Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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201 of 206 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Beware! DVD Is Edited!, March 3, 2004
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.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Widescreen Lovers Beware! , September 20, 2008
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.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
one million years BC, October 10, 2005
Raquel Welch is amazing and just seeing her again is delightful but the story line seems to be edited. There are parts missing in the movie that I remember.
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