Review: One Million Years BC

Set in prehistoric times, John Richardson gets banished from his tribe and ends up joining a new tribe where he falls for cavegirl Raquel Welch. However, these are harsh times for the earliest of humans, the entire world seems to offer all kinds of dangerous threats and fearsome beasts. Other cavepersons are played by Martine Beswick, Robert Brown, and Percy Herbert.

 

All these prehistoric films tend to be a bit same-y to me, this iconic 1966 one comes from Hammer Studios and director Don Chaffey (“Jason and the Argonauts”, “The Fourth Wish”, “The Man Upstairs”). Its iconic status seems largely confined to star Raquel Welch donning a fur bikini, and it’s an objectively pleasant sight for sure. For me the film has limited appeal, and actually most of that appeal comes from the fun stop-motion FX work by the master Ray Harryhausen (“Jason and the Argonauts”, “Clash of the Titans”). The human story and characters didn’t grab me, but every now and then a stop-motion creature would pop up and I’d become a 14 year-old boy again for a few minutes.

 

I’m not sure why a mountain goat turns up here BC, but otherwise the creatures here are fairly credible for a fantasy interpretation of what life might’ve been like pre-history. It’s not Harryhausen’s best work, however. One dinosaur attack in particular is rather poor (I don’t think the scale looks right) and no one seems to have taken the care to consider the weight and impact these creatures would have on the landscape. Also, some of the creatures aren’t stop-motion, merely real creatures (a lizard and turtle, for instance) blown up to jumbo size in crude fashion. Amusing of course, but not exactly technologically impressive. Still, the creatures are far and away the most entertaining thing about the film, with the stop-motion brontosaurus and triceratops being my personal favourites here (Triceratops being my favourite dinosaur of all-time).

 

The other chief assets here are the excellent music score by Mario Nascimbene (“The Vikings”, “Solomon and Sheba”) and terrific cinematography by Wilkie Cooper (“Green for Danger”, “Stage Fright”). As for the cast, Welch surprisingly enough doesn’t register all that much on screen, her character doesn’t take on as much importance as the marketing would suggest. She’s OK, but that’s Welch in any movie really, just OK. It’s actually more of a John Richardson film, and he’s frankly a bit forgettable. I was much more interested in Martine Beswick and veteran character actor Percy Herbert, who are perfectly cast but sadly underused. Less convincing is the future ‘M’ Robert Brown, rather laughable bare-chested as a big burly caveman. Story-wise it’s all very basic and of limited appeal as scripted by Michael Carreras (son of Hammer founder James, and the film’s producer). Story is pretty much king to me, so this was always going to be a bit of an issue. There’s just not much to it.

 

A nice volcanic open and close, some enjoyable stop-motion creature work, but overall a film that only worked for me somewhat intermittently. A remake of a 1940s B-film (with Lon Chaney Jr. in Brown’s role), there’s quite a few dead spots here with boring pre-historic human characters grunting and mugging uninterestingly. It’s a good twenty minutes longer than a film like this really ought to be. There’s an audience for it as with all of these sorts of films, but I’m not really that audience. It’s probably one of the better films of its type, however.

 

Rating: C+

 

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