When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth *** (1970, Victoria Vetri, Robin Hawdon, Patrick Allen) – Classic Movie Review 2435

Writer-director Val Guest’s daft but amusing 1970 Hammer Films’ follow-up to One Million Years BC (1966) casts lovely, exotic-looking former Playboy 1968 Playmate of the Year Victoria Vetri as the scantily clad leading cave-lady Sanna. The film is referenced in Jurassic Park.

Vetri’s co-star is the hunky Robin Hawdon as her prehistoric pal Tara, and the duo live in a celluloid dreamworld never-never land when people co-existed with dinosaurs, albeit none too peacefully apparently. Any real acting, though, comes from Patrick Allen as Kingsor. Allen also provides the opening narration.

There’s very little plot, but the screenplay is held back by being severely restricted to a 27-word caveman language that was ingeniously devised for the movie, supposedly drawing on Phoenician, Latin and Sanskrit sources. The dialogue includes such gems as ‘N’ yde krasta m’kan neecro redak’ which means ‘come fast kill evil flying monster’.

Key words in the caveman language are: “neecha” = “stop” or “come back”; “zak” = “gone” or “left”; “akita” = “look” or “see”; “neecro” = “bad” or “evil”; “m’kan” = “kill” or “killed”; “mata” = “dead” and “yo kita” = “go”.

A small cliff-top tribe hopes to survive by sacrificing three blonde women to their Sun God in return for protection from the giant lizards and other creatures preying on them. Sacrificial offering Sanna is saved when a freak storm interrupts the ceremony, escapes and jumps off the cliff. She is rescued by Tara and some men on a raft, but her search for a safety is imperilled by rival tribes and huge and deadly dinosaurs.

Jim Danforth and Roger Dicken’s old-style stop-motion visual effects in the Ray Harryhausen style are impressive (at least for their day) and were Oscar nominated. They include the birth of a cute baby dinosaur and giant crabs. They are considered a benchmark in stop-motion animation believability.

Respected director Guest is responsible for the brain-in-neutral script from a story, or treatment, by famed author J G Ballard (Empire of the Sun, Crash), but makes amends with his entertaining direction.

Guest said Vetri was ‘a real nothing, and a very strange mixed up lady.. It was tough to take her. She was a nitwit.’ She refused to have her hair turned blonde from its natural auburn for the film, so as the story required a blonde woman, Vetri demanded a wig instead.

The film was released in 1970 as a double bill with Moon Zero Two (1969). In 1971, Warner Bros reissued the film in a double bill with The Valley of Gwangi (1970) so a lot of fans got to see it.

Vetri said that the UK version of the film contains nude scenes, including Sanna making love to Tara in a cave.

The film was intended to include a tyrannosaurus, but the very conservative head of Hammer ordered Guest and Danforth to remove the creature because he thought it resembled the stereotypical stance of gay men!

The landscapes of Earth during the Quaternary period were filmed in Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura (Canary Islands). Locations included Maspalomas beach, Ansite Mountain, Amurga and Caldera de Tejeda.

A lover of fast cars, Vetri won a pink AMX for being Playmate of the Year in 1968.

Vetri was charged with attempted murder after she allegedly shot Bruce Rathgeb, her husband of 25 years, at close range in their Hollywood apartment on 16 October 2010. On 7 September 2011, after pleading no contest to a charge of attempted voluntary manslaughter, she was sentenced to nine years in prison.

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© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2435

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