While watching "1 Million Years B.C." (1966), a film famous for its buxom, fur-bikini-wearing cave women, I realized that there was much more to like than just Raquel Welch being hot. Well, not that much more, but still... OK, there's a catfight. A catfight between two buxom, fur-bikini-wearing cave women. Hmmm.... If I recall correctly there were some dinosaurs fighting, and a turtle, and pterodactyls. But before all that melted my masculine brain, I admired many little touches that made this movie stand out among the other camp I've been watching lately.
First of all, the opening minutes are pretty great, being a kind of low budget prototype to the stargate sequence in 2001. I appreciated the film-makers' attempts to push what visual boundaries they could, even if the effect is ruined by the narrator, who proceeds to tell us exactly what is happening on screen. -_- Anyway, there is no English spoken by any of the characters on screen, just a few words of tribal dialect here and there, un-subtitled. Not that we need subtitles, as the story is rather simple. It concerns two tribes, one more brutal than the other, who eventually clash over hot babes, or something. To tell you the truth I stopped paying much attention past the hour and fifteen minute mark. There's only so much that fighting dinosaurs and hot babes can give, right? (did I just say that?)
Harryhausen's creations are really cool as always. The dinosaurs on display are instant classics, and it's admirable how he got them to expand their chests. It actually looks like they're breathing! There's also a large turtle who's hustled away by thrown rocks and spears and such. The score is alright, if a bit unoriginal. I did appreciate the dissonant start, and some eerie choral music in the ape cave.
Did I mention there's a catfight? Yeah!
Anyway, tommorow I'm checking out... "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad"
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