DVD Tuesday: Monsters and Hotties in Animal Skins!
DVD Tuesday: Monsters and hotties in animal skins – thank you, 10,000 BC, for the cheesy but cherished memories!
Archaeologists are scoffing at 10,000 BC, and I hope no one takes it for a historically accurate picture of Ice Age life. But it did a great first weekend because let's face it: Many of us have a place in our hearts for ridiculous epics about good-looking people in skimpy animal-skin outfits and monsters – dragons, saber-tooth tigers (more correctly called smilodons, as though anyone's going to switch to a dorky name like that)… what's the diff?
Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer my ridiculous pseudo-history made in the years B.C. – before CGI. Give me a stop-motion dinosaur, or even an iguana in dinosaur drag, over a weightless computer rendering. Since I don't have to tell anyone that One Million Years B.C. (1966), starring Raquel Welch, is the gold standard for this kind of nonsense, I'm going to suggest taking a look at When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970). (Confession: It's not even on commercial DVD, but it's on VHS and it's such a blast it's worth going retro... in fact, that might just add to the experience.)
Make no mistake: It's stupid. Prehistoric blonde Sanaa (Victoria Vetri, Playboy's 1968 Playmate of the Year under the name Angela Dorian) is tossed into the sea by her tribe because her glittering locks offended the sun god. (I suspect the spiteful prehistoric brunettes had a hand in fostering that belief.)
Fortunately, she's rescued by a more enlightened tribe, who no doubt appreciate her exceptionally scanty animal-skin bikini and push-up animal-skin bra. The plot, such as it is, includes Sanaa's bonding with a dinosaur (see clip below) and a massive solar eclipse, along with a lot of banter in prehistoric gibberish.
Just watching that clip made me smile. I love that all the prehistoric women are half-dressed foxes, while the men are all scruffy, hairy-booted and draped in capes. Except hunky Robin Hawdon, who rescues Sanaa: He trims his beard neatly and wears an itsy-bitsy loincloth (seriously – check it out): The tyranny of culturally determined standards of beauty is nothing new!
Every once in a while it's good to unleash your inner 10-year-old, and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is one way to do it.
Things to Consider:
Do you have a favorite prehistoric hijinks movie? Why that one?
How about early memories of dinosaurs and cuties in animal skins?
Maitland, your comment about preferring stop-motion dinosaurs over CGI ones reminds me of something I've been thinking about since I read your review of I Am Legend. You made a similar comment in there about how the CGI in the movie "dilutes" the impact of real, non-CGed images, specifically the fact that parts of Manhattan were shut down to create an abandoned, desolate city. A coup, if that's the word, such as shutting down busy streets in NYC seems to lose its edge if the same shots could have been made using green screen or digitally removing people in post-production.
I remember when the first Jurassic Park came out (speaking of dinosaurs), and everyone just marveled at how "real" the dinosaurs were. It was almost magical. I guess I just wonder (and pardon the over-dramatics), is there any magic left in movies? We now seem to take CGI for granted, and there's nothing we can imagine that can't be created and put on film. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Will we ever be awed like we were when we first saw Jurassic Park's living dinosaurs or Christopher Reeve fly in Superman or even the sinking of the Titanic?
(Oh, and don't get me started on full-on motion-capture movies like The Polar Express and Beowulf; they just creep me out.)
Akita, ahem, I mean, I LOVE When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. It's one of my favorite Hammer Films.
Another fave dino flick is Valley of the Gwangi. It's got James Franciscus. It's got Harryhausen. It's got dinosaurs and cowboys. And to that I say: "Akita!"
Although it is from TV, you can't really have a discussion about cheesy pre-GSI pre-historic special effects without including a dose of The Land Of The Lost, now can you?
