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.
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.