My first trip to the movies was with my father, when I was only six years old. I can still remember how excited I was to be doing something special with him! I didn't know what to expect, but I was all in. The movie? Disney's "The Island at the Top of the World".
The film was released on December 20, 1974 together with mini-featurette "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too". I recall entering the darkened theatre, after the mini-featurette had already started, to see Tigger sliding down the printed margins of a book.
Unfortunately, the movie couldn't hold the attention of my six-year old self, and at some point I turned to my father and asked to leave. I remember that he seemed a bit surprised, and was at first reluctant to go, but I insisted, so we got up and left.
Feeling nostalgic, I rented this film over the holidays, and was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable it was. A rich industrialist convinces an archeologist to join him on an expedition to the Arctic in search of his son. Their mode of transportation is a French airship.
Actor Mako, who later played the wizard in "Conan the Barbarian" (1982) was cast as Oomiak, an Inuit guide. Discovering a lost enclave of Norsemen, the expedition is ultimately successful, although complications naturally ensue.
The screenplay was based on the 1961 novel "The Lost Ones" by Donald G. Payne, writing under the pseudonym Ian Cameron, and represents a late example of "lost world" fiction popularized by writers such as Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
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