Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

The Worst Film Ever

Powerful

Fantastic!

This will never be a rival to "Jurassic Park" or even "The Lost World" in the history of films about dinosaurs, but for what the creators of this fun yet silly adventure do makes it worth seeing. The audience is expected to suspend all disbelief in believing that enlarged wild animals of today could be compared with giant animals of the pre-historic time. As told to a group of cave explorers (including a lederhosen wearing Victor Mature), this takes all the people seen in this prologue and transports them back to caveman days where men battle each other as well as nature. The camera is really the star here, enlarging these animals to appear to be dinosaurs, huge snakes and even a woolly mammoth (obviously just an ordinary elephant) and making them appear even greater in size than your usual Geiko gecko.After battling his cave chief, pre-historic he-man Victor Mature is pushed off a cliff, fortunately falling into sand, and setting out on his own to find his own tribe to rule. He battles an elephant (supposed to represent a woolly mammoth) and after floating through a swamp (as giant lizards who obviously are congested and can't smell him swim by), he finds himself a new home where he battles other he-men cavemen for the affections of pretty blonde cave girl Carole Landis. There really isn't too much of a plot other than to explain how these ancient peoples could possibly survive with the elements around them. For that aspect alone, the film is really interesting, even though it is obvious that you can't take science fiction to any lower element of fiction than how this ends up being portrayed.

I first saw this movie on black-and-white TV as a 10-year-old kid. I loved the prehistoric animals and the musical score. Later in life I looked up the composer, Werner Heymann. He was one of many artists who fled to Hollywood from the Nazi threat in Europe. His lush romantic score reveals the influence of 19th-century Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. As for the Nazis, the film can be seen in part as an allegory of the dangers of Nazi brutality (represented by the Rock People) versus the civilizing influence of the Shell People, who represent western liberal democracy. I don't want to push this level too hard, but it is there. If the story seems a bit silly, that is part of its charm to me.

I saw this on late night TV some 40 years ago. It has not been available on DVD and I was always curious about it. Behold, it shows up on TCM. I had fond memories. It turns out to be slow moving sludge with very little excitement, reproducing a cave culture of little interest. The dinosaur scenes, which have become stock footage for other bad movies, are just iguanas and alligators with fins on their backs. Victor Mature, one of the dullest actors in history, mumbles and grunts his way through this thing. I had forgotten that it is a story being narrated by a recluse who is being visited by some hikers. They then play a part in the visuals. I don't mean to dis it too much. It's just not what I thought it was. Hal Roach was a bit of a pioneer, but this is just not very interesting or entertaining.

I find it hilarious that one of the posters here above should think that the Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood, a low-budget factory that usually churned out Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy shorts, and an occasional comedy feature, should have been a nest of gay leftists. Now it's true that back in the 1940s, unbeknownst to their crusty old tight-fisted boss Mr. Roach, someone in the plant might have hired a few inexpensive commies to write the script. Three screenwriters are credited with the screenplay, all of whom disappeared from the industry shortly after the film was made. Their names never appeared on any blacklist in the days when card-holding communists were hunted down. If you want to point a finger at anyone for the saccharine morality of the movie might it not be the influence of that old Kentucky gentleman, D.W. Griffith, the man who adapted "The Clansman" into a movie? No communist he! A fascist perhaps. This film is not so much a pinko/nancy conspiracy as it is an old fashioned Victorian morality tale, just the sort of sugar-coated nonsense that D.W. made in his halcyon days as the acknowledged master of the silent cinema, albeit a world-class cornball. "One Million B.C." is not gay communism, heaven forbid! It's just old-fashioned small town Sunday School Christianity dressed up or down in skimpy costumes. Carole Landis is as always luscious.