The other night I stumbled upon an ancient episode of the 1970s TV show "Land of the Lost" on...I think it was the SciFi channel. I haven't seen this show since I was enamored by it as a child. It's a really weird feeling to revisit a totem of your childhood and see it through adult eyes as the shoddy, cheap production it was. Watching the intro segment, with its cheap puppet dinosaurs and weak theme song, I said, "Is this really what it was like?" I remember it so differently.
The Sleestaks still had kind of an eerie dark glamour to them, though. It was funny to see that this show was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, the same people who made "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters," another show I vaguely remember through the nebulous cocoon of early consciousness.
Also funny: the character named "Chaka" (pictured above - idn't he cute? like a balding sasquatch midget) would seem to be a forerunner of Chewbacca in Star Wars, which came out three years after the TV show.
The lesson here, I suppose, is that AGE (both mine and that of the program) is key to the definition of camp. In other words, it didn't appear campy to me as a child, in the anything-goes 70s, but now it's incredibly campy. Which doesn't necessarily diminish the "fun factor." If anything, it may increase it.
Incidentally, I see a film called "Land of the Lost" is about to be released. Will Ferrell stars. Although I gather it doesn't have much to do with the TV series.
Something about eating the eyeballs from a deer carcass.
Sadly, from what I gather, the film IS based on the show and will be anything but well done.
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