More prehistoric shenanigans from Hammer, although unlike One Million Years BC and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, there are no dinosaurs – which is more realistic and would have been cheaper to make but kind of misses half the point of making these films. The other half point is to see women in caveman bikinis but that’s not enough on its own – and this movie compounds the error by focusing most of its attention on the guys.
There’s about 20 minutes of backstory about a tribe fleeing from a volcano, and fighting, and meeting another tribe and having one of their women (at a sort of cave man orgy), and fleeing again, until the woman gives birth to twins and the story starts. One twin is light hailed (Australia’s Tony Bonner!), one is dark haired; consistent with the film’s theme that light haired people are a more advanced than dark, the dark haired twin hates the blonde, and tries to take over the tribe a la Cain and Abel. Even though Bonner beats his brother in a fight he doesn’t kill him, but takes off to set up his tribe elsewhere – he runs into another tribe, gets a woman from that (it’s a repetitive sort of movie), then has to fight his brother.
There is always something happening – usually a fight – but much of the action is repetitive, and there is little characterisation or complexity to speak of. It’s not even that sexy – Julie Edge is the main woman looks fetching but isn’t given that much to do. (There’s also a beautiful mute girl who does more action but Bonner goes off with Edge at the end which seems a little unfair.) Director Don Chaffey and producer Michael Carreras seem more interested in scenes of men wrestling with one another on the ground.
It looks terrific, though: the Namibian scenery is stunning (deserts, rocks, forest, waterfalls). Bonner has the physique of a caveman, although his blonde hair and beard (which makes him look much older) are a little odd. Hammer did not make any more films along this line.
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