It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)** 1/2 (out of 4) Dinosaurs and rival tribes are all trying to live together during a time when there are still people being sacrificed to the sun gods. Sanna (Victoria Vetri) gets swept away during a violent storm and soon finds herself with another tribe where she falls in love with Tara (Robin Hawdon). Their relationship is faced with problems from both sides as there are battles against each other as well as the dinosaurs that stalk them.After the success of ONE MILLION YEARS B.C., Hammer got this film into production and the end result is a mildly entertaining movie as long as you don't take it too serious. I've read some reviews that did take this film way too serious and they started to nitpick just about everything in the picture. Yes, you can bring up various logical issues as well as other issues dealing with the "cave people" but this wasn't meant to be a Stanley Kubrick picture. This here was a film meant to appeal to kids and young adults on weekends and on that level it works.It was a rather interesting choice to have no English dialogue spoken. The people are given their own dialogue, which the viewer can never really make any sense out of but I actually thought this ended up working quite well as it perfectly put you in the setting. I also that director-writer Val Guest did a pretty good job at holding your attention for the most part, although I will say the 99-minute running time does start to drag towards the end. The music score was nice and the cinematography was actually better than I expected.The reason people went to see WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH was for the special effects and the women. The stop=motion effects were pretty good for the most part and there's no doubt that the creatures themselves were quite good and entertaining. I really liked the giant crab at the end of the picture but most of the dinosaur attacks were good. As far as the women goes, yeah, there were several beauties wearing very little clothes and the uncut version even got some nudity in. How the large breasted women were able to stay in these skimpy outfits was quite impressive.Again, as long as you don't take this film too serious it works just fine as a "B" movie.

I'll readily admit that I'm not a huge fan of Hammer's prehistoric adventures. The distinct lack of English dialogue in these films always seem to me to hamper them too much, so that the story gets dumbed down to the level of 'us vs them' chasing and a literal caveman mentality. In the end, the only reason you can watch these is for the spectacle, and indeed that's the case when it comes to WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH, a film that features some great and detailed sequences involving dinosaurs and not a lot else.The somewhat broad storyline involves a blonde-haired cavegirl who escapes certain sacrifice only to fall in love with the member of another tribe. Eventually, she's outcast from there too, and then hunted down by her former neighbours, all of whom seem determined to see her killed. There's not a great deal more to it than that, I'm afraid.There's not really any scope for acting here. Victoria Vetri was a Playboy pin-up, not an actress, so she fills the bikini readily enough and that's all that's required of her. Patrick Allen beats his chest and sports a masculine beard but is given little to do other than look menacing. The romance scenes between Vetri and Robin Hawdon are sweaty and laughable and, as I mentioned before, the only really enjoyable bits are those involving the dinosaurs. Jim Danforth was the man behind them, and a blinding job he does too.

In prehistoric times, Sanna is a young woman destined to be sacrificed to the Sun God because she has blonde hair. She escapes and is befriended by Tara, a young man from a neighbouring tribe. Can they survive in this harsh and unforgiving land ?This was the third of Hammer's four agreeable dinosaur/cavegirl flicks (the others being One Million Years B.C., Slave Girls and Creatures The World Forgot). In terms of dino action it's pretty good - there's a beach fight with a plesiosaur, a chasmosaurus hiding in a cave, a giant quadruped lizard which befriends our heroine (and is reminiscent of the fictional rhedosaurus from The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms), a clifftop rumble with a rhamphorhynchus, and some giant crabs for good measure. The optical effects are by Jim Danforth and are pretty cool for the time, with lots of detail and clever matte work; there's even a reverse tracking shot on the rhedosaurus at one point. The story has some pedigree in that it was originally written by J.G. Ballard (Empire Of The Sun, Crash) and adapted by Guest (who made the original black-and-white Quatermass movies), but it's a bit hokey, to say the least; at one point our starcrossed lovers run away for eight minutes and then get caught anyway. It does end with both a tsunami and a lunar eclipse though so you get a lot of spectacle, not to mention the very cute Vetri (Playboy's 1968 Playmate Of The Year) as the bad karma heroine. Shot by Dick Bush on remarkable locations on Fuertaventura in the Canary Islands - the landscapes themselves are perhaps the movie's most interesting feature. Not the best picture from Hammer Studios, but even one of their average movies is more fun than most.

Having just watched One Million B.C. (1940), I finally went on YouTube and saw When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth there. This Hammer production is not as involving as the previous Hal Roach one but since this one was made during the much looser late '60s/early '70s, the eye candy-both male and female-get to wear skimpier clothing for the prehistoric setting. Not only that but since the version I watched came from Europe, one-time Playboy Playmate Victoria Vetri is actually nude here! There's also some exciting dinosaur model animation especially that of the pterodactyl when one of his wings gets ripped. Jim Danforth definitely deserves all the credit for those scenes. While OMBC had minimal dialogue and played like a silent movie, WDRTE has way too much caveman gibberish (with "akita" being the most used "word") that probably contributed to the confusion that I experienced throughout. Still, with those dinosaurs and those skimpy women, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is at least worth a look. Oh, and that plant that tried to eat Victoria was way scary!