When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth | Victoria Vetri, Robin Hawdon

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth | Victoria Vetri, Robin Hawdon | where's the dvd?

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When Dinosaurs Rul...

	When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth Victoria Vetri, Robin Hawdon Warner Home Video, 1993 average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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So that's how you spell AKITA.

I just finished this movie, it's rewound, so lets get to it. First of all I like all of these cavemen movies and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and One Million B.C. are the two top ones. Set in the time before earth had a moon--I guess this is before both man and dinosaur were supposed to have existed. And yes, is the typical story of all blonds being kept around for sacrifice only...why else do you think there are so few?

Looking at the SUN zealot it kind of makes me wonder if he was impotent...afterall, if you look at the first three sacrifices, I think I could have found much more to do with them than toss'm into the drink.

PROS:

1. The music goes fine with this movie kind of letting you know our humble past but always aspiring forward and upward.

2. Special effects, fine.

3. Monsters fine. These guys took some time to make a dinosaur. A combination of stop and go anim., and real lizards dress up.

4. Cuties are all cuties--no star there of course.

5. Now lets get to some of the meat of the movie. Other reviewers laugh and scoff at these sudden storms and other bad weather so let me fill you in on something. In the opening scenes, while the three cuties are about to be tossed off the cliff...everybody looks up at the sun and so does the camera and zealot. It changes size and shape, the wind picks up to storm level and waves are created with white caps. Well, in my opinion this is supposed to be caused by an off shore, over the horizon, volcanic explosion. Probably a cleaner explosion than most--near the top of the volcano. Volcanic gas spews out and a moment or two later the top of the volcano explodes. The gas screws up the sun light and the 'slow blow' explosion stirs up the air.

six. Storm scenes with people in the water are fine. Well done and appear to been shot outside in the real ocean.

7. I think the zealot is also some sort of warlord. He throws a lot of orders around in the movie, people get killed, nobody back talks him. but during the funeral I have to say as he looked to heaven his eyes were crossed--hmmm, just pretending to pray.

8. Yes, if you listen and pay attention, the language does seem to have some rudimentry meaning. My opinion is the language has few words with many meanings. You take that Akita! word for instance. Everybody seems to use it and know what it means. It has three consonents (did I spell that right?) and therefore comes from three different words. You would think these guys had a lot of one word sentences. I reckon if you said more than five words you were considered long winded.

9. Interesting story line. One of the blond bombs escapes sacrifice and this is the story of her escaping the zealot and the zealot tracking her down no matter how far away she runs or how many people he gets kills finding her. After all, if he doesn't find and kill her the sun will never return to normal. This is a fine story line and it works.

10. Another interesting possibilitly is the people the blond take up with seem to either ignore the sun's change or else that is why they are throwing that dance party later in the afternoon. If I were a caveman I think dancing around a lot would work better than..."Akita, oodalla, neikro!" This means "Uh oh, the sun's spazing out. There's a cutie to sacrifice. Well, that's it for her!"

11. There are indeed a couple of subplots here. Basically they are a fine addition to the story. I won't go into detail here...oh yes, I heard that the brunette--who was the leading man's woman--was a 'miss hotty' in Europe when this was shot. She supposed to have been their 'Scarlet O'Hara' at the time of this film.

12. Yes, the swimsuits are small. On the cutties they look 'real' small.

13. Victoria Vetri is the lead female and believe it or not I did detect some acting--watch her face...to. The only brown eyed blond I ever seen...afterall cavewomen have not yet discovered hair dye yet.

14. Jumping close to the end of the movie...you remember that volcano I was telling you about that they never showed on camera? And the several other times it either blots out, changes the shape of, or disfigures the sun...well its about to have its day. Unseen, the underwater part of the volcano blows up. A sesmic water wave fifty or so feet tall makes it showing. Naturally when all the cavemen and cavewomen see it coming they must try to out run it by running along side the ocean. You know it's coming in because all the water is draining off the beach. Oh well, nobody said cavemen were overly intelligent.

15. I liked the funeral scene...not a bad way to go with the whole village standing around saluting your body as they pour fuel over you. Light it up with a torch and push it out to sea with the appropriate music. Hmmm, not bad at all. Maybe that's where the Vikings got it. I mean, you take the village leader, tall, strong, fine shape and red headed. A nice stern look on his face during the funeral. Give that guy a shield and battleaxe and you have Eric the Red. Hmmm, I think you guys should study that funeral scene a few times...I don't think I've ever seen it better done except in that movie (I think it was...) The Vikings.

16. The quicksand scene: Yes there is such a thing underwater and is considered incredibly deadly--ask anybody in National Geographic.

17. Man eating crabs? Finely done. I've heard that these armour plated spiders have a ten foot long leg spread on the bottom of the ocean. (They do have some 'real' monsters down there yea know.)

CONS:

Regardless of the other reviews throwing off on this movie--I feel it is carried through to its' conclusion with all subplots tight up nicely. done. The writer should have done a little more study on the language part. I think he did...just not enough.

So all in all, this is a four or five star movie. The writing is there, the idea is there and carried out just fine. The acting (believe it or not) is right on target. They had enough money and everybody did their part. The special effects are on target and despite the sexy over tones they take a back seat to the story--good, that's how it should be done.
So why do I give five stars to a four star movie...well, the funeral.
I felt a slight tightening in my throat...who would have thought it?

There it is. I'm not sure I can rate this movie down to the level with the other popcorn movies so lets just say a salad bowl of popcorn, two hot dogs and a big drink. Though it is all laid out there for you and requires little thought to figure it out I recommend deeper study, and as we all know deep study of a movie requires both corn and dogs. Bye!

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where's the dvd?

Come on, this is a stop motion aficionado's delight. Some of Jim Danforth's effects work is superlative. Warner's, do us all a favour and give this dino epic an official release!

Hokey but enjoyable - my 6 yr old thinks its a hoot.

I always liked caveman movies since I was a kid. Recently I watched this with my 6 yr old daughter. I was suprised at how she got into it. She's still trying to figure out the language of the cave folks. I keep telling her its just jibberish the actors are saying so they wont have to grunt, but she's convinced there is meaning to it. Anyway, its just childish escapist fantasy, but sometimes thats all you need. And, oh yeah, its got fur bikinis.

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BEST OF A LOST FILM GENRE!

While others may have picked at the historical blunders, silly plot, and lack of realistic logic this film displays, I think they miss the point of films of this type. Prehistoric caveman movies, particularly those made by Hammer Studios during the 1960s, were not about accurate history, intelligent plots, or logical realism. They were about adventure, lots of action, monsters, dramatic geological disasters that invariably serve as a climax to these films, scantily clad male and female specimens boasting healthy physiques and figures very much on display, and - oh yes - SEX.

These films, while not overtly sexual, all promote sexy stars with beautiful bodies virtually naked in every frame. ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. gave us Raquel Welch bouncing her way to stardom. WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH gives us Playboy centerfold Victoria Vetri AND Imogen Hassall revealing even more than Ms. Welch dared! The film was nominated for an academy award for best special effects thanks to the animated dinosaurs in it. But, aside from the oscar nominated dinosaurs, the films boasts more action and sexy bodies on display than virtually any other film of its type. The extremely low cut bikinis that the very amply bosomed Ms. Vetri and Ms. Hassall bounce around in barely keep their healthy sized equipment from popping out completely in scene after scene! Of course, the camera keeps a firm focus on every jiggle and bounce revealed when it is not aimed at scenes involving the dinosaurs.

Vetri (the more passive blonde) and Hassall (the more passionate and mean-spirited brunette) battle it out over who gets caveman stud Tara as well as who gets more abundant jiggle exposure in their scenes together. Tara gets to enjoy the best of both vixens until Hassall conveniently runs into a deadly patch of quicksand during the film's climax. She sinks to her death before Tara can respond to her desperate screams for help in record breaking time! The quicksand must have been quicker back in prehistoric times! The chunky wet cement-like goop swallows Hassall under in less than 30 seconds after she runs into it on the beach - just yards from Tara and the raft that would have been her salvation. Of course, Tara could only wind up with the more submissive blonde while the evil dark-haired cavegirl is disposed of as they always are in these movies. Whether it is by falling into a fissure that opens up during an earthquake, running in front of a river of hot flowing lava, or getting glob-gobbled up in quicksand, the bad cavegirls always get finished off by the end of these flicks.

If you accept this movie on its genre's own terms, it is actually one of the best of its type. It boasts oscar nominated special effects, more skin on display for both the cavewomen AND the caveMEN (whose loinclothes are as equally scanty and revealing as the women's outfits), constant action, and some of the best man-eating plants, realistic looking quicksand on the beach, tsunamis, and beautiful on-location photography of the Canary Islands ever!

Give it a try. Just don't try making sense out of it.

END

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Watch it for the Cave Girls and Akita...Oodalla and Neikro!

Take this film for what it is and get a copy of the uncut version on DVD if you can. Its out there if you look hard. The cave people seem to have a problem with the Sun and they repeat several words many time like Akita! Oodalla and Neikro. Victoria Vetri is not the only amazing cave girl as there is a couple others. The cool thing is they even show the older beat up cave women missing a couple teeth as we can't imagine that they would all look like models so that's realistic. The stop motion dinosaurs are nice and Harryhausen like for fans of that kinda thing. It is not a good movie by any means but it is funny to watch and like I said the uncut version does have some nudity and that's always fun in Dino films.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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