ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (uk dvd)
hammer films classic | ray harryhausen

plot
It is the dawn of time. The explosion which brought about the world and life leads into a strange barren land where dinosaurs and man live together, in a savage existance. Man has not yet flourished. He is a hunter-gather, living in tight cave communities, unaware for the most that other tribes even exist.
Tumak (John Richardson) finds himself banished by his own tribe, thrown out by his father and brother. Wandering, he encounters a group of relatively peaceful coastal dwellers, including the beautiful blonde Loana (Raquel Welch). He soon finds himself banished yet again, and Loana, besotted, follows him. Despite their cultural differences, their love binds them in a strange hostile land of volcanoes, earthquakes and terrifying dinosaurs... with the threat of danger from the land and the tribes never far away...

dvd review

story
Often cited as Hammer's 100th film, (it wasn't), One Million Years BC, did prove to be probably Hammer's biggest success. With a huge budget (by Hammer's standards) of £2.5 million it would make £9 million on its release in the summer of 1966 - a summer when England of course won the fabled Football World Cup. It brough Hammer further international recognition, and launched Raquel Welch as a sex symbol and international starlet. Since then, she has never looked back.

Much of the team behind Jason and the Argonauts is brought on board by the British company (including animator Ray Harryhausen, director Don Chaffey, and director of photography Wilkie Cooper) to design the look of a film which boasted the most impressive visual effects in terms of the dinosaurs, ever, courtesy of genius Ray Harryhausen. His stop-motion animation would not be surpassed until Speilberg's Jurassic Park nearly 25 years later.

Seen today, One Million Years BC is something of a relic. Perhaps a little too simplistic for most peoples tastes, and somewhat crude. The essence of the story seems to be one of racial prejudice and understanding, with Tomak's tribe being the dark haired, and Loana's the fair ones. Their living together and communication difficulties could be seen in terms of the difficult political situation in the world in 1966. The visual effects are seen to have been relegated to the bins of history by cgi, and the whole thing reeks of bad camp cheap taste. Nothing though can be further from the truth. The film is bold in its portrayal and absence of dialogue - the acting is no worse than a standard Hollywood blockbuster - though cgi may have superceeded the stop-motion, Harryhausen's work is one of the most influential in the field, with homages evident in films including The Mummy, Tomb Raider and Lord of the Rings.

Michael Carreras' script (based on a screenplay by Mickell Novak, George Baker, and Joseph Frickert) does wonders though, with its barely comprehensible dialogue. More a series of grunts, and half-words, with no English or any other recognised language, lends itself well to a universal multi-cultural audience. Despite the ludicrous nature of some of it, the actors perform well, and manage to instal the suspension of disbelief long enough to let the audience really enjoy the film. The content roams from the big bang through to a mighty earthquake which one could postulate, takes the dinosaurs from us, as the landscape changes. The film is littered with a love story, political commentary, violence, monsters, and dance.

The photography is simply sumptuous -the locations having been shot in the Canary Islands - beautiful, enchanting, and very believable. The interaction of Harryhausen's realistic and well-crafted stop-frame dinosaurs (as opposed to the blown-up lizards which were favoured in the Hal Roach original - although there is still one or two in this production), is good, though the blue-screen and matte processes sometimes look a little too obvious.

The complaints are small, particularly for a film of the period. The cast is good, the technical aspects come across well, and the film still stands well as a piece of family entertainment. Better than Jurassic Park? Just possibly... it demands more in terms of suspension of belief, and holds back the dinosaurs to around the same percentage of screen time, though not in the frightening aspect. Most just get a kick out of watching Raquel Welch parading round in a bikini and getting soaked in the pool.

Whether life really was like this ("This is how it was" stated the original theatrical posters), one can only hope that they had people like John Richardson, Martine Beswick and Ms Welch to lighten things up. One isn't really sure at the end of the day how to interpret the film, as Harryhausen explains in the interview included on the disc, it wasn't intended as a documentary, and yet there is that brief commentary over the opening minutes - a voice over which would lend itself well to a nature program. In the end one wishes they had pushed it just a little further.. Maybe an idea for a future commentary alternative to the grunting!

transfer
For a film now some 36 years old, the print stands up remarkably well, and one assumes that some sort of restoration work has gone on to get it looking as good as it does. There is a little scratching and dirt occasionally throughout, most noticable in the use of stock footage for part of the opening (replacing some of Les Bowie's original prologue of the Big Bang), and in the multi-layered matte shots, and dinosaur interaction. By the very nature of the film presented in these shots, the quality drops a little, and although movement of the dinosaurs may now seem a little stilted, its generally rather good.

The film itself is presented in a non-anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen (representing the original panamation ratio). The lack of anamorphic enhancement will probably irritate a few, and is a shame, but then WB have yet to include this feature on any of their UK Hammer releases. The composition looks well all-the-same, and one hopes that the ratio chosen is as close to the original as possible.

Sound is represented only in the original mono track, which is ok, but shows up the limitations of the original recording. The sound levels vary considerably, noticably between dialogue and the incidental music (which I don't personally like in places, though it does suit the barren and hostile environment well - apologies to composed Mario Nascimbene), and I get the impression that it is perhaps a little too tinny as well.

Design
The dvd cover sports that infamous photograph of Welch which turned her into a sex symbol - what more can I say about it!
Actual packaging was unavailable at the time of this review - though I imagine it will sport the clear plastic shell variety like previous Studio Canal/Warner releases. At least its not those awful red sleeves!

The actual dvd menus are ok. Simple, and non-animated, with this reasonably basic dvd, they do the job ok. Raquel Welch greets the viewer in a collage, with menu selection from rock faces. The cursor takes on the form of a pterodactyl, in green.

extras
This is the first Hammer dvd from Warner Home Video in the UK to have put any real effort into supplying extras. Limited to just over 20 minutes of material, the features are at least of some interest to film fans, and Hammer fans alike.

Theatrical Trailer ~ Running to 3 minutes, and presented in a full-screen ratio. The print quality is better than the one seen on all Day Entertainment's Horror of Hammer dvd, though remains slightly grainy and a little dark. Oddly, the superimposition problems of the blue-screen process of the feature, are heightened in the trailer. Obviously not something that will affect every viewer either.

Raquel Welch in the Valley of the Dinosaurs ~ Running at 7mins 46secs, presented in the same widescreen ratio as the rest of the film. This is a new speciall produced interview with the star of the film, by a company called Blue Underground. Cutting between footage from the film and Ms Welch, she is given time to talk about her contracted appearance in the film, her problems with the character, the unexpected launch of herself as a sex symbol and the phenomenol public reception to the film, and what it was like working on the set and on location, and her thoughts of her co-stars.
Its not a bad interview at all, and Ms Welch looks stunning - jumping between the interview and her appearance in the film, its hard to believe that they are the same person at all. She speaks well, though some of the anecdotes sound like that - anecdotes which she has told many times over the years. All in all though, worth a viewing.

An Interview with Ray Harryhausen ~ Running at 12mins 29secs. Same ratio as the Raquel Welch piece. The picture in both these interviews is good, having been shot recently on a dv format (I guess judging by picture quality). Harryhausen is pictured sitting at home, together with his remaining models from the making of One Million Years BC.
Where this interview excels (credited to Jonathan Sothcott as the interviewer -though all we see or hear is Harryhausen) is in the fact that it covers the one film missing from the Chronicles of Ray Harryhausen documentary which appears on the Columbia Tristar Harryhausen dvds, including The 3 Worlds of Gulliver.
He looks to be in good health, and talks about working on the models, on the location filming and the cast assembled. He discusses his love of dinosaurs and something of the construction of the models, whilst showing us them too.
We even get treated to some footage of the storyboards for the effects sequence. Very insightful, one is always humbled listening to Harryhausen - he is a legend of the film industry, and one who has all to often been forgotten.

SUMMARY
One of Hammer's most succesful films, combining the talents of many of the best working in the industry at the time, and launching the career of Raquel Welch. It has a lot to answer for.
Harmless entertainment, enjoyable for its action, its revolutionary dinosaur effects, a clever use of lack of dialogue, stunning photography and barren locations, and bikini-clad lovelies. Technically dated, but still very good fun.

RJES

RJES

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