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To me, this movie is perfection.

Pretty Good

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Blistering performances.

I've never been a huge fan of caveman movies but I recognize that they have their place. For me the two best were ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. because, well, it had Raquel Welch in a skimpy outfit and I had just hit puberty. The other as CAVEMAN with Ringo Starr, a hilarious movie that should be sought out. That being said I wasn't sure what to expect with this movie.The film opens with a group of lederhosen travelers seeking shelter in a cave while hiking only to find an archaeologist inside checking out some markings on the wall. To pass the time he begins to interpret them for the group. Naturally those in his story look like members of this group.The story is fairly simple yet fills the movie's time well. We're introduced to a tribe of rock dwelling cavemen who have little concern for one another. It's a rule by strength caste system. Our hero is Tumak (Victor Mature), the son of the tribe's leader. This tribe wanders in search of food with tree limbs as clubs. When Tumak kills an animal and they go to eat, he offends his father and is banished from the tribe.Tumak wanders and fall unconscious into a river which takes him downstream. There he is discovered by Loana (Carole Landis), a member of the shell tribe. She calls for help and she and her tribe take him back to their cave. Once awake Tumak finds this tribe completely different from his own. They share food, help one another and have fashioned spears from the branches and stones they've found.Eventually Tumak falls prey to his old way of doing things and steals a spear from a tribe member. This causes Loana's father, the head of the tribe, to cast him out. Tumak takes Loana with him and they are on their own. They come across two dinosaurs fighting one another and when Tumak sends Loana for cover, she is found by his old tribe. Tumak comes to her rescue and begins to teach his old tribe the lessons he has learned from Loana's. An eventual unification of the two tribes is in the works and if you didn't see it coming right from the start you've not seen many movies.So is the movie any good? Is it entertaining? The easy answer is yes to both questions. One has to take into consideration that the movie was made back in 1940 long before CGI created creatures took over movie screens. A combination of animals and people in costumes as well as rear projection footage of larger lizards made to appear enormous made this film a spectacle for audiences of the day. So much so that the film was nominated for an Oscar for special effects.The dialogue once we get into the story could be posted on two pages if that. It is the visual story that is going on here not the words being spoken. This provides a chance for actors to perform with their body language and motions rather than their oratory skills. And it works quite well.The print being offered here is the best available and probably not seen this way since the film was originally released. Digitally restored by VCI you won't find a better presentation. This version also has a commentary track by film expert Toby Roan as one of the few extras. There is also a stills gallery with tons of ad artwork and stills from the film.This might not be the first item you pick up off a shelf to purchase when you go shopping but for film fans it will be something to treasure. It's a piece of film history, more so than the story it tells.

One Million B.C. did good business on its release in 1940 and, despite the years, parts of the film have aged remarkably well. One of these is not its entirely unnecessary opening sequence, in which a bunch of hikers dressed in German lederhosen take refuge in a cave and happen upon a wizened pipe-smoking palaeontologist who, as the resident "expert", spins a yarn to his captive audience about cave people that, with the help of a dissolve, is dramatised for us on screen. This early sequence is so slow and contrived that contemporary audiences may not have the patience to get past it, which is a shame as parts of the film thereafter are quite absorbing and contain a decent dose of the spectacle that made fantastical prehistoric films so appealing. Directors Hal Roach Sr. and Jr. seem to at times approach their prehistoric tale from an anthropological perspective which both helps and hinders the film. They seem so concerned with representing the lifestyles of the prehistoric folk with such authenticity (!) that the action is at times painfully slow and at others simply laughable: prehistoric humans and dinosaurs did not exist simultaneously (a forgivable error in dinosaur films as facts have never stood in the way of Hollywood spectacle), but more glaring is the final scene which imposes a bizarre message about the sacredness of the contemporary nuclear family structure. Equally baffling is the idea that although speech has not yet developed beyond grunts and two syllable sentences, the more complex language of music is a given. The two tribes represented on screen are clearly at different levels of social advancement with Victor Mature, as Tumak making an unsuccessful grab for power in his own tribe that ends with his shunning and adoption into a more civilised order, with mixed results, Efforts to show the tribes levels of socialisation are at times so laboured that they become redundant and drag out for far too long. But dull moments aside, there are some remarkable sequences that will actually impress contemporary audiences if they can endure the slower moments. One such moment is the volcanic eruption and earthquake that causes rockslides and a lava flow that engulfs one of the characters in a scene that may have you wondering how on earth this was achieved without killing the actor. For lovers of practical effects, if you can get past the slow moments that dog this film and drag it out unnecessarily, you will find some impressive moments that still stand up no doubt inspired later dinosaur films such as the highly successful 1966 Hammer studios film One Million Years B.C. that follows the narrative as this Hal Roach creation.

This one had some good special effects for it's day - you can see this kind of special effects used for a few years in Hollywood after this one was made - a far cry from the CGI of today.The story is heartwarming. It's about how the "primitive" humans may have survived and a romance between two people from different tribes that fall in-love with one another. Loana's (Carole Landis) tribe seems more advanced with their use of jewelry, their manners, the way they treat one another etc... while the man she falls for, Tumak (Victor Mature), seems to come from a less advanced group - he's a bit more brutal. Loana teaches Tumak quite a few things including: sharing, gentleness, and love.Akhoba (Lon Chaney Jr.) is the father of Sakana and Tumak. He's a wise man but still has quite a bit he could learn from Loana's ways.It's a good film if you like movies on "cavemen" or prehistoric themed films. I quite enjoyed it.8.5/10

I see where Lon Chaney Jr. made this picture right after the Oscar nominated picture "Of Mice and Men" in 1939. Talk about a reversal of fortune.So gee, where to start. Probably the best thing this picture has to offer is the faux dinosaur battle between the tricked out alligator and the spotted lizard some way into the picture. I love the way these old flicks took ordinary animals and made it look like they were monstrous dinosaurs. Also can't forget how patching up your ordinary every day elephant with a mohair suit qualified them as woolly mammoths and mastodons.You know, those prehistoric cavemen were a hardy bunch weren't they? When Tumak (Victor Mature) went over the cliff in his battle with Akhoba (Chaney) he should have been a goner, don't you think? Instead, he just brushes himself off long enough to get sideswiped into a river by one of those mammoths. That might have been bad news if he hadn't run into Loana (Carole Landis) of the Shell People. Loana spends some time teaching Tumak the benefits of sharing food and even introduces him to the folks once she figures he might be a handy guy to have around.What struck me was how a hardy bunch like the Rock People didn't have their own spear tips fashioned from stone or how they hadn't caught on to the concept of fire, even though they lived a mere stone's throw up river from the Shell folks. Oh well, no use wondering about such things when so much other zany stuff was going on. Like Tumak wrestling a mini-triceratops or teaching the youngsters at the Shell camp how to shake apples out of a tree.The finale was pretty exciting and I couldn't believe the scene where the fleeing cave-girl got smothered by the lava pouring out of the volcano. The rock slide that killed the big lizard was thrilling too, but I did have to wonder why agile creatures like iguanas couldn't avoid falling into those crevices when the ground started separating. But for 1940 I guess this was pretty amazing stuff, so who am I to judge.