Save your money for something good and enjoyable

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

When dinosaurs ruled the earth, man was but a twinkle in evolution's eye, but the makers of this film don't let scientific fact get in the way of entertainment, depicting humans co-existing with prehistoric reptilian monsters. They also get a little creative concerning the formation of the moon, but more about that in a second.Voluptuous Victoria Vetri stars as Sanna, a blonde cave-girl who is about to be sacrificed to the sun when a sudden celestial occurrence causes hysteria, allowing her to escape: as the sun gives birth to the moon (I don't know how else to describe it), she dives into the sea and swims to safety. Regaining their composure, the other cave-people give chase. The remainder of the film sees the buxom cave-babe on the run, avoiding capture with a little help from handsome cave-man Tara (Robin Hawdon).With a thin plot that gets a little repetitive (Tara is captured twice and escapes both times), director Val Guest tries his best to avoid tedium (and mostly succeeds) by ensuring that there is plenty of eye-candy on display, not just in the form of the many scantily clad cave people, but also with some impressive location work (the Canary Islands), and quite a few prehistoric creatures: a plesiosaur, a ceratops, a generic dinosaur and its offspring (who, in the film's silliest moment, Sanna befriends), a pterosaur, and some giant crabs, all brought to life by stop-motion animator Jim Danforth. There are also a few regular lizards with frills and horns glued to their bodies.For most of the time, the film is family-friendly fare, Vetri somehow managing to stay inside her teeny bikini (which is even smaller than Raquel Welch's garb in One Million Years B.C.), but towards the end of the film matters get a little saucier: a caveman forces himself on a cavewoman (who has her top ripped off), and Vetri gets buck naked, to have cave-sex with Tara and for a spot of skinny-dipping.The film closes with the moon, now fully formed, suddenly affecting the tide, causing a tsunami that leaves Sanna and Tara, plus another good-looking cave-couple, safe and sound, their enemies washed away by the giant wave.

Little did I realize when I woke up early this morning to catch "One Million B.C." on Turner Classics that I'd be lulled into catching yet another caveman flick right after with this one. As it opened I had a pretty good idea that this would turn out to be the Spaghetti Western version of prehistoric dinosaur films, and I don't think I was too far off. The hook turned out to be that this picture had a character named Akhoba just like the first one; I can't imagine that would have been such a popular name back in the Paleolithic day.I'm reading on the trivia board that only twenty seven words were used throughout the film. While watching I got the idea that with the limited vocabulary it would have been rather easy to figure out what each one meant after a while, but for the life of me I couldn't figure it out. The best was 'Neecro, Neecro' - each time I heard that one I thought they were shouting out to the Braves bullpen for a relief pitcher.So anyway, could there have been any other reason to make this flick than to appeal to a prepubescent audience going gaga over the likes of Victoria Vetri or Carol Hawkins in their skimpy fur bikinis? This one came really close to soft porn territory more than once, and Vetri goes almost full frontal at one point after her swim with Tara (Robin Hawdon). And check me on this, but didn't it seem to you like that big old green dinosaur was making goo-goo eyes at Sanna (Vetri) after doing her blonde on the half shell bit? Throw in the cute green gumby dino, the prehistoric Venus fly trap and that crazy crab at the end of the flick and you've got yourself one mad pre-Jurassic dino-fest. That this came from the Hammer folks obviously explains a lot, but what really blew my mind was that this whole movie was close-captioned in gibberish! To that, I can only say 'N'to'.

The Cave Man vs Dinosaur movie is ridiculed as unscientific. Harryhausen came to the defense of the concept in his Film Fantasy Scrapbook-casually suggesting archaeological evidence was pushing back human origins or closing the gap between them and dinosaurs. We will never prove 100 percent what was living in prehistoric times and I could not care less one way or the other. This is supposed to be a fantasy film. The idea of humans alongside dinosaurs isn't meant to be historical fact, but imaginative fun.In watching this film and its predecessor, what strikes me the most is the total professional manner the actors treat the subject matter. Especially impressive is Patrick Allen who spends a good deal of time shouting Neekro but handles it like he's doing Richard the Third! He behaves as professionally as Frank Langella playing an evil toy in Masters of the Universe.These days people would wink at the camera or have a joke-filled script--claiming that its the only way to deal with such nonsense. One thing about the 60s and a studio like Hammer was that they treated their films seriously.My only real criticism is the inclusion of a quick shot from Irwin Allen's despicable Lost World where in two reptiles were mutilated and killed for the film. Other than that I think the movie does its best with its budget and resources and its unfortunate movies today are too uptight and unimaginative to try something like this.

Written by director Val Guest based on a treatment by J.G. Ballard, the Hammer production "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth" is a good diversion that goes a long way based on the striking hotness of its young female cast members, its entertaining stop motion monsters created by Jim Danforth, and its convincing enough recreation of a prehistoric time (never *mind* the fact that we all know that cavemen and dinosaurs didn't really co-exist!). The luscious Victora Vetri, 1968 Playboy Playmate of the Year, stars as Sanna, cast out from her own tribe who develops an attachment to Tara (likable Robin Hawdon), who receives similar treatment from his own people. The admittedly episodic movie doesn't have a lot of story, but definitely delivers in the thrills department, especially in the scenes where the cavemen are interacting with the dinosaurs, among them a pterodactyl and a triceratops. One of the cutest of all has Sanna taming herself a young dinosaur. Partly filmed at Shepperton Studios and partly filmed in the Canary Islands, this always has a great look going for it, with art direction by John Blezard and cinematography by Dick Bush. The music by Mario Nascimbene is appropriately rousing. The characters, for the most part, are hard to discern from each other, except for a select few; lovely brunette Imogen Hassall is a hoot as the nasty Ayak. (If nothing else, the girl watching makes this a pleasure to watch. And it's worth noting that the Warner Bros. double feature DVD that pairs this with "Moon Zero Two" features the 100 minute long uncut UK version that features extremely delectable Vetri nudity.) The characters have a limited vocabulary, speaking 27 key words with "zak" meaning "gone" or "left" and "m'kan" meaning "kill" or "killed" (for example). Although it would help to have the translations, this is a story often told just as much with images as dialogue, so it doesn't matter too much. It still amounts to good visceral entertainment, with fine, consistent pacing, and creating one engaging sequence after another. Film fans who enjoy prehistoric era tales should find this enjoyable stuff, with some poignant moments amid its breathless mayhem. Eight out of 10.