When Women Had Tails (1973)

I readily admit that I watch a lot of really bad movies. But there are very few that I can think of that are quite as bad as When Women Had Tails. It's a stinker of epic proportions. What should have been a sexy comedy about a group of cavemen discovering a woman for the first time is instead a dull, lifeless affair without a single laugh to be had. The comedy is extremely weak. I suppose if you think bashing someone in the head is funny, you might find a laugh or two. The guys in this movie make the Three Stooges look like high art. And there's just not enough of a plot to hold the thing together. It seems to drag on and on and on.Well, you may be asking yourself, "If it's as bad as you say, why haven't you rated it lower than a 3/10?" Good question! And I've got two answers. First, the movie is not without its curiosity value. I do find a bit of interest in an Italian spoof of movies like One Million Years B.C. with Raquel Welch. I'll give When Women Had Tails a point for its historic "value". The other two points are for the mere presence of Senta Berger. I know it's not much of an explanation or reasoning for a rating, but what are you going to do? It's the best I can come up with.

"When Women Had Tails":I'll start with the title to the movie,it sounds like a weird storybook for kids! Then again,I guess they couldn't call it "Chasin' Tail" could they? I was up late one night a few years ago and there it was on TV.I'll never understand why people take movies like this so seriously. yes,compared to mainstream movies and the Oscar winners,this is not just "not" in the same league,it's in a whole other dimension in a warped universe! I'd compare it to a teen-agers first attempt at making his/her own! Still,it's just a silly,fun to laugh at because it's so ridiculous kind of movie.Simple plot,cavemen are lonely,bored,quite stupid (who's there to teach 'em anything?) and getting themselves into one mishap after another. One tries to fly,he crashes. One accidentally gets lit on fire and the smartest of them shouts,"Hey,c-mon! React!!" The burning man finally realizes,fire hurts! Anyhow,the ..ahem..men,discover a lone female with,you guessed it,a tail. They all pursue her,wanting to "play".Naturally only the good looking guy gets the girl. The rest eventually find a whole flock of 'em! They go to the women and party! The guy and his girl (who's tail has gone bye-bye,are now a couple. He bemoans the fact that it was he who has now invented "couples" (instead of what's going on in the background! I like to watch bad movies and this one is. It's just fun to do and as I've said of a few "so bad their amusing" kind of movies. Laugh at the absurdity,when you can't laugh for the right reason. 8 stars for that reason,dumb "caveman" fun". (END)

Is it possible for a movie to get any worse than this? There's a bunch of apes wandering about, mumbling b******, acting supposedly silly and we are supposed to laugh? There is no plot here to keep you going in the first place. Even when the women finally show up, there is no sign of improvement; the most expected things happen and by the time the film is over, you might be far asleep. Beware: this is not a trashy cult movie, this is trash -period! I can't believe there's even a sequel to this! 1

There were 150 women at the end of the movie? Honestly, I never made it that far. The product of a really boring graveyard shift at Jumbo Video, my shift partner grabbed this one off the rack because he wanted to watch something with jugs and thought it'd be weird enough for me to give it a try (he was right). I'm sure our copy had the title "The Time Before Women Had Lost Their Tails" (I remember thinking how that didn't make any sense as Filli doesn't have a tail). Painfully juvenile, the cast makes the Teletubbies look like the Marx Bros. In all these years, its never occurred to me that it was Italian. I remember that they were speaking gibberish, but I'm pretty sure it was Caveman gibberish and not a foreign language. Either way, there were no subtitles or dubbing, which didn't make it any easier. Just a lot of gibberish and over-exaggerated mime. Long, boring stretches of attempted situation comedy of the lobotomy-kind, the movie never even rises to its sexploitation ambitions, keeping Filli (Feely) to a bikini minimum (to they dismay of my shift partner who was so perplexed by the movie he watched it like a deer caught in headlights)and hammering its "Johnson" punchline home with such dead horse-brutality that they obviously thought it'd only get funnier with each replay.I've often heard film critics cry over losing 90 min of their lives to some dreadful movie they've had to watch. They have no idea.