When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1971)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Val Guest directed this third prehistoric based Hammer studios film, with fine F/X by Jim Danforth & Roger Dicken. The story involves a beautiful tribeswoman(played by stunning beauty Victoria Vetri) who was targeted for human sacrifice but escaped by the timely intervention of nature. Now on the run, she later finds romance with another tribesman, as they must dodge hostile tribes and dinosaurs in order to survive. Like Raquel Welch before her, Victoria Vetri is the star attraction, and goes farther being unclothed than Welch did! Just as silly and historically absurd as its predecessors, Miss Vetri makes it watchable. Note that the DVD(a double feature) was withdrawn from circulation because it mistakenly used the uncut(Nudity) British version instead! This is the only version worth watching however, so perhaps Warner Brothers will one day re-release it through their archive collection.

Saw this last night on the box. It was a bit cheesy - epitomised by having people coexisting with dinosaurs in the first place, but despite that it was fun and fast moving. I never knew what was going to happen next. My enjoyment was partly from the story, partly from the pure unadulterated nonsense which the film was as a whole. Watch out for the sea and sky changing from calm to raging storm in an instant; for Sanna chastising "her" dinosaur, which hangs its head in shame; the amazing costumes (how do they stay on? why do they wear them at all?); the language which at one point only seems to have one vowel ("a"), and later consists mostly of the word "akita" that means "yes," "no," "come here," "go there," "they went that way", "head them off at the pass," "I could do with a bite to eat," and "I think we are about to be engulfed by a tidal wave."

I actually sat here and read through all 44 reviews chronologically to see what people had to say about this movie. Why? I wanted to see if anyone else had been as deeply affected by this movie as I had been. When I sat down to watch this flick, I just wanted to see some dinosaurs and have a light-hearted evening of mindless entertainment, but what I saw shocked and sickened me. This movie isn't about dinosaurs, it's about man's inhumanity to his fellow man (and obviously women - blond women). This film shows how ignorance, intolerance, and belief can (and many times do) lead to cruelty. If you look at the history of the human race, you can see this time and time again. Didn't the Catholic Church force Galileo to face the Roman Inquisition because his view that the earth orbited the Sun (and not vice-versa) threatened their BELIEF system? Weren't women burned at the stake in Salem hundreds of years ago because those in control BELIEVED they were witches (and not hallucinating because they ate grain fungus)? How often do we read about Islamic fundamentalists today strapping bombs onto themselves and blowing people up because they BELIEVE they'll get 57 virgins in heaven after they die? This movie is heavy and disturbing because it shows how horrible and wrong we can be when we allow BELIEF to get in the way of critical and analytical thought. Why has there always been a significant portion of humanity that chooses belief over science? We think we are enlightened today, but there are still people that enjoy watching FoxNews, or belong to the Moral Majority, or BELIEVE in Creationism. It looks like humanity hasn't progressed much from the time this movie portrays.

Hammer's follow up the successful One Million Years BC concerns a tribe that sacrifices blonde women to appease their sun god. Sanna a blonde woman escapes during said ritual, the tribal leader Kingsor makes it his duty to find her searching high and low throughout his domain. Sanna (Victoria Vetri) is rescued by an alpha male Tara, from a nearby fishing tribe, he falls for her immediately, but Kingsor turns up to cause trouble. Rather silly caveman social drama that uses annoying caveman talk as a means of communication throughout, it does get repetitive and tiresome towards the end. The plot also involves the creation of the Earths moon which naturally causes more concern for the primitives and also a rather unusual use of a Tsunami, well before they became popular. Another positive is the lovely females whose fur and leopardskin bikinis are very easy on the eye, if you're lucky the first edition of this DVD includes nudity from playboy centrefold Vetri.