One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Our story begins One Million Years B.C., or 1,001,966 years before the films release, which is an oddly specific date. As the narrator says, this is when the Earth was just beginning. The Earth is 4,543,000,000 years old, so this was when it was a mere 4,541,998,034 years old, which too is an oddly specific date. So, actually, the story begins with us completely dispensing with the idea of it making any scientific or logical sense.

The Rock Tribe, peopled with brunettes, is brutal and warlike. Our hero Tumak is cast out of the tribe during one of their nonsensical grunting and grabbing ceremonies. He finds a cave with water and some sort of indoor pine tree that produces edible fruit, but he has to leave when the Morlocks come. Later he stumbles onto another tribe. Not sure what they were called. The narrator had given up by then. They carried shells with them, so let's call them the SHELL tribe! Yea, that works.

Anyhow, the Shell Tribe is peopled by blonds who make their cave comfortable and inviting. Totally interior decorators, these people are. They are nice and treat this injured new human. He can't stop his grunty and grabby ways, so off he goes with hot Loana (Raquel Welch) in tow. Have we heard this before? Why yes, as it is a remake of the 1940 One Million B.C., a film with basically no dialog, and the story was copied almost verbatim! They added a few more monster fight scenes, and had the talents of Ray Harryhausen, but the end result was amazingly similar.

So, the question is, did this film need to be remade? All it added was color, slightly better effects, and more cleavage. Otherwise it was quite dull. But let's hand it to Hammer Films. It was a HUGE money maker and movie poster is absolutely iconic. Although noticed in Fantastic Voyage, this was this film that made Raquel an international sex symbol.

Having seen the original, I felt I needed to see the remake. Maybe I would have liked it more had the order been reversed, but that's not what happened. Raquel's boobies not-with-standing, this is a fairly uninteresting movie. AMRU 2.5.