One Million Years B.C.

"1,000,000 BCE" redirects here. For information about this year, see Early Pleistocene.

One Million Years B.C.
U.S. Theatrical poster by Tom Chantrell
Directed by	Don Chaffey
Produced by	Michael Carreras
Written by	Brian Clemens
Starring	Raquel Welch John Richardson Percy Herbert Robert Brown Martine Beswick
Music by	Mario Nascimbene
Cinematography	Wilkie Cooper
Editing by	Tom Simpson
Distributed by	Hammer Film Productions
Release date(s)	30 December 1966 (UK) February 21, 1967 (USA)
Running time	100 min. (U.K) 91 min. (U.S.)
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Box office	$2.5 million (US rentals)[1]

One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch, set - loosely - in the time of cavemen. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions, and was a remake of the 1940 Hollywood film One Million B.C., and it recreates many of the scenes of that film (such as an allosaurus attacking a tree full of children). It is marketed with the taglines "Travel back through time and space to the edge of man's beginnings...discover a savage world whose only law was lust!" and "This is the way it was." It was released in the United States in 1967.

Like the original film, this remake is largely ahistorical. It portrays dinosaurs and humans living together, whereas, according to the geologic time scale, the last dinosaurs became extinct roughly 65 million years BC, and Homo sapiens (modern humans) did not exist until about 200,000 years BC. Ray Harryhausen, who animated all of the dinosaur attacks using his famous stop motion technique, has stated that he did not make One Million Years B.C. for "professors" who in his opinion "probably don't go to see these kinds of movies anyway" (this was a comment he made for the DVD of the 1933 version of King Kong).

Plot

Tumak, a caveman from the Rock tribe, is banished to the harsh desert because of a fight with his father, Akoba, the tribal leader. After surviving many dangers, such as a giant lizard, ape men, brontosaurus and a giant spider, he collapses on a remote beach, where he is spotted by "Loana the Fair One" and her fellow fisherwomen 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 apparently fend off the giant turtle with spears. (Although, in fact, it appears the turtle just wanders out to sea, where it originally intended to go anyway.)

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 jewellery made from shells, 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, 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 creature.

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 ensuing 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, Tumak's brother, Sakana, 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 encounter a battle between a Ceratosaurus, and a Triceratops, eventually won by the Triceratops, which fatally gores its opponent.

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". Loana wins the fight, and refuses to strike the killing blow, despite the encouragement of the other members of the tribe.

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 thieving Rhamphorhynchus intervenes.

Tumak initially believes her dead, but she has survived the ordeal. They are reunited just as Sakana leads a group of fellow hunters in armed revolt against Akoba. Tumak, Loana, Ahot 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 (and symbolically?) 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.

Main cast

Raquel Welch as Loana the Fair One in One Million Years B.C. (1966).

Actor	Role
Raquel Welch	Loana
John Richardson	Tumak
Percy Herbert	Sakana
Robert Brown	Akhoba
Martine Beswick	Nupondi
Jean Wladon	Ahot

Production notes

The exterior scenes were filmed at 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, and is found in Tenerife mountain zones higher than 1600m. As there were no active volcanoes in the Canary Islands, the studio had to construct a 6-7 foot (2 metre) high volcano on the ABPC studio back lot. The eruption, lava explosions and lava flows were composed of a mixture of wallpaper paste, oatmeal, dry ice and red dye.

This was one of the later Ray Harryhausen stop motion animation films, he only created four more films after this one. Harryhausen, as usual, filmed the dinosaur visuals in his personal studio in London.

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 two live creatures: a green iguana and a tarantula (a cricket can be seen at the tarantula's side). Ray Harryhausen was asked repeatedly about these two unanimated creatures, and he confesses 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.

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.

The publicity shot of Welch from the movie became more famous than the movie itself, becoming a best-selling poster and something of a cultural phenomenon. The image can be recognized by people around the world, even among those who are not familiar with the film. 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, who never made anything more than his weekly salary for his world-famous work. The poster was a centerpiece in the film The Shawshank Redemption.

Roughly nine minutes were cut from the American print, including a provocative dance from Martine Beswick and a gruesome end to one of the ape-men in the cave. Some footage of the allosaur attack on the Shell tribe was also deleted from the initial release, but restored decades later.

Stock footage depicting the landslide was reused for Alex's dream (Beethoven's 9th Symphony) in Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange^[2]

Further films from Hammer, which traded on the attractions of scantily clad cave girls, were Slave Girls (1968), When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) and Creatures the World Forgot (1971).^[3]

Fur bikini

Welch was described as "wearing mankind's first bikini" and the fur bikini was described as a "definitive look of the 1960s".^[4][5]One author said, "although she had only three lines in the film, her luscious figure in a fur bikini made her a star and the dream girl of millions of young moviegoers."^[6]

See also

• List of stop-motion films

• Animation portal
• Dinosaurs portal
• Film portal
• Speculative fiction portal
• United Kingdom portal

References

1. ^ Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0810842441. p230
2. ^ Ninth Symphony on Youtube
3. ^ Sinclair McKay (2007): A Thing of Unspeakable Horror: The History of Hammer Films: 105
4. ^ Filmfacts. 1967. http://books.google.com/books?id=zbkvAQAAIAAJ. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 
5. ^ Mansour, David (1 June 2005). From Abba to Zoom: a pop culture encyclopedia of the late 20th century. Andrews McMeel Publishing. p. 345. ISBN 9780740751189. http://books.google.com/books?id=hK0rPUF85loC&pg=PA345. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 
6. ^ Otfinoski, Steven (April 2007). Latinos in the arts. Infobase Publishing. p. 243. ISBN 9780816063949. http://books.google.com/books?id=HBog8AUkXRoC&pg=PA243. Retrieved 24 May 2011. 

External links

• One Million Years B.C. (1966) at DBCult Film Institute
• One Million Years B.C. at the Internet Movie Database
• One Million Years B.C. at AllRovi
• One Million Years B.C. at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• One Million Years B.C. at Rotten Tomatoes
• Screen Captures Of One Million Years B.C.