Product Details

• Actors: Raquel Welch, John Richardson, Percy Herbert, Robert Brown, Martine Beswick
• Directors: Don Chaffey
• Writers: Michael Carreras, George Baker, Joseph Frickert, Mickell Novack
• Producers: Aida Young, Hal Roach, Michael Carreras
• Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo), Spanish (Dolby Digital 1.0)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Dubbed: Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: March 9, 2004
• Run Time: 91 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00018D3ZA
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,272 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "One Million Years B.C." on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Raquel Welch in a two-piece fur bikini. That and the title is pretty much all anyone needs to know. If that indeed isn't enough, there are the dinosaurs of technician-artist Ray Harryhausen (along with some superimposed iguanas), and a prologue that tells you all you want to know about this "brutal world." Want more? There are volcanoes, barehanded wrestling with warthogs, and rival, subhuman, cannibalistic tribes--Lord, the list goes on and on! The portrait of humankind isn't the most flattering: we're petty, greedy, we grunt a lot, and we don't play well with others. Welch portrays a cavewoman from the tribe of the Blondes trying to make a life for herself with an outcast from the tribe of the Brunettes, which doesn't sit well with anybody. --Keith Simanton

Product Description

In this vivid view of prehistoric life, a man from the mean-spirited Rock People (John Richardson) is banished from his home. He soon finds himself among the kind, gentle Shell People and falls in love with one of their loving tribeswomen (Raquel Welch). The twosome decide to face the world together, cut off from all tribal support, alone in a deadly world of hideous beast and earthshattering volcanic eruptions. The film's pioneering special effects have made it a true science-fiction classic.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

309 of 315 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Beware! DVD Is Edited! March 3, 2004

By cameron-vale

Format:DVD

Before you order this DVD, make sure you are aware that this is the shortened, U.S. release version! Fox issued the complete film several years ago on laserdisc in a gorgeous widescreen transfer, so naturally everyone expected that they would do the same for the DVD. No such luck -- Fox has decided this time out to go with the notorious truncated version, which runs a full nine minutes shorter than the original British release. Ray Harryhausen fans should be particularly outraged, as the edited film snips away some of his special effects footage. This has to rank as the first major DVD disappointment of 2004.

I love this movie, but I won't be purchasing the U.S. DVD. Immediately upon finding out the bad news, I placed an order through Amazon.co.uk for the complete film on R2 DVD, which, in addition to being uncensored, also features some extras (including reportedly lengthy interviews with Raquel Welch and Ray Harryhausen) that will not be included on the R1 disc. If you are a fan of this richly atmospheric, goofily entertaining dinosaur epic, I recommend you do the same.

75 of 80 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Widescreen Lovers Beware! September 20, 2008

By Leo W. Early, Jr.

Format:DVD

This is the best cavemen-and-dinosaurs movie ever made! The acting is superb, and, yes, there is a lot of scope for acting in this movie. The plot isn't very subtle, but it concerns the most powerful of all dramatic themes -- survival -- and it is utterly gripping. The scenery is magnificent, and magnificently filmed. The animation by Ray Harryhausen is brilliant and realistic. The score by Mario Nascimbene is awe-inspiring and perfectly appropriate to the action. No, the movie is not scientifically accurate, but that doesn't matter. The movie is fantasy, and should be viewed as a picture, not of the world we live in as it was long ago, but of another world, which might have existed if things had gone differently.

There are some people who laugh at the scene where Tumak is chased by the giant blue iguana, but Ray Harryhausen may have the last laugh, as this is the most realistic part of the movie. In Australia 50,000 years ago, there really were gigantic carnivorous lizards, and there can be no doubt that on some occasions they really did chase down, kill, and eat the ancestors of the Australian aborigines. The lizard is called Megalania today, and it was 30 feet long and 7 feet high in the middle of the back. Its small relative the Komodo dragon is a known man-eater. Of course, Megalania did not look exactly like an iguana, and the shot would have been more realistic with a real Komodo dragon, but a real Komodo dragon would try to eat the cast and crew, and its bite is almost as dangerous as a cobra's. In addition to venom glands which run the whole length of its lower jaw, it harbors a host of nasty bacteria in its mouth. One of these is Yersinia Multocida, which translates roughly as "the bubonic plague relative that kills everything". Iguanas are harmless.

By now you're wondering why I gave the movie one star instead of five.

A close comparison between the DVD version (Region 1) and a full-screen version shown on television reveals that, contrary to the advertising, this is not a widescreen version of the movie. It was made by cutting off the top and bottom of the fullscreen version.

Nor was it made by a careful pan-and-scan process, like the one used to convert movies filmed in Cinemascope into fullscreen versions for television, which tries to ensure that the most important parts of the picture remain centered on the visible screen. Instead, they seem to have cut off the same parts of the picture without regard to what was being shown. Heads and legs of people and dinosaurs are cut off. Spectacular mountain peaks are cut off, leaving a dull brown scene without distinguishing landmarks. In extreme close-ups, people's foreheads and chins are cut off.

If they had advertised this version as a fullscreen version cut down to fit a widescreen TV, that would be truthful and I would have no complaint. But to advertise it as a "widescreen" version, "preserving the original theatrical aspect ratio", is deceptive and misleading.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars 1966 HAMMER REMAKE HAS EXCELLENT DINOSAURS AND RAQUEL December 19, 1999

By Roy P. Webber

Format:VHS Tape

After the commercial failure of FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, Ray Harryhausen and Charles Schneer briefly parted ways. Schneer made HALF A SIXPENCE; Harryhausen was hired by Hammer Films to do the effects in a proposed remake of the film that inspired his career, KING KONG. Unfortunately, this feature was never made because the rights could not be secured at that time from the estate of Merian C. Cooper. So Ray suggested they remake a 1940 movie that starred Carole Landis and Victor Mature, and included a multitude of lizards that were photographically enlarged to stand-in as the prehistoric fauna. He felt he could do better here.

The saurians of ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. are expertly crafted in this picture. He collaborated with Arthur Hayward, a preparator at the British Museum of Natural History to design these monsters. Indeed, they are a quantum leap over the previous dinosaurs he animated in the film ANIMAL WORLD ( which has never been released on video ). Oddly enough, Ray did include an iguana optically blown-up as one of the prehistorics; many criticized this move but now it seems more like an homage to the original offering.

Included in the Mesozoic menagerie is a large sea turtle called an Archelon that lumbers its way to the sea in a torpid manner; a battle between a gigantic Ceratosaurus ( scaled to T. Rex proportions ) and a huge Triceratops, and a fight between Pterosaurs while Ms. Welch is clutched in one's talons. The highlight of the stop-motion ensemble is the small Allosaurus that reeks havoc in the Shell Tribe's camp. This creature is almost a carbon copy of a carnosaur he did many years earlier in 16mm footage. It is killed in an excellent coup de grace, impaled on a pole that is a marvel of miniature rear-projection work.

Starring Raquel Welch ( not her first movie role ) and John Richardson as the lovers Loana and Tumak, they represent the "beautiful people" of eons past. The storyline is almost nonexistent here: Tumak is ostracized from the Rock Tribe and wanders the wilderness until he is taken in by the Shell Tribe. Booted out after nearly killing one of its members, he wanders again with Loana in tow. After many encounters with human and animal perils they arrive at the Rock Tribe's camp to attack Tumak's evil brother ( who deposed his dad in a brutal manner ). As the attack is underway, a nearby volcano violently erupts and utterly destroys the landscape.

Martine Beswick and Percy Herbert co-star in this feature. Directed by Don Chaffy, who worked with Harryhausen earlier on JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS. The movie was shot on the Canary Island of Lanzarote and on sets back in England. In spite of the superficial story and the use of contrived "words" as a pigeon language, ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. is an exciting film with plenty of Mesozoic menances and Raquel to please the eyes. Only unsuitable for very young children ( < 5 yrs. of age ).