Customer Reviews

One Million Years B.C.

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Once again we experience blatant, greedy corporate stupidity. This DVD version is the television version of the movie -- not the complete theatrical release. Fox cut out about 9 minutes from the complete movie resulting in this disappointing garbage apparently thinking we consumers are total morons. (The complete theatrical release on DVD can be purchased at amazon.co.uk.)

Some of us have been impatiently waiting years for this movie to be released on DVD only to be utterly and profoundly disappointed. We were hoping the DVD version would be as complete as the terrific Laser Disc version that was released several years ago.

Fox should pull this DVD from distribution, apologize to the buying public and re-release the actual theatrical version of this movie. That's not all. Heads should roll at Fox. This was no accident. Some starched-shirted MBA slacker jerk at Fox made the decision to release this tripe. What would Fox have lost by releasing the complete movie? They wanted to release some crud just to make a few lousy bucks. Fox felt the lowest common demoninator consumer wouldn't notice or care. Shame on them.

With due respect to Ms. Welch, it was taking movie roles like this which caused film makers to typecast her in these rather substanceless pictures where the looks and not the story was the name of the movie. This was a Hammer Production, and to have Ray do the effects work just did not work. Ray was a master of creature effects and his work at Colombia Pictures turned out so much better then this one time deal with Hammer films which always did their movies quickly and on very shoe string budgets. The budget for this movie was so low that they actually have a cheap lizard appear as the first prehistoric monster before Ray's Dinosaur effects take over. I think more people watched this movie because Raquel was in it and Ray's effects work took a back seat. That's too bad, because he desereved to work on better productions then this piece of celliod trash.

REGION FREE. The version on this DVD has been UNrestored back to the American release print. If you don't have a way to play the Region 2 Warner's release (Available from Amazon U.K) be on the look out for the CryptFlicks bootleg. The picture quality may not be as good but at least it's the uncut version.

Not suprisingly the "restoration featurette" doesn't include them cutting out the restored footage.

I remember having a life size poster of this movie 43 years ago on my bedroom wall. You gotta love Raquel to enjoy this movie because she is the only thing of interest in it. I think it was her first semi hit. The movie is a anthropoligists dream, personaly I think man has decended not assended as the picture would have you believe.

I can't help laughing when I see a group of prehistoric women wearing rags and looking like they just came out of the beauty salon and had their nails and hair done... Typical plot: after a fight about authority a guy is expelled from his tribe and ends up wandering until he meets a bunch of Amazons... with Raquel Welch as the main character. A fun movie to watch when you want to remember the Saturday morning flicks at the local theater, and how special-effects looked like before the advent of computer animation!

Although Fox uses the famous picture of Raquel Welch in her fur bikini on the cover of this DVD, the reason most people will want to watch and this 1966 movie today is because of the dinosaur stop-motion effects by Ray Harryhausen. The film, a remake of a very clunky 1940 movie, "One Million B.C.," starring Victor Mature and Carol Landis, combined Harryhausen's terrific dinosaur effects with a caveman plot heavy with sexual titillation. The combination made the film a big worldwide hit (and without any dialogue in any intelligible language, it translated easily to other countries), but today the sex elements seem tame and often a bit silly. The dinosaurs still amaze; Harryhausen's effects have a sense of wonder to them that never ages. Even away from the animated effects sequences, the film still works remarkably well due to effective performances from the cast and the filmmakers' attempts to keep the story simple but serious (when possible).

"One Million Years B.C." was the brainchild of Michael Carreras, son of James Carreras, the head of Hammer Film Productions in England. Hammer had made its name with its Technicolor gothic horror films, but Michael Carreras wanted the studio to stretch in different directions, and "One Million Years B.C." was one of his most successful experiments. He asked Harryhausen to provide the effects, and the effects man was loaned from his own production company, Morningside, to do the movie. This makes it one of the few films from the period that Harryhausen worked on where he was not one of the producers or involved in developing the project.

The movie was shot on the Canary Islands, a perfect setting for a prehistoric wilderness. In a fictional time where men and dinosaurs lived side-by-side (even six-year-olds know this is ridiculous), Tumak of the primitive Rock Tribe (John Richardson) is exiled from the tribe after a conflict with his brother. He travels through the wastelands until his finds the peaceful (and beautiful and blonde) Shell Tribe by the ocean. He romances the alluring Loana the Fair One (Raquel Welch, in the role that made her star), who eventually leaves with him when the Shell Tribe exiles him as well.

The story is quite simple, following our heroes across the wastes and encountering multiple deadly animals, ape men, plus getting involved in fights and tribal warfare and facing natural disasters like a volcano. There is no intelligible dialogue, only a simplistic, guttural language. A narrator at the beginning lays out the situation, then vanishes, leaving us with the pantomime story. (Strangely, the DVD is dubbed in Spanish, with a subtitle option! Since this only covers the first five minutes, you have to wonder why they bothered.) Welch and Richardson are both very good at the difficult roles, which require heavily physical acting and facial expressions. Also excellent are Robert Brown as Tumak's violent father (the same actor who played M in the 1980s James Bond movies!) and the sexy Martine Beswick (who also appeared in two James Bond films) as Tumak's first love. Yes Raquel and Martine do get into a girl fight -- the filmmakers were not going to turn THAT opportunity down.

Plenty goes on in the human scenes, with many battles and tussles, and Raquel Welch does light up the screen. Mario Nascimbene's bizarre music contributes to the drama. But when the dinosaurs are on the screen is when the film really shines.

Oddly, the first monster we see isn't a stop-motion effect at all, but blown-up footage of an iguana. Harryhausen admits this was his choice, and that it was a mistake. That said, the iguana is well matted into the footage of John Richardson. A giant spider shows up briefly, but the rest of the animals are all stop-motion: an archelon (giant sea-turtle), a briefly sited brontosaurus (originally meant to take part in a full sequence), a juvenile allosaurus that attacks the Shell People camp, a triceratops and a ceratosaurus battling each other, a pteranodon and a pteradactyl and the pteranodon's babies. All the sequences are great, but the allosaurus fights especially stands out. The nine-foot tall dinosaur moves quickly and interacts seamlessly with the human actors, and the result is an incredibly dynamic and exciting scene; the finale is a great stand up and cheer moment.

The DVD is an adequate presentation. The film has been carefully restored from poor sources (the negative is lost), so it looks fairly good, but with noticeable flaws in places. The sound is an adequate stereo. There are barely any extras: the trailers, and a brief split screen comparison of the film before and after the restoration. Considering that the DVDs of Harryhausen films released by Columbia feature interviews with him, the lack of any other special features is disappointing but sadly fairly typical of the way Fox releases its back-catalog films on DVD.

Despite some of those DVD problems, I still recommend "One Millions Years B.C." to any effects and fantasy film fan. It has aged much better than you would think based on those old cheesecake Raquel Welch posters. Raquel looks good, the story holds together, and man those dinosaurs will still make they day of kids of all ages, from six to one million!

I vote everyone who is a big fan of this movie give it the lowest rating imaginable. Hopefully Fox will get the message, take it off the market, and give us the edition it truly deserves. If we all voice together, we can SURELY make a difference!!

No special features, no commentary by Raquel or Ray Harryhausen, her biggest film ever! And then they have released the short version of this film. WTF!! I have been waiting years for Fox to release this on DVD and this is what we get! They are in big trouble and need to apologize and redo this DVD right. Who ever are making these kinds of decisions are really OUT! BOO TO FOX! You let us down with this one.

Before you order this DVD, make sure you are aware that this is the shortened, U.S. release version! Fox issued the complete film several years ago on laserdisc in a gorgeous widescreen transfer, so naturally everyone expected that they would do the same for the DVD. No such luck -- Fox has decided this time out to go with the notorious truncated version, which runs a full nine minutes shorter than the original British release. Ray Harryhausen fans should be particularly outraged, as the edited film snips away some of his special effects footage. This has to rank as the first major DVD disappointment of 2004.

I love this movie, but I won't be purchasing the U.S. DVD. Immediately upon finding out the bad news, I placed an order through Amazon.co.uk for the complete film on R2 DVD, which, in addition to being uncensored, also features some extras (including reportedly lengthy interviews with Raquel Welch and Ray Harryhausen) that will not be included on the R1 disc. If you are a fan of this richly atmospheric, goofily entertaining dinosaur epic, I recommend you do the same.

The 100 minute version previously released by Fox on video and laser disc is nowhere to be found. Instead, this version is the inferior 91 minute cut. Harryhausen, Welch and Hammer fans should avoid this DVD at all costs!