Women of the Prehistoric Planet (1966)

This ranks for me a 6 whether with the MST3K commentary or not. That is as in bad movie 6 that is. C'mon you've got to give a sci fi movie a little bit of slack since it's, 1: filmed in color, 2: talks about how people age on planets while the space travelers don't since they are traveling at the (close to) speed of light, 3: super hot chicks, mostly Asian ones who are all stacked and the movie flaunts it throughout, 4: it has recognizable actors in it (none of the eye candy, which is probably a good thing so we see more skin), 5: it has the "stunning" ending which Corman did before with Teenage Caveman. So there it is in a nutshell, several hot Asian babes showing just enough skin to make it interesting, John Agar in one of his finest roles, the snitch from the Rockford Files who lays it out to the stupid Officers (He's a Chief), saying WTF? Oh I know it's bad, really bad, but give me some Asian skin to look at in a Sci Fi flick and I'll watch with glee. That Engineer LT comedy relief was not bad either, you could tell he was cool because the MST3K crew were getting pi#sed off because he was actually pretty cool. Oh I forgot to mention, they fry a living iguana lizard with fire and that was definitely a real shot of that lizard burning alive, its so cruel but compared to watching a Faces Of Death movie, I'd rather see a lizard die on screen, PETA can go bite me! 6 of 10, yes it's really bad but in a good way, probably best seen with the MST3K commentary but enjoyable without it as well.

And it's a real pity that it was in the first national, Comedy Channel (pre-Comedy Central) season of MST3K (before Josh Weinstein left to work on THE SIMPSONS, and before Mike Nelson signed on as a utility actor), so it presumably won't be reissued on home video in their version, while my off-cable VHS tape is on its last legs. The cast makes the film, as several have noted here, as does the twist ending you know M. Shyamalan is waiting to spring on us again any film now...I won't reveal it, but its probably the oldest cliché in bad written SF, so ridiculously hack that even the usually shameless film industry hasn't bothered with it much over the decades.However, quite aside from seeing Stuart Margolin beginning his long, deft, typecast career, and Robert Ito with surely no inkling of his similarly long television career to come, for this viewer, the female cast, led in this regard by Irene Tsu and Merry Anders, is remarkably lovely. Arthur C. Pierce, truly an undersung contributor to the Whacked tradition of film-making, provided us with so much in his few mid-'60s features. It's a pity we haven't given him more attention...or, perhaps, not. But these are wonderfully weird (not least in their utter lack of realization of how schlock they are), and often hard to find, films.

With a title like "Women of the Prehistoric Planet" I envisioned a Lost World type movie in which scantily-clad amazonian beauties ride dinosaurs, fight against half-animal savages and a harsh, unforgiving environment. But with only one women, some forced perspective lizards that com-bust on impact, and a bunch of white guys straight out of the U.S. Navy, one can only wonder what the creators of this movie were thinking when they came up with the title.To be fair, there are some legitimate scientific ideas that are dealt with in the movie, even if the writers don't understand how they really work. For example, the writers were correct in saying that when you travel near the speed of light time slows down, so that a three week journey for the astronauts aboard the spaceship is perceived by those on the planet as taking eighteen years. However, the perception of the people down on the planet has nothing to do with the speed of the planet's rotation but the way in which the planet's matter distorts the space time continuum.The real plot of this movie is that a spaceship (Cosmos III) is hijacked by the primitive Centurions (a.k.a., non-white people) who probably perform menial domestic services for the crew aboard the spaceship. The ship crash lands on an unexplored planet with only a few survivors. Another ship in the vicinity (Cosmos IV?), moving at nearly the speed of light, travels to rescue the survivors (a three week journey on the spaceship, but an eighteen year wait on the planet). Once on the ground a group of idiots looking like U.S. Navy officers are dispatched to find the crash site. Meanwhile, a beautiful Centurion girl (the ultra-sexy Irene Tsu as Linda) wanders off and encounters a mysterious stranger named Tang who is also a Centurion. Obviously, he's the son of the survivors of the crash eighteen years earlier.The story of Linda and Tang is probably the most interesting aspect of this movie. Through their adventures together they fall in love but must still deal with the tension of growing up in two very different environments. The other aspect of the plot has to do with clumsy idiots falling off logs into acid pools and shooting at anything that moves with their ultra high tech .44 pistols. The ending of this movie will surprise no one.

This is one of those films that is so bad that it is funny. The premise is pretty good but the acting is so bad. The only saving grace about it are Irene Tsu and Robert Ito. I did love the twist ending that made it look like aliens from another planet were Adam and Eve. Too bad there aren't Saturday "creature features" on television anymore. This film would certainly fit right in.