One Million Years B.C. (U.S. and International Versions)

This is a review for the blu-ray version of One Million Years B.C. by Kino Lorber released in February, 2017.This is the 1966 remake of One Million Years B.C. which made Raquel Welch a star. She had starred previously in 'Fantastic Voyage' but this is the movie that made her famous. The cover image of her is the animal skin bikini has become an iconic image, probably the most famous image from a dinosaur movie. The movie itself is a fairly entertaining 1960's sci-fi fantasy film in which you must suspend disbelief if you are going to enjoy it. Most significantly it features humans in the time of dinosaurs when if fact, dinosaurs had died out approximately 65 million years prior to the time period depicted.BLU-RAY (4k): I didn't have high expectations of the print quality but it was decent. I watched the U.S. version. I am no expert in film quality. The print was clean as I didn't seen any spots or imperfections. The clarity was at times real good and at other times a bit blurry. Essentially it looked like a decent transfer with blu-ray quality with the imperfections cleaned up. I don't really know if it is possible to make a better print. It might just be that that is the way it was filmed and some of the blurry parts are there from when the movie was filmed.EXTRA'S: Significantly you get a 4k restoration of the U.S. cut of the film. You also get the international cut. The interational version is 9 minutes longer at 100 minutes.There is no commentary and there are no subtitles. Of course no English is spoken in the movie. However subtitles might have made it easier to follow the made up language.There are three interviews:Raquel Welch - I anticipated this the most but it was less than 15 minutes. It did have some interesting tidbits.Martine Beswick - The longest interview was somewhat interesting. She seemed to gush over John Richardson and how handsome he was.Ray Harryhausen - I've seen so many interviews with him so that to me this was the least interesting.Lastly, you get a trailer.PLOT/SUMMARY: The narrator tells us that this is the story of two brothers, Tumak (John Richardson) and Sakana. That is not entirely true, it is a bit more than that.Tumak and Sakana are depicted as rivals for their father's (Akhoba) approval. Early on, Tumak and his father get into a fight over food. Essentially it is for the leadership of tribe. I'm not quite sure who's idea this fight was. Akhoba wins the fight and leaves his son for dead. Tumak survives and takes off. He walks for awhile and passes out near a beach. Apparently even though they are near the water, nobody from their tribe has ever traveled that far. This is hard to believe when you look at the landscape they live in. It is almost completely barren and in order to find food they would probably have to travel quite a bit to find it. At this beach, lo and behold, is a bunch of blonde haired beauties led by Loana (Raquel Welch). All the men are blonde too. They take Tumak back to their cave, which is much prettier than the previous one. They are also much more advanced and use many tools and the leader does not appear to be the strongest person. Loana nurses Tumak back to health and promptly falls in love. Unfortunately Loana has another man from her own tribe who is in love with her and he gets into a fight with Tumak. Tumak wins but is stopped short of killing his rival by the tribe. Tumak is sent packing. He leaves but Loana chooses to go with him. Tumak and Loana go back to Tumak's original cave where he challenges his brother for leadership. His brother Sakana has taken leadership after treachery against his father. From here things get a bit wacky. Raquel Welch gets into a famous cat fight with Martine Beswick over Tumak. Loana is taken by a flying dinosaur. Tumak goes after her. Sakana tries to take back leadership. Tumak returns with the blonde warriors in tow and then....what a surprise....a volcano erupts and makes a mess of everything....PRODUCTION: One Million Years B.C. was created by the famous English movie studio, Hammer Films. It had special effects by the master of stop motion, Ray Harryhausen. The outdoor scenes were shot in the Canary Islands.According to Harryhausen in the interview included in the extra's, the budget was 400,000 to 500,000 pounds, which was a decent amount at the time. Stop motion is used for most of the dinosaurs with the exception of the first one you see and the tarantula. In that sequence they use the lizards with glued on fins method (I'm not sure if there were any fins glued on)! For the most part the stop motion animation is good. However when people are used in the animation it doesn't look all that good even for the times. I suppose it was very difficult to make realistic looking humans using stop motion effects. If Harryhausen couldn't make it look good, I don't suppose anybody could.The acting was average at best. John Richardson as Tumak was just OK as was Raquel Welch as Loana. Martine Beswick was the other female star. At the time she was considered very beautiful and she was a Bond girl. While attractive, she isn't my cup of tea. I much prefer Raquel Welch. I'm not sure any movie from the time period portrayed cave men in a believable way.CONCLUSIONS: One Million Years B.C. is a fairly entertaining movie. Obviously there were no people in the time of the dinosaurs but as Ray Harryhausen says, you have to look past that in order to have an entertaining movie. As simple as it is, it gets slightly confusing at the end, especially since the characters speak in a made up language. You don't always know what the characters are trying to do. But then again, that's probably the way it was.There are some other plot holes too. It's highly unlikely that two tribes so close to each other would have never come across each other. Not to mention that one is all blonde and the other all brunette. The land seemed mostly barren and without any animals to hunt.The Dinosaurs, which are supposed to be the star of the show, are mostly in the movie for some action sequences but don't move the plot much at all. They are mostly stop motion but a few are not. Besides the enlarged lizard you also have a tarantula that looks much the same as it does in any movie with tarantula's when a live one is used and enlarged. The sequence are fairly well done, especially the attack by the Allosaurus and the fight between the Triceratops and the Ceratosaurus.This is probably as good as you will ever see this movie. It made Raquel Welch a star and while at the time she wasn't thrilled with making it, she admits in her interview in the extra's, it is the movie that made her famous.I give it 4 stars for the picture quality, 3 stars for the plot, 4 stars for the extra's.Overall I give this release 4 stars out of 5.Recommended for fans of Raquel Welch, dinosaur movies and fans of 60's sci-fi/fantasy.

...it's better!Raquel Welch in Paleolithicaly skimpy getups. Fun flick!Cavegirls in fur bikinis! Stop-motion dinosaurs! Volcano models erupting! This is the way it was in One Million Years B.C.!Tumak (John Richardson) is one rough and rugged caveman. He comes from a tribe where violence, no mercy and zero sympathy is a way of life. This Rock Tribe’s rule is truly survival of the fittest.Tumak is banished from the tribe by his own father Akhoba (Robert Brown) who is the leader. Wandering around the desolate Stone Age land Tumak collapses and is saved by Loana (Raquel Welch) who comes from the peaceful Shell Tribe. This savage caveman and docile cavegirl grow close as Loana teaches how to live a more peaceful existence.However, Loana’s Neanderthal squeeze isn’t too thrilled with the attention Tumak is getting from her. Soon the two are banished once again. This time together going back to Tumak’s Rock Tribe where Loana teaches the people her peaceful ways. But not everyone is too crazy with her more civilized way of life and tensions heat up.Thank goodness for those stop-motion dinosaurs, fake volcanic eruptions and sexy 60’s babes in animal skin two-pieces that will help liven up this prehistoric story.One Million Years B.C. is a tough movie to talk about, just because – there’s not a lot going on in it! The movie really has two things worth talking about – the stop-motion dinos and Raquel in her fur bikini. Everything else is pretty thin. For the majority of the movie I was sitting there dead faced staring hoping a dinosaur would arrive, eat someone and make the cave folk scatter.It’s a pretty silly movie. Hammer Films decided to do this remake of the 1940 fantasy film I imagine hoping kids would be drawn to the prehistoric adventure and seeing dinosaurs attack. See, kids liked dinosaurs long before those Jurassic movies.Hammer must of been happy with the results, It was one of their most expensive movies made and became one of the most profitable. I can understand how kids back in 1966 would enjoy it and the novelty of a whole movie about cavemen and dinosaurs.Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creations are still a real kick to watch. It’s amazing how much personality he was able to give those hunks of clay. For instance, in one scene a dino is speared and killed. It doesn’t die immediately and we watch it struggle a bit and finally take it’s final breaths. I felt really bad for that poor dino. The stop-motion effects work much better than the volcanic eruption during the climax. The miniatures look fine, it’s just the caveman running and falling into deep chasms are really dodgy.The story for what it is is very simple and straight forward. Which was probably the best way to approach this movie. The actors aren’t given any dialogue, which took me awhile to get used to. I figure they would just talk in one-syllable words at least, but not really. It’s mainly just cave-talk, which consists of grunts and people’s strange names.Let’s face it, this movie is not after any kind of historical accuracy. I’d be shocked if they had any kind of scientific consultants onhand to make sure everything that transpires onscreen had some historical validity. If they did – that would make a great movie on its own!What a neat idea that could be! A Hollywood movie wanting to depict total authenticity with their new prehistoric drama and the expert consultants they hire have no respect for the film industry and they decide to just steer the production in completely wrong directions. That idea could have some potential.Without verbally expressing themselves the cast is left to use their faces and bodies to tell the story and convey how their characters are feeling. They’re not all that good at expressing themselves.Richardson often just stares sternly, but we get the point. Maybe mimes would have done better. This might of made a good acting experiment given to young performers. How would you portray a caveman? In what ways would you express yourself without the ability of speech?I’m getting a little too highfalutin’ with criticizing this. The actors were probably not using the Strasberg Method and I doubt the performances were the highest priority for the filmmakers: “Yeah, yeah just look angry. Ok great! No, no that was perfect! Let’s move on! Come on people we all know the selling points are Raquel and the dinosaurs. That’s more than enough to make the kids want to go see this. Stop trying to overthink these performances. Now, just run around like you’re scared of something!”It might have been more fun had they camped it up a bit more. But hey! Raquel Welch and Harry Harryhausen!

Liked the speef of delivery.Rachel whats not to like

I was a 10 year old when I first watched this, I marvelled at the realistic dinosaurs and the glamor of Raquel Welch, it was pure magic to a kid who loved dinosaurs and I'm still a kid at heart now and still love the rather outdated special effects but I'd prefer them any day to the over used CGI you now get in almost any sci-fi/horror movie. The story is literally non existent and basically a love story between our cave girl warrior Raquel and John Richardsons cave man mixed with fighting off maruading dinosaurs. Of course not scientifically correct regarding man coexisting with his scaly neighbours but its an out an out fantasy movie and I still love it, it has a charm about it that you don't get with today's modern movies.

I look upon this film like this : England won the World Cup in the same year and as far as I know much of the video footage available of the final (complete match) is in monochrome, with odd moments around the match filmed in colour i.e. the celebrations, the presentation of the cup etc. Video tape in colour was too expensive at the time for the BBC and most great sporting events were video taped in black and white.The great merit of England's performance has never been devalued because it was filmed using poor black and white film.Might I say that this film was state of the art at the time, in colour, with solid British actors as support for the most shapely of female forms in Raquel Welch. Minimum of dialogue--- I cant complain at the lack of subtitles--- excellent sets whether in the desert or coastline and special effects by the great Ray Harryhausen.Yes the creature features are rather lame when viewed against today's cgi's but in context they don't look out of place in the film and the story line just rolled along nicely given what it is.So avoid this if you want special effects in the league of '2012', 'The Day After Tomorrow' or any Arnie film for example. This is just a nice little example of 60's memorabilia which spawned countless imitations featuring scantily clad aspiring actors but there was only one Raquel Welch..... well there is also only one Salma Hayek...... Marilyn Monroe..... Claudia Cardinale.....

For their 100th release, Hammer Films remade the 1940 cavemen groaner One Million B.C. It would prove to be a roaring box office success, whilst simultaneously making Raquel Welch an iconic poster girl and Ray Harryhausen an even bigger hero.Plot is slight. Two tribes exist in prehistoric times, the Rock People and the Shell People. The former are more aggressive and basic, the latter more forward and assured. Tumak (John Richardson) of the Rocks and Loana (Welch) wind up together, fighting prejudices and lots of giant beasties! Hooray!That's really it, the message is clear but ultimately we are here for the dinosaurs and giant creatures (well OK, the scantily clad cave dwellers as well), with Harryhausen once again showing why he was a legend in his field of animation. With good fights, a bit of sexy sizzle and a volcanic finale, it's all good really.It's no history lesson of course, but as Harryhausen was wont to say, they wasn't making a film for history professors! 7/10

I remember this film coming out in the sixties and it was greeted with derision even then, mostly because of the gross inconsistency of historical details. The tribes wear hide and wool, but where are the animals to provide them? Dinosaurs and pterodactyls, together with goats and warthogs, appear out of nowhere. The character of the land changes according to the needs of the storyline, and there's bags of glamour among the ladies.However this was made for fun. Ray Harryhausen's creatures, once much admired, seem quaint , but there is a scrap between two pterodactyls towards the end of the film which is pretty remarkable.....and the earthquake is well done.You might like to fast forward for the first half hour since there's no dialogue. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that nobody seems to have discovered swimming before Raquel Welch takes a dip.More of a guilty pleasure than a silly bore.

I watched this film with genuine pleasure and I am glad that I finally discovered this great classic - even if objectively speaking this is a very silly movie. Below, more of my impressions with some very limited SPOILERS.This adventure film about prehistoric people doesn't even try to stick to any kind of realism - in the year 1 000 000 BC modern humans didn't exist yet and as for the sex appeal of proto-human "Homo erectus" chicks, well, I definitely don't even want to go there... Dinosaurs of course were also extinct in those times, already since 64 million years - and the bikini worn by Ms Welch (even if it is supposedly made in deer-skin) wouldn't appear before XXth century... But all of this has of course no importance - this is just an adventure film, having absolutely no other pretensions that to entertain.The story is basically about an exile from one tribe of prehistoric people who finds refuge with another, more advanced tribe and obtains there a bride - actually, now that I think of it, it becomes clear that Jean-Jacques Annaud copied this general story line into his own (much better) "Quest of fire" film. Of course there will be some further complications, but really, the story doesn't really matter. The two things that make all the interest of this film are the chicks and the dinos.Being a terminal screen junkie and having watched uncounted thousands of films in my life, I already saw a great lot of beautiful actresses - but few films can equal this one in which we can admire not one but TWO incredibly hot and sexy beauties: Raquel Welch as gentle Loana and Martine Beswick as bitchy hellcat Nupondi, both of them wearing little clothes. Even better, at one moment they get into a nasty catfight... Every scene in which even one of them appears is a splendor - and if you think that Raquel Welch is THE star in this film, well, wait until you see Nupondi dancing!The dinosaurs in this film are amongst the best creations of the great Ray Harryhausen and anybody who liked his creatures in Sinbad films will be delighted to discover here the same kind of stop-motion magic.Chicks in bikinis vs. dinos in stop motion film - can it get any better? A film without any pretension other than to give good time to its public, more suitable for watching amongst guys, with a mandatory consumption of beer a condition to appreciate it more. Enjoy!