One Million Years B.C. movie storyline. Tumak (John Richardson), a member of the Rock Tribe, is expelled from their cave after running afoul of their leader Akhoba (Robert Brown), who also happens to be his father. After several days of wandering, he stumbles upon several female members of the Shell Tribe, a group that lives on the coast. Loana (Raquel Welch), the daughter of the Chief, sees that he is in terrible shape from his ordeal and nurses him back to health.
This causes her betrothed, Payto (William Lyon Brown), to become jealous and eventually the two of them get into a major fight and Tumak (John Richardson) is expelled as a result. However, Loana decides to join him and follows him back to the caves of his people. While there Loana teaches the Rock people civility and this causes Tumak to become the new leader (Akhoba was severely injured while Tumak was away). This doesn’t sit well with Tumak’s brother Sakana (Percy Herbert), who begins to plot to have Tumak overthrown.
One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 British adventure fantasy film directed by Don Chaffey. The film was produced by Hammer Film Productions and Seven Arts, and is a remake of the 1940 American fantasy film One Million B.C.. The film stars Raquel Welch and John Richardson, set in a fictional age of cavemen and dinosaurs. Location scenes were filmed on the Canary Islands in the middle of winter, in late 1965. The U.K. release prints of this film were printed in dye transfer Technicolor. The U.S. version was cut by nine minutes, printed in DeLuxe Color, and released in 1967.
Like the original film, this remake is largely ahistorical. It portrays dinosaurs and humans living at the same point in time; according to the geologic time scale, the last non-avian dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago, and modern humans (Homo sapiens) did not exist until about 300,000 years B.C. Ray Harryhausen, who animated all of the dinosaur attacks using stop-motion animation techniques, commented on the U.S. King Kong DVD that he did not make One Million Years B.C. for “professors… who probably don’t go to see these kinds of movies anyway.”
Despite the censorship upon release in the U.S., the film was still popular and made $2.5 million in U.S. rentals during its first year of release. According to Fox records, the film needed to earn $2,250,000 in rentals to break even and made $4,425,000, meaning it made a solid profit. In 1968, it was re-released in the U.K. on a double feature alongside She (1965), an earlier Hammer film. The pairing became the ninth most popular theatrical release of the year.
Opening narration
This is a story of long, long ago, when the world was just beginning… A young world, a world early in the morning of time. A hard, unfriendly world. Creatures who sit and wait. Creatures who must kill to live. And man, superior to the creatures only in his cunning. There are not many men yet. Just a few tribes scattered across the wilderness. Never venturing far, unaware that other tribes exist even. Too busy with their own lives to be curious. Too frightened of the unknown to wander. Their laws are simple: the strong take everything.
One Million Years B.C. (1966)
Directed by: Don Chaffey
Starring: Raquel Welch, John Richardson, Percy Herbert, Robert Brown, Martine Beswick, Jean Wladon, Lisa Thomas, Malya Nappi, William Lyon Brown, Yvonne Horner, Micky De Rauch
Screenplay by: Michael Carreras
Production Design by: John Wilcox
Cinematography by: Wilkie Cooper
Film Editing by: Tom Simpson
Costume Design by: Carl Toms
Art Direction by: Robert Jones
Music by: Mario Nascimbene
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Warner – Pathé Distributors (United Kingdom), 20th Century-Fox (United States)
Release Date: December 30, 1966
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