One Million Years BC

Some of the dopiest material ever committed to celluloid is found in One Million Years BC. There’s the gaggle of seductive cave woman, all big 60s mod hairstyles and fur bikinis without a speck of dirt or sweat upon their bodies, and the images of men outrunning gigantic iguanas and land roaming sea turtles. There’s a moment in a ritual where one of these cave dwelling honeys starts to go-go dance, honest to god, she starts gyrating like it’s an episode of Shindig!

What does it all add up to? Nothing much as it is merely a 90-minute kitsch fest with Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion dinosaurs and Raquel Welch wandering around like the hottest babe on the volcanic planet. Perhaps that climatic volcanic explosion is merely the earth’s natural reaction to seeing her panting and all wet. None of that matters in this ahistorical bit of schlock.

After directing the career-high for Harryhausen with Jason and the Argonauts, Don Chaffey returns but without the sustained sense of tone and pace that made their prior collaboration such a classic. We’re treated to the never-ending sights of mankind fighting dinosaurs and dinosaur-like creatures, many of which have been thrown together despite appearing across vast differences of time, yet none of our characters speak beyond rudimentary babble and grunts. If you’re going to ask us to buy into something as ridiculous as Raquel Welch fighting dinosaurs in a fur bikini, then couldn’t you also allow the characters to speak in normal English? After all, if you’re in for a penny with this absurdity then go in for a pound and completely dismantle any sense of plausibility in your tale.

One Million Years BC wants to be both a completely ludicrous bit of cheesecake, and a pseudo-complex tale of mankind surviving in harsh terrain with its series of power struggles, betrayals, romances, and reconciliations. This makes for stretches of the movie being near interminable as you wait for the next attack scene to drop you back into good ol’ fashioned camp territory. Harryhausen’s dinosaurs exhibit far more personality than just about any of the human players, exemplified in the battle between a Triceratops and a Ceratosaurus that has more rooting interest than any other action scene. This prehistoric hokum is passable as entertainment merely for Harryhausen’s efforts and the erotic allure of Welch. This is one is mildly entertaining without ever approaching the realm of good.