Lets get Pre-Historic!
10,000 BC
Roland Emmerich's 10,000 B.C. has something to annoy at least two separate but equally dickish groups. First, the jesus freaks who believe the Earth is six thousand years old. Then the historical know it alls. Man, who doesn't hate these douchebags? To both these groups, I have one answer. Fuck you. Now that we got that out of the way, back to 10,000 BC. A tribe of mammoth hunters are ready for the big hunt, you know the one where the boy becomes a man, and one becomes the stone age equivalent of starting quarterback. He'll even get his choice of cheerleader. There's an old lady, Old Mother, who prophesies this, that and the other thing using her mogambo. Some kind of voodoo bullshit bout blue eyed girls, a hunter to lead the people and so on. Our hero, D'leh, accidentally kills a mammoth and gets the coveted "white spear" and the hot cheerleader even though he doesn't deserve it. D'leh has obviously read his Joseph Campbell and realizes after seeking counsel from his tribe's Obi Wan that he's gotta really earn his stripes and do all that thousand faced hero journey stuff that always involves a hell of a lot of walking. And usually sand for some reason. As luck would have it, evil slavers on horseback raid D'leh's village and take many prisoners including his girl Evolet. One of the slavers looks exactly like a muscled up young Sid Haig and so we know he's totally bad he has a milky eye. So D'leh along with TicTic/Obi Wan and a couple of others start to walk after the slavers. Before you know it, they're outta the snow and in the jungle fighting the slavers and some pretty cool skull cracking, giant flightless birds. They're like velociraptors combined with ostriches. Along the way D'leh also pulls the splinter out of a sabre tooth tiger's paw, metaphorically speaking. This obviously increases his mogambo greatly, as any such Beastmaster act might. Along the way D'leh does his share of prophecy fulfilling by attracting various members of African type tribesman to the fold, all who have suffered at the hand of the slavers and the mysterious god like big cheese who runs the show. Eventually they reach the site of the pyramid building where all those taken have been enslaved and here's where the big showdown occurs as slave and mammoth alike rise up and do what they do in this sort of picture. And there you have it. It's basically just a hero story that has touches of many other hero stories from 300 to LORD OF THE RINGS and I would argue, my own beloved BEASTMASTER. With this kind of thing you just about always are gonna get some eye rolling dialogue and there is plenty of that here but I'm not sure how you can avoid it. I guess my main problem with the film is that it's just kinda there. I think they meant to make a fantasy and they did, but I just felt like it never cut loose. It's got obviously magical plot elements and some fantastic creatures so why not go the extra mile and kick in some more of that stuff. It's almost like they were trying to hold on to a bit of historical accuracy plausibilty. The trouble with historical accuracy is it's historically boring. I wanted more sabre tooth tiger, more beasts, more mammoth stomping and a lot more of the chick. She was hot so why not Raquel Welch this sonabitch up some. I really think you could've done all these thing I mentioned and kept it PG and mostly family friendly. The picture looks great but is ultimately not fun enough to see twice.
ONE MILLION BC
Holy Cats! Back to the Gorillanaut time machine, this time all the way back to ONE MILLION BC. Here we have another Don Chaffey-Ray Harryhausen effort but this time produced by Hammer Studios. This is a remake of the original from 1940 which starred Victor Mature, Lon Chaney Jr.and Carole Landis. It's a caveman domestic squabble that drives this thing with heaps of sibling rivalry and daddy issues. Tumak(John Richardson) gets booted from the Rock people tribe which is led by his father and contains his brother. They live in a cave, have brown hair and are a pretty surly group. So he starts walking and eventually collapses from thirst and hunger but is found by Loana (Raquel Welch) of the Shell people. And we all know how hot Raquel is in that fur bikini. Wow. So she takes a liking to him and nurses him back to health. I should mention there is hardly any dialog but thy do manage to do the old "Me Tarzan.You Jane" bit. The Shell People are pretty nice compared to Tumak's Rock People, they even go swimming. Everything is cool until he gets into a fight with their main guy and is forced to leave. Loana goes with him and they wander around, bumping into some dinosaurs and some ape men until they make it back to the Rock people. Tumak settles the score with his brother who is now in charge. The two tribes fight until a volcano erupts and thins out both sides, who then come together under Tumak. Throughout the picture we get several Harryhausen dinos, the best of which is the Allosaurus that attacks the Shell People. There's also a brontosaurus, a pretty cool giant turtle, a triceratops-Iguanadon fight, and a pterodactl. Unfortunately, the producers added some Bert I Gordon style photographically enlarged iguana and tarantula stuff that just doesn't sit right with Harryhausen's work. Really, the only reasons to watch the flick are Raquel and Harryhausen's dinosaurs. I get the feeling they knew the Welch factor was gonna save this thing and they feature her a lot after the first twenty five minutes. There's a pretty good hot cave girl fight between Welch and Martine Beswick, it's real Dynasty Alexis vs. Crystal stuff. At ninety minutes it did seem like it could've lost ten or so and been fine. It's too bad Hammer didn't do this flick in the seventies and added lesbianism and nudity. I'm not really sure what the point of having no dialog was since they obviously were making a fantasy picture but I suppose it doesn't matter too much. You know what you're getting with this one, so I think Welch/Harryhausen fans will be mostly pleased.
