Land of the Lost - Discover the 1970's TV Classic

It was Jurassic Park for the 1970's. It left young TV viewers entranced week after week with its brilliant mix of imagination and special effects. It was the brainchild of TV super producers Sid and Marty Krofft, the creators of 1970's children's shows H.R. Pufnstuf and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. It is Land of the Lost, the Saturday morning show that ran for 43 episodes from 1974 to 1976 and told the adventures of the Marshall family in a land of dinosaurs and cavemen.

Today, the words "sleestak" and "Chaka" have been nearly lost, no pun intended, to a vocabulary trash-heap of dated slang and forgotten cultural references. Thankfully, the wave of nostalgia has caught this TV curiosity in its grip, and the show has begun to win new fans via the internet and DVD. These new fans look beyond the show's inherent cheesiness and dated production values to find a show with a lot of heart and soul, something sorely lacking from today's processed, product placement commercials that masquerade as kid's entertainment.

The premise was a bit odd and far-fetched, but eager fans glossed over it in favor of dinosaur sightings. The Marshall family, consisting of father Rick and siblings Will and Holly, are taking a raft down a valley river when an earthquake supposedly opens a portal to another dimension, and after a tumble down a waterfall, find themselves in a pre-historic land. Not only is this land filled with dinosaurs large and small, it is also home to some monkey-like cavemen. The youngest of these cavemen, called Paku, was named Chaka and he befriends the Marshalls, to his parents' disapproval.

The Marshalls manage to find a cave in a cliffside to live in, but must contend with angry T-Rexes and other assorted hungry dinos. Holly does manage to adopt and train a small brontosaurus she names Dopey to help them move fruits and vegetables they find (which, of course, are much bigger than usual).

The Marshalls have a more dangerous enemy, called the Sleestak, a race of lizard men who inhabit nearby temple ruins called the Lost City. The Sleestak are evil, hiss, and shoot arrows at them (albeit poorly), but the Marshalls cannot avoid them at times, because they seem to be the guardians of glass-like pylons in the forest that feature a table with colored crystals that can change the weather, and perhaps, send them home.

Kids watching the TV show in the 1970's didn't get caught up in the details of the plot: all they knew was that the sleestak were creepy cool, the dinosaurs looked fantastic, and the Marshalls were always running from something that wanted to kill them every week. Credit the Krofft brothers who did their best to deliver a quality show when they could have easily cut corners. The dinosaurs (like "Alice" and "Grumpy") were recreated with a clever mix of stop-motion photography (as was used with most monster movies since King Kong) and puppets.

The makeup was first rate, as any kid who had their wits scared out of them by the soulless eyes of the scaly sleestak can attest. Even when a more advanced sleestak named Enik, who wore a gold vest and spoke perfect English, appeared as a possible ally, you didn't fully trust the talking lizard.

Early on, the show boasted a number of science fiction authors and Star Trek alumni as writers, including David Gerrold, D.C. Fontana, and "Chekov" himself, Walter Koeing. Their writing, though still aimed towards kids, was smart and inventive, far better than it should have been. Fans may be surprised to learn that Wesley Eure, who played Will, went on to become a television producer of shows like "Totally Hidden Video" and the children's animated show "DragonTales." In addition, the character of "Sa," Chaka's mother, was played by Sharon Baird, who was one of the original Mouseketeers.

Even today's young viewers, who have grown up on a diet of CGI and other lifelike special effects, find the undeniable charm in the series, and continue to ask the eternal question: did they ever get home? Only Chaka knows.