The show only ran three years, and, looking back, I’m kind of surprised it didn’t eke out a stronger showing. Some of the episodes the first year were written by SF heavy-hitters Larry Niven and David Gerrold. The special effects were not terrible by 70s Saturday morning TV standards, and you had dinosaurs and hissing Sleestak bad guys for drama.
When I was a kid I watched “Land of the Lost.” I’m pretty sure it was a remake or a new version or something (early '90s this would have been).
Every time I see the first line of the theme song written down, I try to sing it in my head, but I don’t know the tune, but did you know it actually fits into the meter of “Whiskey in the Jar”?
I always liked the parts where MW&H would get get chased Grumpy and run over to the canyon, and then when he was about to catch them, that other dinosaur would be on the other side of the canyon and start bitching him out. For the next 10 minutes they’d howl at each other while MW&H would get away. I just thought that was funny.
Ah, yes…Enoch. Played (or at least voiced) by the great Walker Edmiston, one of the great-but-overlooked vocal talents in Hollywood.
I still remember the first episode he was in, where he assumed he had been transported to his people’s primitive past. Then upon seeing their ruined city, he sadly comes to the realization that this is his race’s future. Even at the age of ten, this had a massive dramatic impact for me.
I wish more Saturday morning kid-vid was of this quality. We’d have a smarter generation following us, that’s for damn sure.
I only watched that show because the head sleestack, Eenick (sp) went to my church when I was a kid. I thought I had arrived when I knew a real life tv star.
My favorite episode was the one where MW&H found out that they were dead. (I think it might have been the final episode of the first season.) After recovering from the existential horror of that little revelation, they do some weird pylon/sleestack time travel thing to instantly swap themselves with another set of MW&Hs in an alternate/parallel/whatever universe so they can die all over again.
You won’t find stuff like that on kid’s TV these days.
I would pay lots of money for the complete Land of the Lost and Johnny Quest on DVD … .
Pochacco, there’s a Volume 1 DVD of Land of the Lost with four episodes. I don’t know if it’s the only one.
spoke-: According to IMDB Bill Laimbeer is 6’11" (it also credits him as a Sleestak). I hadn’t remembered the Sleestak being so tall. Laimbeer could even call you “Shorty!”
HelloKitty, I think Clint Howard would have already been too old to play Chaka, but I see the resemblance (but only because you mention it).
In the later LOTL series the Sleestak talked, and were indisputably reptilian in their features. I found the originals with their vaguely insectoid traits and sinister hissing instead of speech, to be much, much scarier.
I love that guy.
Even as a kid I felt he was out of place in that show. That moment of “This is the future! Oh god, no!” was marvelous. I didn’t see it coming and it came off completely serious.
The original series had this strange way of being cheesy and serious at once. The time travelling of MWand H after Eenik tells them their dead being a great example. Or hey, look bizzarre technologically advanced devices-that you open by peeling the tab down.
"The sequence runs from end to beginning. The rope would be cut."
The new series stank-new themesong, talking Sleestaks , ick
The Sleestak used to scare the crap out of me when I was a kid. I also have a specific memory of being terrified during the one episode where Holly goes pylon-hopping, when she looks out the door and sees this huge vacuum-cleaner-looking creature, like a long tubular hammerhead shark or something.
I remember hating the show when they introduced that baby bronto. I liked it scary.
“Chaka” was Grohl’s band before he joined Nirvana, and he still had the drum heads when they filmed the video. The name, I am sure, is not a coincidence.
One of my favorites!! Pylons, skylons, the matrix table, hot crystals, the lost city, the Zarn, the flyswatter, the mist marsh, Enik, time doorways. I was 12 when LOTL premiered and head over heels in love with Holly.