Slave Girls [Prehistoric Women] ** (1967, Martine Beswick, Edina Ronay, Michael Latimer, Carol White, Stephanie Randall) – Classic Movie Review 2440

Slave Girls [Prehistoric Women] (1967): ‘Beaten into submission… turned into slaves… man at the mercy of a Kingdom of Prehistoric Women!’ 

Writer/ producer/ director Michael Carreras’s Hammer Films 1967 British fantasy adventure movie Slave Girls (released as Prehistoric Women in the US) in DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope helped to revive and re-spark the interest in the genre. Popular but derided in its day, nowadays it has a small cult following as a so-bad-it’s good movie.

It is a follow-up to Hammer’s successful One Million Years BC (1966), also produced by Carreras, which featured Martine Beswick as a cave girl, who gets her chance to star here in a very sexy and seductive as the beautiful but deadly brunette Queen Kari, which includes a sultry dance sequence as the trapped blondes look on.

Stage actor Michael Latimer also stars as David Marchant, a British explorer who is pursuing a leopard on an African safari, along with Colonel Hammond (Robert Raglan) and a guide, when he comes across a lost tribe of tough dark-haired lovely amazons who use blonde rhino-worshippers as their slaves. Queen Kari is the leader of the brunettes, who want to sacrifice Marchant to their white rhino god.

Edina Ronay plays terrified fair-haired beauty, Saria, who tumbles out of the bush. Steven Berkoff features in a small role as John at the end.

With its eccentric blondes versus brunettes storyline and campy handling, it is incredibly daft, of course, but it is also a lot of fun and can certainly be admired for Beswick’s performance. Keeping the budget low at ₤140,000 even though they were following up a worldwide box office hit, Hammer used nearly all the sets and costumes left over from One Million Years BC. Carreras wrote the script as Henry Younger.

Also in the cast are Carol White, Stephanie Randall, Alexandra Stevenson, Yvonne Horner, Sydney Bromley, Frank Hayden, Mary Hignett, Louis Mahoney, Bari Jonson, Danny Daniels and Sally Caclough.

It was released in the UK as Slave Girls and in the US as Prehistoric Women.

Slave Girls [Prehistoric Women] was cut from its original 91-minute length to 74 minutes and released as a support feature on a double bill with The Devil Rides Out (1968).

It is released on a Hammer Collection double feature DVD with The Witches.

Martine Beswick (born 26 September 1941) is best known for her roles in two James Bond films, as the fiery gypsy girl Zora in From Russia with Love and the ill-fated Paula Caplan in Thunderball.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2440

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