Do creature features get much more iconic than this? The classic combination of eye-catching monster and attractive leading lady has served filmmakers well over the decades, but to take one of the most renowned big screen beauties of all time and pit her against the creations of the most celebrated creator of special effects in film history; now that’s a rare feat. A full 50 years on, Hammer’s One Million Years BC remains the benchmark by which any and all prehistoric fantasies are measured, and a time-honoured favourite of lusty women-fanciers thanks to the unforgettable, and no doubt historically accurate (ahem) fur bikinis worn by the sex symbol extraordinaire Raquel Welch, and her female co-stars. And quite apart from that, it’s also one of the best-remembered titles from the back catalogue of Ray Harryhausen; the stop-motion animation legend didn’t actually make as many dinosaur movies as people sometimes think, and as such there’s a particular potency to those he creates here. The film also stands as a great example of how a remake can outmatch its source material, as it’s based on the otherwise largely forgotten 1940 movie One Million BC.
Still, while One Million Years BC may boast FX work and a leading lady which have long since earned their place in film history (to say nothing of the classic poster art, given a slight redesign and a red tinge for this new Studiocanal release), there may well be a bigger question mark over how well the film itself stands up half a century later – or, indeed, whether there was really much to it at the time. It may have iconography pouring out of its ears, but it’s still safe to say that, as fun as it may be, few of us are likely to hold up director Don Chaffey’s film as anything close to a cinematic masterpiece. Still, while it may have been an ostensibly glossy and mainstream-friendly production, anyone coming to One Million Years BC for the first time may be taken aback by just how weird it is in execution, and how ambitious it is in the themes it attempts to address.
Considering that it presents a version of the origins of humanity which everyone knows is completely inaccurate (one of the few things that advocates of evolution and creationism should be able to agree on), it may come as a surprise as to just how seriously the film seems to treat its vision of a prehistoric world where mankind and dinosaurs co-exist. After opening on some pretty primal imagery of the world coming into being, we meet our first tribe of man: dark-haired, grubby, simple-minded and belligerent, they live by their base urges and violently attack anyone that stops them getting what they want. When a power struggle for leadership of the tribe breaks out, Tumak (John Richardson) finds himself banished to the harsh wilderness; wandering alone, he narrowly avoids death at the hands of various scary monsters before stumbling upon a new tribe very different to his own: fair-haired, peaceful, using basic tools and living in an ordered society (maybe we shouldn’t read too deeply into the superior race being the blonde ones…). The fairest among them is, of course, Loana (Welch), and soon romance blossoms between the golden-haired beauty and the dirty brute slowly learning the civilised ways of her people. But the prehistoric world is not a safe place to be, and danger soon looms on an epic scale.
The key thing that makes One Million Years BC such an unusual viewing experience is that, beyond a spot of narration, there isn’t a word of English, or indeed any other recognisable language spoken in the film, all the dialogue spoken instead in a fully invented caveman dialect. This might on the one hand seem like a great challenge for the cast, as it forces them to convey their characters and emotions as much through body language and expression as anything else; but on the other hand, it definitely adds to the absurdity of the whole spectacle, for as much as there would appear to be some words that have some sort of meaning (‘Akeeta! Akeeta!’ comes up a bit), it’s hard not to believe the cast aren’t just making random grunts most of the time.
As for the sex appeal aspect; this isn’t quite so heavily emphasised as it would be in Hammer’s later films to venture into similar territory, Prehistoric Women, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and Creatures the World Forgot; but those films lacked one of the fundamental strengths of One Million Years BC, which is of course Harryhausen’s dinosaurs, and they were a hell of a lot weaker without them. Fact is, without both those key elements – sex appeal, and awesome dinos – One Million Years BC wouldn’t be half the film it is. Indeed, the two seem to go hand in hand in a curious way; it does seem to be in the moments when Welch is at her most coquettish – frolicking playfully in the water, for instance – that a pterodactyl or an allosaurus will come rampaging out of the wilderness and seize her, much in the manner that old Kong just couldn’t keep his paws off Fay Wray. Fun and games for Freudians, no doubt; and one suspects Amazon wouldn’t be so rife with dinosaur-based erotic fiction without this movie. (Look up ‘Taken By the T-Rex’ if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) But it’s not all girl-on-dino action, as we also have the eye-opening wrestling match between Welch and Martine Beswick.
New interviews with Welch and Beswick are the key special features on this 50th anniversary edition disc, as well as some behind the scenes stills galleries and artwork by the late, great Harryhausen – not that existing fans of the film will need much more persuasion to snap this one up.
One Million Years BC is out on Blu-ray and DVD on 24th October, from Studiocanal; on this same day the film will screen at the Cambridge Film Festival.