Notes: Hammer Films Production Ltd./Warner
Bros.
Sanna: Victoria Vetri (former Playboy Playmate
of the Year)
Tara: Robin Hawdon
Also starring Patrick Allen, Drewe Henley,
Sean Caffrey, Magda Konopka, Imogen Hassall.
Producer: Aida Young
Director: Val Guest
Writer: Val Guest
Cinematographer:
Costume Designer: Carl Toms
Music: Mario Nascimbene
Special Effects: Jim Danforth
Summary:
Get this! (and insert sanctimonious pauses). "A time of
beginnings, of darkness, of light, of the sun, the earth, the
sea, of man! The beginnings of man living with man, by the sea,
in the mountains. The beginning of love, hate, and fear. Man's
fear of the unknown. Man's fear lest the sun should leave him,
leave him alone in everlasting darkness. A time when the color
of a woman's hair condemned her to sacrifice to the sun. A time
when there was as yet no moon."
A tribe is ritually sacrificing blondes to
the sun. Men wear lizard heads. An inexplicable wind creates
enough chaos for one blond, Sanna, to escape into the sea, where
she is rescued by our hero Tara, but word reaches the tribal leader
that she has lived.
Obviously dinosaurs do not rule the world,
because when we get to Tara's seaside tribe, a plesiosaur is roped,
and, although it escapes temporarily, it is recaptured and burned
to death. At the feast afterwards, a brunette does the jerk.
She is interested in Tara, but he is fascinated with Sanna who
has set up a hut. He brings her food. After a "chick fight"
in the water ("Necro!" "Akita! Akita!"
"Necro!"),
Sanna's former tribe arrives, looking for her. She flees and
is followed by pursuers. Hiding in a tree, a boa winds around
her but attacks and kills one of the men, whom the three other
men can't help. They think Sanna is in a nearby cave, but a triceratops
attacks instead, wounding the men. Harpie-like vultures, not
content as scavengers, actually squawk and take swipes at the
wounded. When Tara seeks Sanna, he finds the one man dead and,
after the triceratops charges and runs off a cliff, rescues the
others.
A Beowulvian funeral pyre at sea is followed
by a tribal frenzy during which Sanna's hut gets burned and people
orgiastically scream "Necro!" Tara runs away. Sanna
meanwhile has faced a vicious Slurpasaurus [as in The Lost
World (1960), a long-tongued lizard with plates glued on its
body] and is nearly eaten by a plant. She cuts off her hair to
escape the plant's evil jaws (? whatever). Tara finds this evidence
that she is chlorophyll fodder.
Sanna sleeps in a large dinosaur eggshell.
The other egg hatches and the dinosaur imprints. The parent,
thinking Sanna has hatched, brings her a deer carcass. Sanna
plays with her new sibling. She dives and catches fish in her
teeth. She finds her dinosaur involved in a fight with a few
men, and she call off the dino.
After an incident involving Tara vs. a pterodon,
he and Sanna reunite and go to her cave, witnessed by a lookout.
When Tara returns to the tribe, he is challenged, tied to a raft,
and set to sea with the raft burning. A sea monster knocks over
the raft; Tara escapes and staggers back to Sanna. But the tribe
is still searching for Sanna, and see smoke from her fire. The
two run, swim, climb, and witness some stock footage of dinosaur
fights, but are captured. Sanna's dino sib rescues her, but Tara
they prepare to burn again. A giant crab kills a few men as the
weather grows ominous again. The moon seems to be forming, and
a tidal wave looms. Sanna arrives to save Tara from the giant
crab, and a raft escape begins to take shape. The tribal leader
tries commanding the water to heel. That brunette "jerk"
woman gets sucked into quicksand, and the leader is unsuccessful
in his negotiations with water.
Sanna and Tara and two other people survive
(although it's still inevitably going to be incest in two or three
generations). We all witness an eclipse, so now a moon exists.
I think this is supposed to be meaningful. The four kneel and
we are assaulted with glorious hymn-like blastings.
Commentary:
One Million Years B.C. was bad enough in retarding literacy,
but this one inflicts us with interminable rantings of "Akita!
Akita!"
Reportedly, an allosaur or tyrannosaur was
planned for the film, but the film's producer "was offended
by such dinosaurs because they reminded her of the pose adopted
by blatant homosexuals!"
The insistence on blondes being persecuted is an interesting theme in this film, somewhat in One Million Years B.C., and in the Clan of the Cave Bear. What is this all about? Combined with the Shell Tribe / Rock Tribe dynamics (that is, the seaside people vs. the mountain invaders, also in One Million Years B.C.), is this some kind of self-pitying Californian vision?