One Million Years B.C.

One Million Years B.C.
Theatrical poster with Welch against backdrop of dinosaurs attacking humans
US theatrical release poster by Tom Chantrell
Directed by Don Chaffey
Produced by Michael Carreras
Written by
Starring
Music by Mario Nascimbene
Cinematography Wilkie Cooper
Edited by Tom Simpson
Production
company
Distributed by
Release date
  • 30 December 1966 (1966-12-30)
Running time
 100 minutes (United Kingdom)
91 minutes (United States)
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget ₤422,816[1]
Box office $8 million (United States)[1]

One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure fantasy film starring Raquel Welch and John Richardson, set in a fictional age of caveman and dinosaurs. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions and Seven Arts, and is a remake of the 1940 American fantasy film One Million B.C.. It recreates many of the scenes of the earlier film, such as an Allosaurus attacking a child in a tree. Location scenes were filmed on the Canary Islands in the middle of winter, in late 1965. The British release prints of this film were printed in dye transfer Technicolor. The US version was cut by 9 minutes,[2] printed in DeLuxe Color, and released in 1967.[3]

Like the original film, this remake is largely ahistorical. It portrays dinosaurs and humans living at the same point in time; according to the geologic time scale, the last non-avian dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago, and modern humans, Homo sapiens, did not exist until about 200,000 years BC. Ray Harryhausen, who animated all of the dinosaur attacks using stop motion techniques, commented on the US King Kong DVD that he did not make One Million Years B.C. for "professors... who probably don't go to see these kinds of movies anyway."

Opening narration:
This is a story of long, long ago, when the world was just beginning... A young world, a world early in the morning of time. A hard, unfriendly world. Creatures who sit and wait. Creatures who must kill to live. And man, superior to the creatures only in his cunning. There are not many men yet. Just a few tribes scattered across the wilderness. Never venturing far, unaware that other tribes exist even. Too busy with their own lives to be curious. Too frightened of the unknown to wander. Their laws are simple: the strong take everything.[4]

Plot

Akoba (Robert Brown) leads a hunting party into the hills to search for prey. One member of the tribe traps a warthog in a pit, and then Akoba's son Tumak (John Richardson) kills it. The tribe brings it home for dinner and Tumak is later banished to the harsh desert because of a fight over a piece of meat with Akoba. After surviving many dangers such as a giant iguana, ape men, Brontosaurus and a giant spider, he collapses on a remote beach, where he is spotted by "Loana the Fair One" (Raquel Welch) and her fellow fisher-women of the Shell tribe. They are about to help him when an Archelon (which is three times the size of the actual prehistoric Archelon) makes its way to the beach. Men of the Shell tribe arrive and drive it back into the sea. Tumak is taken to their village, where Loana tends to him. Scenes follow emphasising that the Shell tribe is more advanced and more civilized than the Rock tribe. They have cave paintings, music, delicate jewelry made from shells, agriculture, and rudimentary language;– all things Tumak seems to have never before encountered.

When the tribe women are fishing, an Allosaurus attacks. The tribe flees to their cave, but in the panic, a small girl is left trapped up a tree. Tumak seizes a spear from Ahot (Jean Wladon), a man of the Shell tribe, and rushes forward to defend her. Emboldened by this example, Loana runs out to snatch the child to safety, and Ahot and other men come to Tumak's aid, one of the men being killed before Tumak is finally able to kill the dinosaur. In the aftermath, a funeral is held for the dead men – a custom which Tumak disdains. Leaving the funeral early, he re-enters the cave, and attempts to steal the spear with which he had killed the Allosaurus. Ahot, who had taken back the spear, enters and is angered by the attempted theft, and a fight ensues. The resulting commotion attracts the rest of the tribe, who unite to cast Tumak out. Loana leaves with him, and Ahot, in a gesture of friendship, gives him the spear over which they had fought.

Meanwhile, Akoba leads a hunting party into the hills to search for prey but loses his footing while trying to take down a ram. Tumak's brother Sakana (Percy Herbert) tries to kill their father to take power. Akoba survives, but is a broken man. Sakana is the new leader. While this is happening, Tumak and Loana run into a battle between a Ceratosaurus (as with the Archelon, the Ceratosaurus is twice the size as the actual creature) and a Triceratops; the Triceratops eventually wins, charging its opponent and leaving it stunned. The outcasts wander back into the Rock tribe's territory and Loana meets the tribe, but again there are altercations. The most dramatic one is a fight between Tumak's current love interest Loana and his former lover "Nupondi the Wild One" (Martine Beswick). Loana wins the fight but refuses to strike the killing blow, despite the encouragement of the other members of the tribe. Meanwhile, Sakana resents Tumak and Loana's attempts at incorporating Shell tribe ways into their culture.

While the cave people are swimming – seemingly for the first time, and inspired by Loana's example – they are attacked by a female Pteranodon. In the confusion, Loana is snatched into the air by the creature, and dropped bleeding into the sea, when a giant thieving Rhamphorhynchus intervenes. Loana manages to stagger ashore while the two pterosaurs battle and then falls down. Tumak arrives but is only greeted by the sounds of the victorious Rhamphorhynchus eating the Pteranodon's young, actually believing it is eating Loana.

Tumak initially believes her dead. Sakana then leads a group of like-minded fellow hunters in an armed revolt against Akoba. Tumak, Ahot and Loana (who had staggered back to her tribe after the Pteranodon dropped her into the sea), and other members of the Shell tribe arrive in time to join the fight against Sakana. In the midst of a savage hand-to-hand battle, a volcano suddenly erupts: the entire area is stricken by earthquakes and landslides that overwhelm both tribes. As the film ends, Tumak, Loana, and the surviving members of both tribes emerge from cover to find themselves in a ruined, near-lunar landscape. They all set off – now united – to find a new home.

Cast

Production

Welch in fur bikini, in smoky, rocky surroundings, stands with feet braced apart, hands away from sides, tensed as if seeing a threat in the distance.
Welch as Loana the Fair One

The exterior scenes were filmed on Lanzarote and Tenerife in the Canary Islands in the middle of winter. The film features the Echium wildpretii plant, as a homage to Tenerife's unique endemic flora. However, the plants are set in scenes filmed on the Lanzarote beach. In actuality, this plant only flowers from May to June. It is found in Tenerife mountain zones higher than 1,600 m (5,200 ft). As there were no active volcanoes in the Canary Islands, the studio had to construct a 6–7 ft (2 meter) high volcano on the Associated British Picture Corporation's studio back lot. The eruption, lava explosions and lava flows were composed of a mixture of wallpaper paste, oatmeal, dry ice and red dye. Harryhausen filmed the dinosaur visuals in his personal studio in London.

The film was written by Brian Clemens, with script polishing by Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, and Tom Stoppard.[5]

As the Shell people are attacked by a giant turtle, the women call it Archelon which is the real scientific name for the animal. The film uses three live creatures: a green iguana, a warthog and a tarantula (a cricket can be seen at the tarantula's side). Ray Harryhausen was asked repeatedly about these unanimated creatures, and he confessed they were his idea. At the time, he felt the use of real creatures would convince the audience that all of what they were about to see was indeed real.

Shortly after, Tumak encounters a dinosaur skeleton, which helped build audience anticipation for further dinosaur encounters. This supposedly massive skeleton was actually only about 12 inches in length, made of plaster and shot against a blue backing and matted into the foreground.

The scene where the Allosaurus attacks the village is similar to one in the original film. Shortly after the creature appears it plucks a man out of the water. They used an actor suspended on wires and Harryhausen positioned an animated model man over the actor, on the rear projection plate; thus it seemed as if the live actor was being eaten. Another technically complex scene in this part of the film was when a man fighting the Allosaurus is trapped under a shelter: the dinosaur grabs a support and collapses it. The team used a full-size shelter rigged to collapse at that point during the action. Harryhausen then placed a miniature part in the creature's mouth which, when all lined up on the rear projection plate, blended in perfectly. The final significant scene in this sequence is when Tumak impales the creature on a spear from below. John Richardson, the actor who played Tumak, held nothing in the long shots and pretended to have a pole in his hands, but he did hold a pole in the close-up shots. A miniature pole was built and used for the long shots. It was placed in the studio in front of Richardson's hands, and then Ray animated the Allosaurus suspended on wires in front of John, on top of the miniature pole.

The Pteranodon sequence took much time to create, primarily because of how hard it would be to make a model pterosaur pick up a real woman. However the solution was simple: Instead of using a large crane on location, the crew had Raquel Welch fall behind a rock, and then the model Pteranodon swoops down and flies off with a model of Welch, which was substituted during the single second in which she is behind the rock and not visible. Later, when the creature takes her to its nest, the nest was matted into the scene atop a real rock face by double printing the film. For the Pteranodon and Rhamphorhynchus fight scene, when she is dropped into the water, Harryhausen and the crew released her from two dummy rubber Pteranodon claws and while the real Welch fell onto a mattress, the film cut to a long shot of the Welch model suspended on wires.[6]

Robert Brown (Akhoba) wears makeup similar to that worn by Lon Chaney, Jr. in the same role in the 1940 version, One Million B.C.

Originally Hammer offered the role of Loana to Ursula Andress. When Andress passed on the project due to commitments and salary demands, a search for a replacement resulted in the selection of Welch.[7] Welch, who had finished doing Fantastic Voyage for Fox, was under contract to the studio (who held US distribution rights for the film) and was told by studio President Richard Zanuck that she would be loaned out to Hammer for the production. Although reluctant, Welch said that the selling point was the chance to spend six to eight weeks of filming in London (while shooting interiors) during the height of its "swinging" period. [8]

Fur bikini

Welch wore a bikini made of fur and hide in the film. She was described as "wearing mankind's first bikini" and the bikini was described as a "definitive look of the 1960s". The publicity photograph of Welch from the film became a best-selling pinup poster,[9] and something of a cultural phenomenon.[10][11]

The iconic image was copied by the artist Tom Chantrell to create the film poster promoting the theatrical release of One Million Years BC. Welch's depiction is accompanied by the film's title in bold red lettering across a landscape populated with dinosaurs.[12]

Welch stated in a 2012 interview that three form-fitting bikinis were made for her, including two for a wet scene and a fight scene, by costume designer Carl Toms: "Carl just draped me in doe-skin, and I stood there while he worked on it with scissors." Many noted photographers had been flown to Tenerife by 20th Century Fox on a publicity junket, but the iconic pose of Welch was taken by the unit still photographer.[13] The poster was a story element in the film The Shawshank Redemption.[14][15]

Critical reception

Among contemporary reviews, Variety wrote "the whole thing is good humored full-of-action commercial nonsense, but the moppets will love it and older male moppets will probably love Miss Welch";[16] and The Monthly Film Bulletin noted "Very easy to dismiss the film as a silly spectacle; but Hammer production finesse is much in evidence and Don Chaffey has done a competent job of direction. And it is all hugely enjoyable";[17] while more recently, The Times wrote that "seen nowadays it is a kitschy, retro scream. Yet as dinosaurs and giant sea-turtles roam the volcanic earth in One Million Years BC, this is also a chance to appreciate the early work of the great special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen."[18] and similarly, TV Guide concluded "While far from being one of Harryhausen's best films (the quality of which had little to do with his abilities), the movie has superb effects that are worth a look for his fans."[19]

Release

The US release was censored for a broader audience, losing around nine minutes. Deleted scenes included a provocative dance from Martine Beswick, a gruesome end to one of the ape men in the cave and some footage of the Allosaurus attack on the Shell tribe. Nonetheless, the film was still popular and made $2.5 million in US rentals during its first year of release.[20][21]

In 1968 it was re-released in the UK on a double bill alongside She (1965), an earlier Hammer film. The pairing became the ninth most popular theatrical release of the year.[22]

All the dinosaur models from this film still exist, although the Ceratosaurus and Triceratops were re-purposed for The Valley of Gwangi (1969), as Gwangi the Allosaurus and the Styracosaurus.

One Million Years B.C. was the first in an unconnected series of prehistoric films from Hammer. It was followed by Prehistoric Women (1968), When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) and Creatures the World Forgot (1971).[23]

Stock footage depicting the landslide was reused for Alex's daydream scene in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange[24]

The film was released on Blu-ray on February 14, 2017 by Kino Lorber Studio Classics. The release included restorations of both the international and U.S. cuts of the film, interviews with Raquel Welch and Martine Beswick, archival interviews with Ray Harryhausen, and other extra material.

In other media

The film was adapted into a 15-page comic strip for the May 1978 issue of the magazine House of Hammer (volume 2, # 14, published by Top Sellers Limited). It was drawn by John Bolton from a script by Steve Moore. The cover of the issue featured a painting by Brian Lewis of Raquel Welch in the famous fur bikini.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Marcus Hearn & Alan Barnes, The Hammer Story: The Authorised History of Hammer Films, Titan Books, 2007 p 105
  2. ↑ "One Million Years B.C. - Alternate Versions". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
  3. ↑ "One Million Years B.C. - Original Print Information". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
  4. ↑ "Greatest Opening Film Lines and Quotes 1950s - 1960s". filmsite.org.
  5. ↑ Trailers From Hell (3 June 2012). "John Landis on ONE MILLION YEARS BC" – via YouTube.
  6. ↑ Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life pgs 194-202
  7. ↑ Smith, Gary A. (1991). Epic Films: Casts, Credits and Commentary on over 250 Historical Spectacle Movies. Mcfarland & Co. p. 162. ISBN 978-0899505671. Retrieved February 2013. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  8. ↑ Newsom, Ted (Spring 1993). "Raquel Welch". Femme Fatales.
  9. ↑ Mansour, David (2005). From Abba to Zoom: a pop culture encyclopedia of the late 20th century. Andrews McMeel Publishing. p. 345. ISBN 978-0-7407-5118-9. Retrieved 28 August 2012.
  10. ↑ Filmfacts. 1967. Retrieved 24 May 2011.
  11. ↑ Gayomali, Chris (5 July 2011). "Top 10 Bikinis in Pop Culture". Time. Archived from the original on 30 July 2017. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
  12. ↑ Wigley, Samuel (23 November 2016). "Amicus and the art of the film poster". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 29 July 2017. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  13. ↑ Spitznagel, Eric (8 March 2012). "Interview with Raquel Welch". Men's Health. Retrieved 25 November 2012.
  14. ↑ Carr, Jay (23 September 1994). "Captivating Shawshank". The Boston Globe. Highbeam Research. (subscription required)
  15. ↑ Harvey, Neil (7 October 2004). "Shawshank Redemption gets the treatment it deserves". The Roanoke Times. Highbeam Research. (subscription required)
  16. ↑ Gold, Rich (22 December 1966). "One Million Years B.C."
  17. ↑ "Monthly Film Bulletin review". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  18. ↑ Muir, Kate (21 October 2016). "Classic film of the week: One Million Years BC (1966)" – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
  19. ↑ "One Million Years B.C." TVGuide.com.
  20. ↑ Solomon, Aubrey (1989). Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. p. 230. ISBN 978-0-8108-4244-1.
  21. ↑ "Big Rental Films of 1967", Variety, 3 January 1968 p 25. Please note these figures refer to rentals accruing to the distributors.
  22. ↑ "The World's Top Twenty Films." Sunday Times [London, England] 27 Sept. 1970: 27. The Sunday Times Digital Archive. accessed 5 Apr. 2014
  23. ↑ McKay, Sinclair (2007). A Thing of Unspeakable Horror: The History of Hammer Films. Aurum. p. 105. ISBN 978-1845133481.
  24. ↑ Hughes, David (31 May 2013). "The Complete Kubrick". Random House – via Google Books.
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