On this date in 1925, the first in-flight film was shown on an airplane on an Imperial Airways flight. The film was The Lost World, one of the first science-fiction films. Based on a 1912 Arthur Conan Doyle novel, it featured early examples of stop-motion special effects by Willis O’Brien who created the original King Kong.
The 1925 American silent fantasy, adventure film was produced and distributed by First National Pictures, a major Hollywood studio at the time, and stars Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger. In 1998, The Lost World was deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Because of its age the film is in the public domain, and can be legally downloaded online.
