A few months ago, I read an old science fiction story from the 1930's or 40's, and I suspect it might have been the inspiration, or one of the inspirations, for Land of the Lost. Does this sound familiar?? I might have mentioned it here, I forget. I think it was by Clark Ashton Smith. I'll try to remember.

hey Smerd, this is the story I was thinking of. I'm pretty sure I mentioned this once before, either here, or on IMDB, but I guess it got lost on the shuffle... anyway, there was a story by Clark Ashton Smith called Dweller in the Gulf. There are at least two slightly different versions of it that got published... I'm thinking of the one that had the character Chalmers in it. Apparently it was written in 1932, and published in 1933.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

It's a story about a small group of explorers who travel down a very deep cavern on Mars. Mars is already supposed to be reasonably well settled and explored by humans at the time of the story, so they are really making an effort to seek out unexplored places... ah yes, they hid in the cave to escape from a sandstorm, and ended up exploring it. Had to double check that.

Here, you can read about the story here if you want, these guys did some serious research:
https://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/55/the-dweller-in-the-gulf

The Chalmers character reminds me a lot of Collie, from Land of the Lost... Jefferson Davis Collie III, living in the caves, viewed by the explorers as a lost vestige of an earlier period in their own culture... in Dweller in the Gulf, Chalmers has succumbed to the malevolent powers around him, although in LotL Collie is still fiesty and constantly battling the Sleestaks.

The Sleestaks are similar to the Aihai in DitG. The Alhai also are divided into the devolved and evolved versions, which the explorers deal with at different points, in different ways. That, to me, is a particularly striking similarity between Lotl and DitG.

I feel like there were more similarities, but I can't think of them right now... in general, Clark Ashton Smith is pretty similar to HP Lovecraft, by the way, but he is better for horror fans in some ways because he is willing to depict gore, and generally disgusting things. Like, in DitG, the main monster/demon/god/thing sucks people eyes out before it turns them into its slaves.

I actually e-mailed one of the writers from LotL about all these similarities, but he hasn't gotten back to me yet... he still could, I guess.

Did you ever see Bolero? It's a TERRIBLE movie, but my God Bo Derek is beautiful in it.

Dramtic Wagner Lemur, which should be called Dramatic Strauss Tarsier.