One Million Years B.C. (1966) Review

One Million Years B.C. (1966) Review

Hammer Film Productions is most well-known for remaking some of the classic Universal monster films in the 1950’s and 60’s, such as Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula, but they also remade One Million B.C, an American film from 1940 about cavemen living among dinosaurs and other ferocious creatures. The original does not hold up well today, but the remake, One Million Years B.C. (note the slight title difference) is still a lot of fun. 

It begins by introducing the rock tribe, a primitive family of cavemen ruled by the tyrannical Akoba. They go on a hunting trip and capture a warthog in a pit, but when one of the older hunters falls in the pit and gets injured, they leave him behind to be eaten by vultures. It’s established early on that Akoba—and all of the tribe members, for that matter—are primitive and brutal. Also established is a conflict between Akoba’s two sons, Tumak and Sakana. 

When Tumak fights his father for some of that tasty warthog meat, he gets banished from the tribe and must wander the wastelands, encountering giant reptiles and insects along the way, before stumbling across the shell tribe and the beautiful Loanna. He learns about their different, somewhat more-advanced way of life, before being banished by them, as well, but Loanna goes with him, and the two outcasts face the harsh outside world together, before returning to Tumak’s tribe in a final showdown. 

One Million Years B.C. is a fantasy film, but it’s also a creature feature, with a mix of real animals projected to look enormous, and stop motion dinosaurs created by Ray Harryhausen, who went on to do The Valley of Gwangi a few years later, and would even re-use some of the models he created for this film. Mix that in with scantily-clad cavewomen and beefy cavemen, and you have the beginnings of what became an ongoing series of films from Hammer Studios, reusing this concept three more times. 

If you want old-school dinosaur battles, this movie delivers just that. Two of the biggest highlights are when an Allosaurus attacks the shell tribe and they fight back with spears (a scene that also occurs in the original), and when Tumak and Loanna get in the middle of a battle between a Ceratosaurus and Triceratops. But, there are more than just dinosaurs in this film. It seems they left nothing out; there are vicious ape men, pterodactyls, and even a giant turtle at one point. 

No one speaks real dialogue at all throughout the movie, they just use made-up words. Raquel Welch plays Loanna, and the image of her in that fur bikini has become iconic, to the point where people know that image of her is from this movie, but they don’t know anything about the actual movie. 

The only complaints I have are the lame bits of narration at the beginning and the sudden, random ending, where the earth goes berserk and there are earthquakes and volcanoes and fissures open up and it’s madness, but Tumak and Loanna survive, and then it’s just, over? 

Though the ending is not particularly satisfying, One Million Years B.C. is still one of the best remakes of all-time, and is a highly-entertaining (if scientifically inept) prehistoric adventure, with lots of great action, lavish effects (for the time), and the beautiful and iconic Raquel Welch at its center.