One Million Years B.C.
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Movie Reviews of One Million Years B.C.
Movie Review: One Million Years B.C. the complete version please!
Summary: 2 Stars
When "One Million Years B.C." was released on dvd I couldn't wait to get a copy! Just think, a Ray Harryhuusen and Raquel Welch interview, commentaries, isolated score, making of documentary, boy was I dreaming! Not only did it not have any of those features, which I could sadly accept, the print they used was the CUT VERSION!!! Why the studio would cut any Harryhausen footage in the first place was ridiculous! The picture quality on the dvd is sharp and colorful but it's a shame because it could have been great. I recently purchsed Fox's special editions of "Fantastic Voyage" and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", they are super! I just hope Fox reissues "One Million Years B.C. with the same bells and whistles and with the COMPLETE version!Movie Review: Insomniacs delight
Summary: 2 Stars
No script. Grunts and screeches replace the English language in this film.
The best 2 parts belong to Raquel, and you don't see much of them.
Boy gets away from his tribe of angry boys and gets taken in by a tribe of nice people. Earthquake pushes them together. Fighting, grunting and lots of breast heaving makes for a happy ending.
If you can get your mind around a fur bikini (al a Ms Welsh and her chums)and still think that this movie has anything serious to say, then this is for you.
For the brain dead only.
Movie Review: Widescreen Lovers Beware!
Summary: 1 Stars
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.
Movie Review: RUN AWAY (from this version)
Summary: 1 Stars
I completely concur with cameron-vale's and shonner's reviews : this version is : 1/ edited and 2/ mutilated at top and bottom of screen to make it look widescreen. Among the edited pieces (I can tell because I have both DVDs, though I do plan to get rid of this one...) : Tumak's erring through the desert ; the feast/dance/ceremony at the tribe's cave ; the fight between two apemen and impaling of the loser's skull ; and quite a lot of isolated shots either shortened or deleted. Worse (if at all possible) : top and bottom of screen missing entirely, which is made all the worse yet by the bonus about the restoration process, that compares an admittedly badly scratched but full screen 1993 film version with the truncated 1996 laserdisc version used for this DVD (as regards the 2002 "restored film version" and "restored video version", I can see absolutely no difference between the two). And to make things complete and irrevocable, there is a bad technical problem : on my player and projector at least, I keep getting blurred lines every couple of frames (every time someone moves, actually...). What is "better" about this version, then ? Well, maybe the fact that you get a couple more languages and a lot of subtitles for the 3 or 4 only sentences of the film (at the very beginning) - including the "English for hearing impaired" that is actually quite fun : "HISSES", "ROAR", that kind of thing all the time ! Or the short demonstration of the restoration process (including its shortcomings, then...). This stops mighty short of being worth the buy. So sorry for the extra bucks, folks, but if you do plan to buy this film (if, like me, you are a Ray Harryhausen fan, for instance, and want to own every picture he ever made - which is now possible at relatively low cost -), go by all means for the British version on amazon.co.uk while it lasts, I promise it's worth every extra penny.Movie Review: Beware! DVD Is Edited!
Summary: 1 Stars
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.