Hammer-Time!: One Million Years BC (Dir Don Chaffey, 1h48, 1966)

Look, I'm not going to pretend that everything Hammer Films made was cinematic art-even their most beloved films occasionally dipped into the salacious, the ridiculous and the sensationalist, and their status as a fixture of British cinema of the 1950s to the 1970s is as much to do with their campy or kitsch sensibility and unabashed attempts to spice up the gothic and the supernatural (among other themes) for a new generation. The counterargument to Hammer as low budget masters of serial gothic cinema in which Dracula, Frankenstein, et al, plus original creations, wreak havoc and are then defeated (largely by Peter Cushing) is in understanding that, even at at their shlockiest, Hammer's films had something to recommend them-even largely panned films from the end of the studio's reign, like Kronos (1971) and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (uh, also 1971), have something to recommend them. But for prime, unapologetic shlock, for Hammer at their most unapologetically adolescent, one need look no further than One Million Years BC.

By the mid 1960s, Hammer were an undeniable production line for horror, franchising all three of their major series (Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy) as Universal had done a few decades ago. Like any studio, though, Hammer could not live by scares alone, and they began to diversify, first back into low budget thrillers, in the mould of Henri-Georges Clouzot's hugely influential Les Diaboliques (The Fiends, 1955), in which a school becomes the battleground for a terrifying war of wits between a tyrannical school master, and his frail wife. Next would come war, swashbuckler, and even comedy films, though the latter would often feature the blackly comic sensibility of Hammer's more popular fare, or even science fiction or horror elements, before, with 1965's She, starring Ursula Andress as the H. Rider Haggard-created immortal, Hammer hit on another formula, the "prehistoric" film.

She, for its part, is a rather well made piece of action adventure cinema, Hammer's most expensive film of the time, and, whilst not quite as influential as the 1935 adaption, is probably the best cinematic adaption of Haggard's work, with Andress becoming Hammer's first female star. It would also bring John Richardson, previously a bit-part player turned supporting actor, forward into the limelight, as the goal of "She"'s quest to find her lost love from centuries ago. His next role, against American actress Raquel Welsh, already a rising star in films such as Fantastic Voyage (1966) and A Swingin' Summer (1965), would see him once again take the role of love interest for a female heroine, as Hammer turned to Hal Roach and Hal Roach Jr's 1940 caveman film of the same name, remaking much of the narrative shot for shot.

It is a time of prehistory, of cavemen, and of fur bikinis. Our hero, Tumak, of the Rock tribe, quarrels with his father (Robert Brown, made up to look like the previous actor to play the role, Lon Chaney Jr, to some effect), and is exiled to the desert-the Rock tribe are almost stereotypically macho, fighting over their food, and, like the other tribes in this film, barely speak other than characters' names or occasional grunts-nevertheless, the acting, and the script by Hammer head, Michael Carreras, perfectly brings across the point of each scene with scant dialogue, (Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), two decades later, would need subtitles for its prehistoric cast.) Thus banished, Tumak travels to the coast, the home of the Shell tribe, encountering a colossal lizard that stalks, and attempts to eat him and narrowly avoiding a colossal spider, before being found on the beach by Welch's Loana, and, in one of the film's most impressive effects shots, the Shell tribe is soon attacked by a giant turtle.

The world he travels through, and the creatures he soon encounters would be a group effort; Tenerife would stand in, in rather impressively shot sequences, the prehistoric world, whilst Hammer's special effects team built a colossal volcano model, and whilst the colossal lizard and spider would be, well, a lizard and a spider shot on a backplate and superimposed onto the background against which Richardson reacts in horror, the film's true spectacle would come in its special effects work, courtesy of the legendary Ray Harryhausen. Having already provided creature animation for It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955), The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1959) and, mostly notably, Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Harryhausen's additions to the film, in the form of the fearsome Archelon that threatens the Shell tribe, as well as the Allosaurus that later attacks the hapless cavemen, and the Pterodactyl that later attacks Loana, are not only his DynaMation stop-start at the height of their powers, but some of the highlights of the film.

The other highlight, undeniably, is Welch; whilst the film made her into a sex symbol via the iconic (and subsequently much copied fur bikini) which adorned the poster, which itself plays a crucial role in The Shawshank Redemption (1993), it is her character, and her tribe's very different ethos to surviving in prehistory that arguably steal the show-far from the savagery of the Rock tribe, the Shell tribe are egalitarian, Tumak surprised, and suspicious of the generosity awarded him in the film's middle section. This kindness, this humanity of the Shell tribe is brutally juxtaposed with that of the Rock tribe, as Tumak's power-hungry brother, Sakana (Percy Herbert), badly injures his father, and proceeds to rule the tribe with even greater cruelty. Banished, from the Shell tribe, despite his rescue of a small girl from the terrifying Allosaurus, Tumak and Loana thus set out across the wilderness, where they run into Harryhausen's most impressive moment, a stop-motion fight between a Triceratops and a Ceratosaurus, that remains remarkably kinetic and engaging, which our heroes narrowly escape on their return back to the Rock tribe.

From here, the film quickly gathers pace, the inter rivalries of the tribe, and Tumak and Loana's attempts to meld the two ideologies swept aside first by a pterodactyl attack that leaves Loana seemingly for dead, and then the spectacular seismic upheaval of the area, complete with special effects producing a volcanic eruption, which puts a rather permanent answer to which approach to survival in the prehistoric world is correct, and shows the fragility of life in this savage young world. Moreover, for all its smartly done battle between might is right and nurture, that the film's pull is its special effects, and, like She, the year before, a slightly adolescent portrayal of women.

It is, undeniably, an uncomplicated film, the Hammer formula of cheap and cost-effective cinema honed to an artform, with a mass appeal sensibility making it a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, its special effects lauded, and its heroine a pinup.  Nevertheless, One Million Years BC is, undeniably, effective-Harryhausen's prehistoric monsters may be millions of years out of time, and dumb brutes, decades removed from the fearsome and intelligent predators of Jurassic Park (1993) et al, but there is an undeniable jokey charm, and a timely reminder that Hammer were just as capable of providing thrills as scares.

Rating: Highly Recommended

One Million Years BC is available to watch online in the UK via Amazon Prime and Apple TV and on DVD from Studio Canal. It is currently available to stream via Amazon Prime, and on DVD from Twentieth Century Fox in the United States.

Next week, we continue in the footsteps of Hammer Horror as Christopher Lee and companions face the threat of a black magic cult, as the Devil Rides Out.

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