Professionally made and imaginative adventure film of the early 70s

kg2006

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.

score 7/10

kg2006 27 June 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2633954/