Fulvue Drive-In.com
Current Reviews
In Stores Soon
 
In Stores Now
 
DVD Reviews, SACD Reviews Essays Interviews Contact Us Meet the Staff
An Explanation of Our Rating System Search  
Category:    Home > Reviews > One Million Years B.C.

One Million Years B.C.

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C+     Extras: C     Film: C+

 

 

Some films become infamous for so many reasons and are still watchable, no matter what the problems.  Don Chaffey’s One Million Years B.C. (1966) was a Hammer Studios production that came out two years before Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and must have had at least a little more credibility for a very, very brief time in showing a world of cavemen before Kubrick’s Arthur C. Clarke collaboration kicked in and forever changed motion pictures.  Sure, it is not scientific that men existed when dinosaurs did, but how many profitable films have been made with exactly that situation?

 

This film is also infamous for how fake it looks now, and looked to a great extent then, but audiences knew the limits of visual effects at the time.  They accepted limits.  The film also was ridiculed for its dumb portrayal of cavemen, but the person who became a star and was dumped on for decades because of it was Raquel Welch.  It made her a sex goddess, one of the last of the original Hollywood, and her presence made the film a big hit.

 

Yes, she looks great wearing next to nothing, which she did often early in her career before so called “talents” like Britney Spears made a living at it.  However, she is not the only thing that is interesting about this very simple film.  The stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen is interesting and the film has a consistent look and sense of silence that actually keeps you watching.  It gets thin at 100 minutes, but is a very minor camp and genre classic that has its few moments.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image was shot by the great Wilkie Cooper, B.S.C., a veteran of TVs The Avengers and one of Britain’s all-time cameramen.  His use of the DeLuxe color palette as it stood then is a big plus for the film and one of the other reasons it holds up as well as it does.  This DVD benefits from a new restoration by Fox that took the best surviving materials, and cleaned them up for DVD.  My only complaint, as is noticed in the restoration supplement, is that detail and video colors black, white and red looked better before the restoration in the video realm.  That cleaning may seem to make the image look more pristine, but it really degrades it subtly throughout.  Though some of the materials are grainer than they would have been if the original camera materials had survived, but it took work to fix what remained.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 is only listed on the box as English Stereo and Spanish Mono, but there is also English Mono, which (as is the case for the simple stereo remixes Fox does on their older films) differs little from the stereo version, making the choice one of either preference or which one comes across better on a given set-up.

 

The extras offer over a dozen trailers for films within the genre, a theatrical teaser and trailer for this film, and the restoration information and footage.  The first part shows the full frame 1993 film master, which was dreadful with faded color, graininess beyond belief, and major detail trouble on the left screen, and the then-impressive 1996 upgrade for the 12” LaserDisc format presented letterboxed.  This version shows the 2002 film restoration on both sides of the screen, with the additional video tweaking on the left.  In either case, they are huge improvements over the 1990’s versions, but I like the raw 2002 images the best.  You can decide for yourself.  Fox cannot do enough of these segments in their supplements.

 

So there you have it.  One Million Years B.C. may not be brilliant filmmaking, but it is much more watchable than most of the big budget garbage we get today, especially in it genre!  That is reason enough to take a look at this new edition, sold separately and as part of a five DVD Raquel Welch Collection set.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


Marketplace


 
 Copyright © MMIII through MMX fulvuedrive-in.com