First off: this isn’t that prehistoric film Hammer made in the 60’s, where Rachel Welch famously wears that fur bikini. That was One Million Years B.C. Just wanted to get that out of the way.
1940’s One Million B.C. comes to us courtesy of Hal Roach, a guy better remembered for his work with Harold Lloyd, the Little Rascals and Laurel and Hardy. Not exactly the guy one imagines being first pick to helm a non-comedic picture set in prehistoric times.
And yet this movie is better than the majority of similar fare in the decades that followed. I went in expecting high camp and hopefully a lot of laughs at its expense. Instead, I found myself simply watching the film and appreciating it on own its terms.
It begins in the present, with a line of people on a mountain pass during a storm. Isn’t it strange how instantly the Lord of the Rings pictures became a classic? Every time there’s a scene like this in a movie today, I can’t help but think of Gandalf considering the dangers of taking an alternate route through the mines of Moria.
These travelers take shelter in a convenient cave. They may not be hobbits or elves, but they are still something weird: a stereotype of the Swiss people I don’t think ever really existed. They are wearing vests, goofy hats and lederhosen—an ensemble perfect for waiting tables at an Octoberfest or starring in a Ricola ad.
Turns out somebody else already had dibs on the cave. There’s a kindly scholar who is there studying prehistoric paintings on the walls. He proceeds to tell the visitors how the story told by the paintings might have happened. We then see, as he imagines the story, the hikers as players in this possible tale of prehistoric man.
This is an interesting way to frame the story. I like how, despite this being a tale the scholar is weaving, there isn’t narration. Unlike Clan of the Cave Bear, there isn’t much “Ooh ugh grunt grunt” dialog and what little is there isn’t subtitled. Unlike that 80’s film, this picture assumes the audience is smart enough to follow what’s going on without telling them explicitly. Really, it wouldn’t take many changes for this to work as a silent movie.
The storyline is simple. It first focuses on the Rock People, aggressive hunters where the strongest survive. This is a society where it is every person for themselves. Victor Mature plays the son of the leader. He is exiled after a falling-out and, following a series of misfortunes, ends up floating down a river while unconscious.
Fortunately, he washes up on the banks of the community of the Shell People, a peaceful, agrarian group who believes in sharing. They can even fashion crude tools, and are carving their history into the walls of their cave. Needless to say, these are the images which inspire the professor in the present day as he regales his guests with the story they tell.
All these new concepts are too much for Mature to take in. Sharing proves to be especially difficult for him to grasp, as we see them struggle to convince him there is plenty of food for everybody. Alas, he still can’t fight his worst impulses, and he has to leave this group and return to his own people.
A besotted Carole Landis leaves the Shell People to be by his side. One of the elements of this picture I most appreciated is how the women don’t have perfectly styled hair in the fashions of the time this was filmed. Not to say this movie is a complete stickler for accuracy, as one look at Landis had me wondering how cave people developed the technology of lifting and separating.
Even less accurate is the occasional appearance of dinosaurs. There’s two kinds here. One is a man walking around in an obvious costume, like a cruder, less cartoony version of Barney. The other are various lizards and animals, some of which have prosthetics glued to them. The scenes with these live animals bothered me, especially when some of them fight to the death. Curiously, some of this footage would later be repurposed in a great many films, including legendary turkey Robot Monster.
Overall, the special effects are shockingly good. For a feature made in 1940, many of the effects have held up better than similar features from the next couple of decades that followed.
The strangest aspect of this movie is how it constantly felt like it was about to turn into a Biblical epic. For example, the imagery of Mature floating downriver on some sort of debris effortlessly brought to mind baby Moses drifting on the Nile.
My wife had an especially interesting insight while we watched this. When Mature returns to the Stone People, we see his father is now missing an eye and his right arm is withered and useless. She was wondering if this was a deliberate reference to Shanidar 1, a Neanderthal man who led anthropologists to speculate if that species took care of its old and infirm.
There is much I found to recommend in One Million B.C. Despite the real violence to animals, this is a smarter and better made picture than I anticipated. Most importantly, it shows how is it never too late to learn how to share, how to be generous and how to show compassion—lessons I feel most people still need to learn today.
Dir: Hal Roach
Starring Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Lon Chaney, Jr.
Watched on VCI blu-ray