always, notes:

• George Kennedy made his third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week in Lost Horizon. He was previously in View from the Top (week 83) and Bolero (week 456).
• Sally Kellerman played Sally in Lost Horizon. She was the narrator in Delgo (week 148).
• Phil Chong had a small role in Lost Horizon. He already showed up in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (week 184).
• Michael York has a very recognizable face. He has now appeared in 54 (week 266) and Lost Horizon.
• Finally, Charles Boyer was in Lost Horizon and Casino Royale (week 461).
• Have you seen Lost Horizon? What did you think? Did you see the similarities to The Wizard of Oz? What other movies do you think were inspired by The Wizard of Oz? Share your thoughts in the comments.
• If there’s a movie that you think would make for a good Sunday “Bad” Movies subject, let me know. Drop it in the comments and I might just watch it for a future week.
• Make sure to check out Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
• Next week, I’ll be checking out a movie I watched once before, many years ago. It was one of two Craig Robinson rapture movies to come out around the same time. I’m not going to be writing about This is the End. Instead, I’ll be checking out a movie called Rapture-Palooza. Maybe you’ll join me? I’ll see you next week, if you do.