One Million Years B.C. (1966) - film review

Tumak is a decent sort of bloke but he does have something of an anger management problem.  Unfortunately, as our story takes place one million years ago, a time when dinosaurs and giant spiders walked the Earth, he was unable to receive therapy for his condition.  So, after one barney too many with his dad, who happens to be the leader of his tribe, he finds himself an outcast, with no one to help him trap and kill his next meal.   Fortunately, all is not lost for Tumak.  After a day or two out in the sticks, where he has to fend off the odd giant lizard and such like, he comes across another tribe - one far more civilised and better coiffeured than his own.  The women are much nicer too, especially Loana, who seems to find his animal magnetism irresistible.  Tumak becomes an instant hit with the tribe when he saves a sweet little girl from being munched up by a greedy allosaurus.  Sadly, Tumak’s temper problem and atrocious table manners soon bring an end to his celebrity status and, once again, he is banished into the wilderness.  Luckily, he has the lovely Loana to accompany him this time.  Whatever else happens, he won’t die of boredom...

The film that catapulted Raquel Welch to stardom and gave oversized reptiles their biggest career break since the Cretaceous era was also to be one of the biggest successes for the company that made it, Hammer Film Productions.  Of course, just about everyone with a smug grin and a university degree is bound to ridicule the film for its historical inaccuracies.  At the time in which the film is supposedly set, man would more closely resemble a chimp than a bronzed statuesque Hollywood actor (even if the two generally have a comparable level of intelligence), and the aforementioned giant reptiles died out at least sixty four million years before.  Anyone who is prepared to waste valuable minutes of his life whining on about these errata is clearly missing the point of the film and really should get out more.  Do they apply the same level of well-considered critical analysis to every episode of The Flintstones?  One Million Years B.C. isn’t a National Geographic documentary, it’s a piece of silly escapist fun, like a children’s cartoon or a party election broadcast.   

A big budget remake of an earlier Hollywood production, One Million B.C. (1940), the film is remembered primarily for two things.  The first is obvious from the famous publicity shot that just about everyone on the planet has seen (and many have had hanging up in their bedroom at some point) - Raquel Welch, not so much dressed as lightly garnished, in an animal skin bikini (the animal in question presumably being a chinchilla or a very small rabbit).  The second is the set of deliciously blood-thirsty dinosaurs, convincingly realised through stop motion animation by effects maestro Ray Harryhausen.  These effects were remarkable for the time in which they were made and stand up pretty well against today’s more sophisticated CGI effects.  Harryhausen employed the same techniques to even greater effect in his other fantasy films, notably Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974).

The enormous popularity of One Million Years B.C. in both the UK and the United States led to a series of similar but inferior dinosaurs films, including a few made by Hammer: When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) and Creatures the World Forgot (1971).  One Million Years B.C. is the best of the bunch, on account of its superior production standards and the fact that the screenwriter (in this case Michael Carreras, the son of the man who founded Hammer) at least made an attempt to cobble together something that vaguely approximates to a coherent storyline.  The absence of intelligible dialogue and the slightly hammy performances do make it hard for an audience to take the characters seriously, although the swift pace of the film and the quality of the effects prevent us from getting bored.  

The exotic location (the less visited areas of the Canary Islands) adds greatly to the film’s visual impact, creating a sense that what we are seeing really is in another époque.  Regrettably, the perfect dental apparatus with which just about every member of the cast is equipped does ruin the illusion somewhat.  It’s one thing to con the audience into believing that the dinosaurs roamed the Earth a million years ago.  Expecting us to believe that Cro-Magnon man had invented fluoride toothpaste and flossed regularly is another matter entirely.

© James Travers 2009

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