Jonny Quest (TV Series) The Mystery of the Lizard Men (1964) User Reviews

A solid way to start off the series

[bensonmum2 · 7/10 · 25 November 2008]

Over the years, I've seen everyone one of these Jonny Quest episodes at least a half-a-dozen times. When I was much younger, there wasn't much of anything on television as cool as Jonny Quest. It combined mysteries, monsters, and the unknown with some really groovy 60s music, and James Bond type gadgets. What boy wouldn't love this stuff!

Well, I'm not a kid anymore and it's not the 60s anymore, but I still enjoy watching Jonny Quest. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to give every episode of Jonny Quest another go round. I started this morning with the first episode, "The Mystery of the Lizard Men". While I don't think the sight of the lizard men's hands reaching over the side of the boat affected me the way it did several decades ago, it's still a nice moment. Overall, it's a solid way to start off the series. Spooky ghost ships, the mysterious Sargasso Sea, and deadly lasers – "The Mystery of the Lizard Men" packs a lot into its brief runtime. I don't rate this episode as highly as others because the main baddie doesn't really stand out and he's too easily defeated. Otherwise, it's an enjoyable episode. A 7/10 seems about right.

Scary but fun for kids :-)

[VetteRanger · 8/10 · 13 March 2023]

The Jonny Quest writers and artists had a knack for producing scary shows and visuals which weren't too much for kids, and carried just the right combination of drama and light-hearted moments.

In this, enemy agents wear wetsuits which look like lizard scales. Why they wear their masks even when out of the water is still a mystery, but when you watch the episode, you can see that they did.

The writers even set up some of the action between Jonny and Race versus the bad guys by introducing a judo lesson early in the story ... before government agents arrived to ask Dr. Quest to investigate strange ship disappearances in the Sargasso Sea.

They even imparted a bit of correct history by mentioning that Christopher Columbus first discovered the vast area of seaweed.

In this episode, they hadn't decided to add Hadji yet, and the lack is noticeable. However, he's in place in the next one.

A Quest worth going on

[Fluke_Skywalker · 7/10 · 7 February 2017]

Plot; Dr. Benton Quest is sent to investigate the disappearance of several ships in the Sargasso Sea.

Though it was before my time, I was still a bit surprised when it dawned on me that I'd never seen an episode of the original Jonny Quest (or any of its progeny come to think it). It says a lot about its pop cultural impact and staying power that despite this, I was familiar with the basic premise and knew the names of the characters.

I was expecting something a bit more typical of the Hanna-Barbera I grew up with, so I was surprised that Jonny Quest felt a bit more mature in its approach... Well, as mature as something titled "The Mystery of the Lizard Men" can be, I suppose. Here Jonny and his bodyguard Race find themselves ducking and dodging gunfire and not lasers (though we do get those as well) or magic spells or whatever. There's also just a more sophisticated approach to the storytelling than the Hanna-Barbera I grew up with. I wasn't surprised to learn that it originally aired in early primetime.

Normally I find kid protagonists annoying, and did even when I was a kid myself, but I found Jonny himself to be a likeably plucky lead. In this episode his father is rather ineffectual and inconsequential, with the daring Race Bannon acting as the man of action. In this first episode Jonny and his father have almost zero interaction, and it's actually Race with whom Jonny spends the bulk of his time; the former acting as a sort of hybrid of father figure and big brother. The character Hadji is shown in the opening credits, but doesn't make an appearance here.

Fun, action-packed and surprisingly sophisticated for the era and genre, Jonny is a Quest worth going on. - 7/10 - Jonny was voiced by a young Tim Mathieson (Animal House).

• Jonny Quest serves as the primary inspiration for the Cartoon Network series The Venture Bros., a sort of twisted take on the formula positing "What would happen if Jonny grew up to be a total failure and let his father's work go to rot?".

Groundbreaking and still fun to watch

[cashbacher · 10/10 · 13 March 2020]

The original Jonny Quest show was a groundbreaker in the sense that it was a cartoon that ran in prime time on ABC in 1964-65. While it had a devoted following, decades of popular reruns confirm that, the series only lasted one season. It featured Jonny, the son of super scientist Dr. Benton Quest and special ops sensation Roger (Race) Bannon, assigned to protect the Quest's. There was no wife of Benton in the group. The show was designed to be science fiction derived from known modern technologies, so not a great deal of extrapolation was needed on the part of the viewer. This is the first episode in the series, so the main characters and their backgrounds are presented. Ships are mysteriously being lost in the Sargasso Sea and the only survivor mumbles deliriously about giant lizards. Dr. Quest and his group are dispatched to investigate, and they encounter and battle the evildoers. What made the series so fun is that while he is a boy, Jonny is a full action figure, fighting alongside Race and being the hero to all adolescent boys that watched him. Jonny's dog bandit is also a contributing member of the team, he takes direction very well and helps Jonny and Race escape. This is another one of those series that ended well before it should have. Unlike most cartoons, the dialog is superb and somewhat adult. For example, Jonny: "Foolish question number one, does it hurt Race?" Race: "Only when I say ouch."