One Million Years B.C. (1966)
"Travel back through time and space to the edge of man's beginnings... discover a savage world whose only law was lust!"
Plot
Tumak is banished from the savage rock tribe and finds temporary refuge amongst the more gentle shore tribe. Here Loana, one of the females, takes a liking to him but his savage ways are too much for the gentle tribe who eventually banish him as well. Faced with a dilemma, Loana decides to go with him and the two must face the prehistoric world of dinosaurs by themselves.
Not the sort of film you'd expect to see from legendary horror studio Hammer, One Million Years B.C. was one of their many attempts to diversity their output in the 60s and 70s away from the classic Gothic horrors that they had become synonymous with and into any new niche genre that they could capitalise on. They tried swashbuckling action with The Devil-Ship Pirates, exotic adventure in She and fantasy islands in The Lost Continent to name a few but nothing caught on. However, they struck gold with One Million Years B.C. and proceeded to make a handful of prehistoric 'cave girl' films within a five year period from 1966. One Million Years B.C. was the first of these and the best, becoming a huge international hit upon its release, though the bulk of its success lay at the feet of one of the most iconic movie posters of its era.
Billed as the '100th Hammer Film' and evidently sold on its two main selling points (or should that be three....) of Ray Harryhausen's wonderful special effects and the absolutely stunning Raquel Welch in a skimpy fur bikini, One Million Years B.C. is a fun exploitative prehistoric romp. There's little pretence of story. There's no real narrative to the film. Dialogue is virtually non-existent. It's just a series of encounters between dinosaurs and aggressive cave men. And that bikini. The film quickly boils down to its lowest denominators and sticks to it until the end. It knows its strengths and plays to them. Director Don Chaffey was no stranger to making these big budget fantasy epics, having helmed the classic Jason and the Argonauts a few years earlier, but he bites off a little more than he can chew here, expanding the film to a whopping one hundred minutes - a long time when you haven't got a story or script to keep everything together. Granted most films featuring Ray Harryhausen's special effects were little more than set piece-driven spectacles but at least they had a story and dialogue so that you at least knew what was supposed to be happening. This one plods from dinosaur to dinosaur, with not even talky filler scenes to bolster the running time.
I could give the film top marks on Raquel Welch alone. Simply put, Welch looks amazing in this, sizzling in every scene that she is in. If anyone ever wanted to see just how drop dead gorgeous one of cinema's most famous sex symbols was in her prime, then show them this. She only has three 'lines' but the shot of Welch in her fur bikini has become one of the most famous images to come out of the 60s. Apart from strutting around in very little (and doing a super job of it too!), she has nothing to do in the film. None of the actors do. The only real words are spoken by the narrator - the rest of the script consists of grunts and groans as the cavemen communicate with each other in primitive fashion. I suppose it's authentic but hell, if you're going to slap a hot red head with perfect hair and make-up and pretend she's a legit cave girl, why not have them talk to each other? There are loads of famous faces hanging around such as John Richardson, Percy Herbert, Martine Beswick and Robert Brown so why not have them talk to each other. It seems like a real waste of talent to me.
Legendary stop motion effects wizard Ray Harryhausen provides the special effects here and it is this reason alone why One Million Years B.C. stands head and shoulders above virtually every other dinosaur film made up to this point. The dinosaurs he brings to life have more character and personality about them than the cast does. The scene with the pterodactyl swooping down and attacking Ms. Welch by the lake is one of his most complex and riveting action sequences and the fight between the T-Rex and the triceratops is classic Harryhausen.
But maybe it's because we're only dealing with dinosaurs here that the effects don't stand out as some of his best. There's no skeleton fight here, no Talos or cyclops to get the pulse racing or a Medusa to scare the pants off us. The dinosaurs look good but they fail to generate that extra excitement factor that his more well-known fantasy monsters do. Arguably, this is because we've all seen dinosaurs before and they're common coin in cinema. Not all of the dinosaurs are animated too and, in some scenes, a normal lizard and a tarantula have been blown up to gigantic proportion and super-imposed on the screen. It mixes up the special effects somewhat and ruins some of the illusion but just goes to remind everyone how good Harryhausen was at his day job. This was one of his last films and he would only make four more after this.
Final Verdict
One Million Years B.C. is good, but not great, as it's hard not to get worked up over Ray Harryhausen's special effects and the stunning Ms Welch. For these reasons alone, the film has garnered much more praise than it deserves and they do paper over a lot of the obvious cracks.
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One Million Years B.C. Director(s): Don Chaffey Writer(s): Michael Carreras (screenplay), Mickell Novak (adapted from an original screenplay by), George Baker (adapted from an original screenplay by), Joseph Frickert (adapted from an original screenplay by) Actor(s): Raquel Welch, John Richardson, Percy Herbert, Robert Brown, Martine Beswick, Jean Wladon, Lisa Thomas Duration: 100 mins |  |
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