My review was written in July 1989 after watching the movie on MCA video cassette.
An interesting companion piece to "Gorillas in the Mist", Universal's no-dialog feature "Missing Link" had a brief theatrical run last November and currently is in video stores.
Pic limns the travails a million years ago of the last apeman (genus Australopithecus Robustus), doomed to extinction by the more violent race of man. Coming from the "Gorillas" executive producers (and featuring effective makeup effects by Rick Baker, also from that film), pic carries its similar ecological message and warning with agreeable understatement.
The handsome visuals of the Namib desert and various national parks in Namibia shot by filmmakers David and Carol Hughes deserve a big-screen treatment, but absence of a strong narrative makes it more appropriate for the lower involvement of a video audience.
Peter Elliott is expressive and quite sympathetic underneath Baker's variation on an apesuit makeup. After finding his mate and compatriots dead, killed by man's invention of the ax, he wanders to the sea in vain search for other survivors of his kind.
Mood and some setups are similar to Stanley Kubrick's classic "Dawn of Man" sequence in "2001: A Space Odyssey", but with a further inversion as here the viewer is inevitably rooting for the gentle guys our ancestor knocked off. By extension, all other animals on the planet are in danger until we come to our senses, the film implies.
Fascinating views of wildlife ranging from bullfrogs to lions and elephants make this picture of interest to fans of nature shows. Besides "Gorillas in the Mist", it also fits in thematically with producer Dennis B. Kane's previous National Geographic Society documentary feature "People of the Forest".