After watching 1970’s When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, I decided to do so some fact-checking. I learned the moon is estimated to be roughly 4.5 billion years old. The era of the dinosaurs spanned from 245 to 65 million years ago. In comparison, the earliest homo sapiens only started appearing 300,000 years ago. I knew dinosaurs had long been extinct by the time we took the stage, but I was taken aback by how long it was between these epochs.
Still, I was willing to accept humans and dinosaurs coexisting in this Hammer film. After all, this is the studio who gave us Rachael Welch (in a fur bikini) alongside dinos in One Million Years B.C. four years prior. I’m not expecting a history lesson here, and so I can handle this operating at about the level of The Flintstones, though without a sense of humor.
But I simply refuse to accept the idea that the moon did not exist at the time in which this film was set. Since the moon is likely part of the nascent Earth spun off in a collision with another protoplanet, I wonder what, in the world of this movie, was supposed to have formed our only natural satellite.
It appears to have suddenly coalesced from who knows what during a ritual sacrifice we see at the start of the picture. We see a tribe of sun worshippers (literally—they aren’t sunbathers) preparing to sacrifice three blond women once the dawning sun has finished rising over the horizon. The victims are made to watch the sun as they prepare to have their brains bashed in by bolo-twirling men in alligator masks standing behind them. It isn’t as cruel as putting them in a giant wicker man, but I can’t help but think the anticipation is extremely unpleasant.
Anywho, something suddenly obscures the sun and a strong wind sends one of the potential victims (Victoria Vetri) off the cliff and into the sea, where she is rescued by Robin Hawdon. He and some other men from a different tribe had been out on the water on their raft. Hawdon is immediately smitten with this blonde, apparently at least partly because everybody in his tribe is a brunette. This development will cause intrigue and a cat fight with his old squeeze, played by Imogen Hassall.
Hassall gladly rats her out to the sun worshippers when that group arrives looking for their wayward sacrifice. A temporary darkening of the sun through some of this “the moon is forming” nonsense prompts them to immediately convert to the religion of the other tribe, and soon we have a much larger group pursuing Vetri. Our heroine, on the other hand, seems less intent on basic survival and more so on doing things like training a baby dinosaur as if it were a dog. That said, this will come in awfully handy in later scenes as a deus ex dinosaur. Also, these scenes prove prehistoric blondes had more fun.
The film’s main attraction for me is the stop-motion animation. The dinosaur figures themselves are sculpted and animated very well. That came as no surprise as Jim Danforth was the effects supervisor. I especially liked a triceratops which had sags and bulges that moved believably, instead of being all hard plastic like a toy. Unfortunately, some effects are less than stellar, with one especially bad shot of a dinosaur’s reflection in the glass behind it completely breaking the spell. Some other moments fail to mix live humans and stop-motion creatures together, as the animated elements are in sharp focus while the live components are blurry. On the other hand, there were other times when I couldn’t figure out how an effect was pulled off and that never fails to make me happy.
Then there’s the picture’s other kind of special effect. I can’t recall who said it, but I remember once reading breasts are the cheapest special effect. The studio must have saved a bundle on the cost of fabric as little is employed for the costumes. Conversely, the budget for adhesive tape must have been astronomical, as wardrobe malfunctions seemed imminent on a great many occasions. Still, I was shocked there were a couple of moments of all-out (and I do mean all-out) nudity. While I am usually all too happy to see stellar examples of the female form in all its glory, that is only when in consideration of context. Here, these moments are incongruous with what is otherwise largely a kids film. I simply can’t change gears to accommodate in the same picture bare breasts and a baby dinosaur that can be trained. That, and one of those moments when an actress is relieved of her minimal garments is in a rape scene.
This is one of those movies where everybody goes “ugh” and “grook”, and I always wonder what the script for such a film looked like. I swear a character at one point says something that incorporates some of the chorus from “Kokomo” by The Beach Boys, though I know that’s not possible. That this script was based on a treatment by J.G. Ballard has me baffled, though I like to think the author of Crash might have once written a scene for a stop-motion baby dinosaur.
I was willing to cut When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth a great deal of slack, though I still fault its mixing of adult material into what is ostensibly kids fare. What I am most baffled by is my own unwillingness to accept the idea that moon hadn’t formed yet. Trying to pinpoint exactly why this irritates me so, I think it comes down to dinosaurs or humans existing (together or separately) before something was there to generate tides. Without tides to stir the pot, I don’t believe any life forms would have evolved. To those who feel this is petty of me, I can only say, in the language of this film, “Ughrooba, jahmakka, to the past I want to take ya.”
Dir: Val Guest
Starring: Victoria Vetri, Robin Hawdon
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray