When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1971)

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)** 1/2 (out of 4) Dinosaurs and rival tribes are all trying to live together during a time when there are still people being sacrificed to the sun gods. Sanna (Victoria Vetri) gets swept away during a violent storm and soon finds herself with another tribe where she falls in love with Tara (Robin Hawdon). Their relationship is faced with problems from both sides as there are battles against each other as well as the dinosaurs that stalk them.After the success of ONE MILLION YEARS B.C., Hammer got this film into production and the end result is a mildly entertaining movie as long as you don't take it too serious. I've read some reviews that did take this film way too serious and they started to nitpick just about everything in the picture. Yes, you can bring up various logical issues as well as other issues dealing with the "cave people" but this wasn't meant to be a Stanley Kubrick picture. This here was a film meant to appeal to kids and young adults on weekends and on that level it works.It was a rather interesting choice to have no English dialogue spoken. The people are given their own dialogue, which the viewer can never really make any sense out of but I actually thought this ended up working quite well as it perfectly put you in the setting. I also that director-writer Val Guest did a pretty good job at holding your attention for the most part, although I will say the 99-minute running time does start to drag towards the end. The music score was nice and the cinematography was actually better than I expected.The reason people went to see WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH was for the special effects and the women. The stop=motion effects were pretty good for the most part and there's no doubt that the creatures themselves were quite good and entertaining. I really liked the giant crab at the end of the picture but most of the dinosaur attacks were good. As far as the women goes, yeah, there were several beauties wearing very little clothes and the uncut version even got some nudity in. How the large breasted women were able to stay in these skimpy outfits was quite impressive.Again, as long as you don't take this film too serious it works just fine as a "B" movie.

Essentially an unacknowledged remake of Hammer's most financially successful film "One Million Years B.C.", it's not on the same level as that film but it's still great fun. Ray Harryhausen, the master of stop motion, did not return for this film but Jim Danforth is a more than worthy substitute. The dinosaurs look brilliant for their time and they hold up remarkably well. It's a shame that stop motion is essentially a lost art form in the 21st Century. While both films were shot in the Canary Islands, the locations used here were less exotic and otherworldly. This has a darker, murkier appearance than the previous film, which I didn't really like. I don't think that Val Guest was the director that Don Chaffey was, I'm afraid.As in "One Million Years B.C.", the entirety of the dialogue is in the cave people's fictional language, though in this instance it seems to consist mostly of three words: Neekro (anything to do with killing or death), Akoba (the name of the Sun God, as well as Robert Brown's character in the aforementioned film) and Akita (everything from "over here" to "hey you," basically). These three words were repeated ad nauseam and it gets a little trying after a while. There is too much dialogue in the film and not enough dinosaurs, frankly. At 96 minutes, the film is about 20 minutes too long.With films like this, it's sort of hard to criticise them in the same way as other films. It doesn't have a plot per se but, than again, neither does "One Million Years B.C."! They're both basically a collection of set pieces but the set pieces in the earlier film were better and it was far more visually striking and memorable. When it comes to the acting, Patrick Allen (whose excellent voice was also put to use for the film's opening narration) does the best job of delivering the made-up language with conviction while Imogen Hassall, one of several Hammer actresses to die in their 30s, is not far behind. Victoria Vetri and Robin Hawdon are likable in the lead roles but they're no Raquel Welch or John Richardson.Overall, this is very fun film but "One Million Years B.C." is still the exemplar of the prehistoric fur bikini genre.

Little did I realize when I woke up early this morning to catch "One Million B.C." on Turner Classics that I'd be lulled into catching yet another caveman flick right after with this one. As it opened I had a pretty good idea that this would turn out to be the Spaghetti Western version of prehistoric dinosaur films, and I don't think I was too far off. The hook turned out to be that this picture had a character named Akhoba just like the first one; I can't imagine that would have been such a popular name back in the Paleolithic day.I'm reading on the trivia board that only twenty seven words were used throughout the film. While watching I got the idea that with the limited vocabulary it would have been rather easy to figure out what each one meant after a while, but for the life of me I couldn't figure it out. The best was 'Neecro, Neecro' - each time I heard that one I thought they were shouting out to the Braves bullpen for a relief pitcher.So anyway, could there have been any other reason to make this flick than to appeal to a prepubescent audience going gaga over the likes of Victoria Vetri or Carol Hawkins in their skimpy fur bikinis? This one came really close to soft porn territory more than once, and Vetri goes almost full frontal at one point after her swim with Tara (Robin Hawdon). And check me on this, but didn't it seem to you like that big old green dinosaur was making goo-goo eyes at Sanna (Vetri) after doing her blonde on the half shell bit? Throw in the cute green gumby dino, the prehistoric Venus fly trap and that crazy crab at the end of the flick and you've got yourself one mad pre-Jurassic dino-fest. That this came from the Hammer folks obviously explains a lot, but what really blew my mind was that this whole movie was close-captioned in gibberish! To that, I can only say 'N'to'.

The Cave Man vs Dinosaur movie is ridiculed as unscientific. Harryhausen came to the defense of the concept in his Film Fantasy Scrapbook-casually suggesting archaeological evidence was pushing back human origins or closing the gap between them and dinosaurs. We will never prove 100 percent what was living in prehistoric times and I could not care less one way or the other. This is supposed to be a fantasy film. The idea of humans alongside dinosaurs isn't meant to be historical fact, but imaginative fun.In watching this film and its predecessor, what strikes me the most is the total professional manner the actors treat the subject matter. Especially impressive is Patrick Allen who spends a good deal of time shouting Neekro but handles it like he's doing Richard the Third! He behaves as professionally as Frank Langella playing an evil toy in Masters of the Universe.These days people would wink at the camera or have a joke-filled script--claiming that its the only way to deal with such nonsense. One thing about the 60s and a studio like Hammer was that they treated their films seriously.My only real criticism is the inclusion of a quick shot from Irwin Allen's despicable Lost World where in two reptiles were mutilated and killed for the film. Other than that I think the movie does its best with its budget and resources and its unfortunate movies today are too uptight and unimaginative to try something like this.