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Volume 8305
It's a direct
sequel to Amicus' first Burroughs movie. The second movie in the series is
completely unrelated. Personally, I'd have
thought, if you're going to do a sequel, don't stick a completely unrelated
movie in the middle of the trilogy, but that's just me.
Technically,
this movie is a fusion of the last two novellas by Burroughs - People that Time
Forgot, and Out of Time's Abyss.
It's also a
movie that was shot and released at the same time as Star Wars, 1977. Think about that. 1977, a decade after Planet of the Apes and
Star Trek, contemporary with Star Wars, Aliens, Terminator, Close Encounters of
the 3rd Kind right around the corner.
Holy flaming
weasels, Batman, that's just a scary thought.
Because it's
crap! It's real crap! I mean, there was a period in the fifties
and even the sixties when this sort of low budget, seat of the pants stuff
passed for cutting edge or at least mass market sci fi. But that was a couple of decades prior. Hell, over in Tokyo, the Gamera series had
thrown in the towel back in 71 or 72, and the Godzilla series had died with a whimper
by 1975, a victim of its own cheese.
But somehow,
back in 1975, Amicus films had roared in with a crude historical epic starring,
based on a nonsensical Burroughs work, featuring appallingly crude suitmation
dinosaurs and a plot that rambled around like a drunken kangaroo, with The Land
That Time Forgot, and somehow, through sheer madcap inventiveness, and a crazy
amount of dinosaurs, this had become a success.
So, they
followed it up, keeping all the basic elements -- crappy suitmation, a kind of
retro-historical steampunk (before steampunk was even coined) and Doug
McClure. Which took them to At The
Earth’s Core in 1976, and eventually to The People that Time Forgot in 1977.
How does it
fare? Well, the general rule of series
is that it just gets weaker as time goes on.
No one ever counts on a movie trilogy or series. Audiences and markets are fickle, and
there's a lot of strange things that can happen in the film industry to derail
a project. The archives are full of 'first
movies' that never got made, planned sequels that died in development, and
unplanned sequels dragged screaming into the theatres.
The rule is
that you use all your stuff and all your best stuff in the first movie. Basically, you got to grab that
audience. If you save your good stuff
for a later movie... Well, there's
probably not going to be one. So the
first movie is usually the one brimming with ideas, action, performances, and
all the knock you on your ass, wow, stuff.
The sequels invariably
start to run out of ideas and momentum.
Remember, all the good stuff got used the first time. The second time, you're using the stuff that
wasn't good enough to make the first cut.
And the third time, you're using the stuff that wasn’t good enough to
make the first two. Or you're
desperately reaching around for an idea to stuff into your sequel and grabbing
anything within reach. Or you're simply
repeating yourself.
So, as the
sequels wear on, the product gets tired, worn out. It's stuff we've seen before, except not as
good as the first time. There's usually
less money, limitations of all sorts are showing up.
It’s not always
the case. Arguably, there’ve been some
cases where sequels have trumped the original movie, or where series manage to
keep themselves fresh. But usually it’s
the downhill slope.
And sadly,
People That Time Forgot is no exception to the rule.
Take
Dinosaurs. They may have been crappy suitmation
and puppets, but in the Land That Time Forgot, you had dinosaurs up the
wazoo. You had: Pterodactyls, Allosaurs,
Plesiosaurs, Mosasaurs, Diplodoci,
Triceratops, Ceratosaurs, Styracosaurus and Polacanthi. And they didn't just stand around,
either. They attacked submarines, bit
people in half, rampaged, got into fights with each other, they were central to
the plot, they were making stuff happen.
Sure, the were pretty tosh, even by (particularly by) the standards of
the day. But the sheer number and
aggression of them just wears you down, and they carry the day. In At the Earth's Core, they kept the
monsters nonstop, drawing on prehistoric specimens but adapting them in over
the top ways.
Unfortunately,
the Dinosaur quotient is way down in The People That Time Forgot. We've got a nasty Pterodactyl or two, we've
got a sleepy Stegosaurus, there are a couple of leftover Ceratosaurs, some
Hippo-like quadruped, some sort of giant horned toad (probably a scutosaurus, a
mammal-like reptile), and some cave lizards.
Yeah, it's the same old story.
They'd used up all the really good dinosaurs, and now they were down to
the sloppy seconds - retreads and less colourful critters. Indeed, I've got no idea what the hippo-thing
was supposed to be, it's completely slapped together and uninteresting.
But even the
use of dinosaurs here is cut back sharply.
They just don't get the same screen time. They show up for a minute, make an appearance,
take a bow, cash their cheque, and then they're gone.
Except for the
pterodactyl fight with the airplane at the start, and the battle with the
scutosaur at the end, it's pretty perfunctory.
And again, with the exception of the pterodactyl, they have practically
no relevance to the plot.
Let's face it,
if they were all edited out, we wouldn't notice. On the other hand, if the Dinosaurs had been
edited out of Land Before Time, or At the Earth's Core there wouldn't have been
a movie. Literally, they would have been
shorts. The monsters were the whole point.
So, what takes
the place? Some dreary lost-race/rescue
adventure. Here's what happens: At the end of the Land that Time Forgot,
Bowen Tyler (Doug McClure) threw a message in a cannister out to see in hopes
of getting rescued. The cannister drifts
to Scotland, eventually a rescue expedition is put together. This consists of an old steam/sailer, with a
seaplane.
In the seaplane
are four characters: The pilot, Hogan, the hero McBride (played by Patrick
Wayne, John Wayne's son), the scientist Norfolk, and the love interest, Lady
Charlotte. That's pretty damned generic. In the first movie, you had Germans and
Americans and Brits, none of whom trusted each other, all screwing with each
other and cooking up some tension. In At
the Earth's Core, the hero and scientist from the surface build relationships
with the Pellucidareans, finding friends, allies, enemies and love interest, and
there are all sorts of tension.
Here, mainly
its a quartet of generic characters, no tension.
Anyway, off
they go. They get attacked by a
pterodactyl, whose size varies scene to scene, but who seems to be able to
chase down a motorized aircraft.
They land, they
find a stegosaurus which doesn't do much, but obligingly tows the aircraft for
them.
And speaking of
this, there's a scene where Lady Charlotte spots a spiked thing hovering in the
background, and convinces McBride to pose near it, so it'll give him a good
scare. Think about that: Lady
Charlotte, for her own amusement, tricks McBride into stumbling over the lethal
business end of an elephant-sized monster of monstrous power and unpredictable
disposition. The movie treats this as
good fun.
Me, I'm sitting
there wondering why McBride doesn't punch the psychotic b****. Excuse my language, but Jesus H. Christ
here! She could have gotten him killed, for a prank.
By the way, I'm
astonished at how poorly prepared or organized the rescue expedition is. Particularly when you compare it to how
organized and armed to the teeth the castaways were in the first movie. In the
Land that Time Forgot, we've got a semi-starving group of three or four
nationalities, mistrustful of each other, and yet they go through dinosaurs
like a buzz saw because they're organized, disciplined and heavily armed. McClure relates all this in his message.
In contrast, the
rescuers are lightly armed, or unarmed, flounder around with no real plan or
ideas, and basically act like teenagers in a slasher movie. I'm surprised that
McBride doesn't just tell them all to split up and look for clues.
Anyway, off
they go into the wilderness, and they meet yet another generic stock character
- The Cave Babe.
Take a good
look, because her wide open leather bustier and bouyant two piece set are the
most impressive special effects in the movie.
And yes, that’s
very sexist of me. But on the other
hand, this is what they were selling the movie with, so don’t blame me. For some reason, Cave-Girl Chic was in, there
were a lot of movies - One Million BC, When Women Had Tails, Savage Women,
Journey to the Planet of Prehistoric Women. When Dinosaurs ruled the Earth, One
Million AC/DC...
It was a more
repressed age, so basically, prehistoric epics were one way to have women
running around in skimpy bikinis. It was that and beach movies, I guess. As if this
was something shocking. Given we now live in an age of wall to wall porn, it’s
hard to relate to. But there it is.
Anyway, a
couple of Ceratosaurs show up, and McBride shoots at them and fires some smoke
bombs, so they get offended and leave in a huff. Talk about anti-climactic.
Then there’s
some convenient exposition through the cave girl. It seems she's from Tyler's adopted tribe,
the Ga-Lu, but unfortunately, the Ga-Lu's march to civilization was interrupted
by another more advanced race, the Naga, who got there first and wiped them all
out. The Naga have Tyler. If he's still alive.
So then, after
this, they encounter some cave men and have to fight them off. Then after that, they encounter some
different cave men, wearing blocky 'Frankenstein style' make up prosthetics. I think they were supposed to be neanderthals
or something. These they don't fight
off, instead, they get staked out as Dino-kibble. Luckily, cave girl rescues them, and off they
go to the land of the Naga.
The Naga, when
they show up, ride horses and dress like Medieval Japanese soldiers. They speak English, learned from Tyler, and
invite McBride and the rest of them home.
That’s mighty friendly of them.
But oh look,
their city or headquarters or whatever, is a big mess of brown skulls! That doesn't look good. Look, unless you're
in a He-Man movie, a skull motif on the architecture usually means bad guys.
Okay, I
shouldn't mock. It's not a bad matte painting,
has a bit of the look of those medieval African cities like TimBukToo, except
for the skull motif.
Naga don’t
appear in Burroughs by the way, they’re borrowed from Indian folklore of snake
people. In the movie, the Naga are the
stand-in for Burroughs' winged Wieroo, from Out of Time's Abyss. This is their city of skulls direct from the
Novella.
In Time's
Abyss, Burroughs the villains are the'Weiroo' who are winged humanoids, but
annoying, selfish, disgusting and obsessed with garbage. Basically, its as if angels evolved from
seagulls. I think that decision was partly because they'd used flying villains
in the previous movie with the Mahars. It would have been repetitive. And expensive, a race of winged mutants is
not in the budget, and costume rentals from a Samurai epic were cheap, so there
you go.
The Naga are
mostly masked except for the evil tyrant, who has gynormous eyebrows, a weight
problem, baldness and what looks like a toxic amount of body makeup on. At one point, the mask gets pulled off a
Naga, and they're discovered to be mutants.
Which sort of
makes this movie a Retro Beneath the Planet of the Apes, you know what I
mean?
It's almost
beat for beat. In Beneath, James
Franciscus plays another astronaut looking for Charlton Heston, last seen in
Planet of the Apes having a revelation which turns his world upside down. Here, Patrick Wayne is on a rescue expedition
to find Doug McClure, also last seen in the previous movie having a revelation which
turns his world upside down.
In both movies,
the new hero is searching for the prior hero.
And their first clue is finding the prior hero's savage native
girlfriend who leads the new hero to the old hero, and the new villains.
Along the way,
the prior hero must flee from or contend with subhumans or non-humans who own
this world now - Apes and Cave men respectively.
Then the new
hero in each movie encounters the mutants - who pretend to be benign and friendly,
but turn out to be evil, racist and generally despicable. Oh and it turns out that when the masks come
off they're really ugly and monstrous.
AS an amazing
turns out that the mutants are keeping McLure/Heston captive. Also, the mutants worship the destructive
volcano/nuclear warhead, making them wrong-headed and nihilistic.
Finally, the
whole thing ends with the world blowing up good. The entire world in Beneath, and the whole
Island of Caspak.
Seriously, this
really is just Beneath the Planet of the Apes. It literally repeats the entire
plot, beat for beat, only way better, years ago, and so this thing comes across
as a cheaper, dumbed down, faded out, photocopy.
Never
mind. Our heroes arrive in the Naga
throne room -- there's the Evil Tyrant -- overweight, gross and accompanied by
a fauning slave/witch. Yep, check off
that little generic touch. The place is
decorated heavily in skulls. Turns out, the
villain is going to throw the men into prison, and throw the women into the
volcano. Because you can't be a race of evil mutants without a little
gratuitous sacrifice and pointless religious worship to a very questionable
inanimate object.
I'm not sure
what that's about, but everyone seems okay with it....
Even our heroes
and heroines, don't seem really bothered by the whole proposition. They really
under-emote at this part. I mean, for god's sakes -- betrayal, treachery, barbarism,
chicks into volcanoes. They're upset,
sure. But it's the sort of 'upset' you
get when someone steals your parking spot at the mall. If it was me in this situation, I'd be
freaking out, I'd be screeching like a really attractive howler monkey at a gay
orgy after the lube ran out. I'd be more
freaked out than Donald Trump with the wrong brand of hair spray.
Oh, and by the
way, I'd like to point out one of the characters in the throne room scene: The executioner,
who has no lines but a distinctive costume.
He's played by David Prowse, who that year would go on to fame and
fortune as the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. And speaking of Star Wars, Lady Charlotte in
this film, spends half the movie wearing the same idiotic buns on the sides of
her head that Princess Leia did in Star Wars.
It's like they’re mocking us or something with all these subtle
references to much better movies.
Ah, but in prison,
the boys finally find Tyler, played by Doug McClure with a thick beard as if
he's trying to hide his presence in the movie.
They break out (offscreen), don Naga costumes (complete with built in
face masks to conceal their identities), and rescue the chicks from the fiery
pit.
During the
fight, the Evil Tyrant more or less accidentally falls in, and his witch/slave
jumps in after to clean up the plot (seriously, no other reason). Yes, this is a
movie where the hero wins because the villains are poorly coordinated.
As dramatic
battle scenes go, it ain't. There's one
hilariously surreal moment when McBride, being heroic, swings on a chandelier
to rescue his embattled friend. The
trouble is that it's all on a level floor.
McBride could have simply walked over.
There was no point to swinging, except maybe it was in the script and
the script imagined a much bigger budget and a bigger set where dramatically swinging
across the room on a chandelier would have worked. Or maybe they'd just stopped caring long ago.
Why does the
evil villain even have a chandelier? Never mind.
After that,
there's the dramatic 'running away' scenes, where they battle cave lizard hand
puppets, the scutosaur, and a horde of Naga who have all forgotten their horses
and can't shoot any better than storm troopers.
Oddly, in the
fight with the scutosaur, the one real battle with a dinosaur that they have in
the whole movie, it dies accidentally when a falling stalagmite impales it.
Honestly, it was a herbivore, it was probably harmless. They startled it,
harassed it by beating it with clubs, and then the poor thing dies of limestone
poisoning. Tragic.
Talk about
ineffectual heroes! Wayne's character, McBride, is literally an idiot. He stumbles over a stegosaur, harasses a
couple of ceratosaurs, he's unceremoniously beaten and tied up by Neanderthals,
tricked and imprisoned by the Naga. The evil overlord is defeated by his own
clumsiness. Nothing McBride does actually succeeds by any action he takes.
He simply
constantly fails ever upwards, like some upper-middle-class white guy in
America.
Sadly, the
climactic escape and battle with the Naga is pretty lifeless. So to jazz things up, they start letting off
the explosives, hoping to distract the audience. There's no reason for any of the
explosions. No one has dynamite, the
Naga don't have firearms. So it's just
randomly gratuitous.
In the Land
that Time Forgot, they were armed to the teeth and not afraid to use it. And in At The Earth's Core, they were
basically in a volcano.
But here?
Volcano again.
What it is, is the volcano is erupting, or belching, and this takes the form of
random explosions all over the countryside.
Because that's how volcanoes work apparently. Forget all that stuff you learned about magma
and calderas and stuff like that. No, Volcanoes
are nature's randomized firecrackers. A sort of geological minefield. Okay, sure. Why not!
The idea is
that the world, or at least this particular corner of it, is blowing up and our heroes are dramatically
running for their lives. The producers
apparently thought this was such a neat idea, they kept it up, even on ice
floes on the sea. Go figure.
During the
chase, Tyler gets killed, which made the whole rescue kind of pointless. When you think about it, if they'd stayed home,
Tyler would still be alive, the cave babe would be doing her cave thing, the
Evil Tyrant would be making TV dinners, the Witch would be fondling her skull,
and many Naga would be going home to their Nagababes and Nagababies. Everyone would have been better off.
So yeah - White
Guy failing upwards, completely wrecking his own goal, and ruining everything
for everyone else. McBride should have been called Zuckerberg or Bezos.
And look, this is
not me being political. I didn't write this script. This was not lefties or
socialists critiquing capitalism or any of that stuff. This wasn't 'woke.'
This movie was
made by people who just wanted to do a thrilling adventure, get bums in seats,
and make lots of money, by not being unconventional or subversive, and playing
all the cliches straight.
It's not my
fault that their entire subtext is toxic white guys filled with entitlement who
fail at everything at every point, and wreck everyone and everything, and still
end up the hero who gets the girl and gets their butt kissed by everyone
else. I'm not doing this. It's in the
movie. They celebrate it!
The weird thing
is that if you look around in the movies of the 50s, 60s and 70s, this sort of
unearned, gratuitous and destructive success is actually a regular thing in
stories - its all bumbling entitled idiots failing their way to coincidental
victory, while being horribly destructive.
Go watch the Green Slime!
Actually,
there's an odd philosophical bit. It's
not from Burroughs though. Before Tyler
dies, he explains that the Island is alive and aware, and that the volcano’s
eruption is in response to the heroes invasion.
Or something like that. They
actually stole this from Barbarella, I think.
But the
implication here is that Caprona is blowing up, but it wouldn't have, if they'd
just minded their goddammed business and stayed home. There's a subtext there that I can't believe they
thought about, because if they had thought it through... well, it's frigging
horrible.
And of course,
as a final insult, they lose their camera, film and scientific notes, so they
don't even have any proof of their adventures.
The lost world of Caprona is apparently destroyed in the volcanic
eruptions, which means it too is gone.
Which means the whole exercise has been utterly pointless. At least in the Lost World, Professor
Challenger brought home a dinosaur.
There's not even
a romantic resolution. There was no
romance blossoming during the movie anywhere. McBride and Lady Charlotte do not
end up in a clinch. Maybe that's
understandable since she's obviously the sort of headcase who thinks it's
laughs to trick people into potentially lethal encounters with unknown giant
animals. I still think McBride should
have punched her for that.
But that part
of it is completely absent. There's
absolutely no chemistry between them. At best, they're not even good friends, but
vaguely respectful acquaintances.
The Cave Girl
may have been a substitute romantic interest, but nothing happens there. There's no Cave Girl romance - Lady Charlotte
(and Cave Girl's prior relationship with McClure) acts as a cock blocker, and
she and McBride are prevented from even interest in each other. But then, there
isn't any room for romance when McClure makes his appearance.
Even her
sexuality is chaste. The closest the movie
comes to any kind of overt sexuality or sexualization, comes is at the end ,
where they're all having drinks, and Hogan the pilot (who hasn't really met her
before she hopped on the plane and escaped with the rest of them) makes a
clumsy pass at her, and she gets a 'Oh god, not another one of those' look on
her face. Good for her, by the way.
I really
respect her for that by the way. Hogan the lecher stares at her boobs, and the look
of revulsion and contempt that crosses her face shows exactly what she thinks
of him. I’m not sure that was actually acting.
There's a
complete lack of anything happening to the characters in any way. They don't
build or affirm relationships, there's no friendships formed, no romances, no
alliances, the characters don't evolve in any way. So there's an overall
absence of any kind of tension or development to make us invest in the
proceedings.
Seriously, this
is a huge problem for the movie. At the end
of it, the heroes for all their adventures, fail utterly. Tyler is not rescued, there's no proof of
dinosaurs or of the lost island, apart from their dubious testimony and a
suspiciously bouyant cave girl. Nobody
falls in love. Indeed, their
accomplishments are negative -- Tyler is killed and the whole island apparently
blows up because they showed up.
The movie ends
with our heroes back on the ship, having a toast in the Captain's stateroom, celebrating
their safe return and utter lack of accomplishment. Seriously, at the end of the adventure,
they’re all standing around, having a drink.
What the hell? They didn't even know how to end the movie?
Okay, so what's
good? The story is utterly generic,
with the only distinction being the crippling but unrecognized incompetence of
the characters. The actors are given
nothing to work with so we can't say if they're any good or not.
The action scenes
are poorly staged and choreographed (and possibly risky, there's one scene
where an arrow actually hits Doug McLure in the face and bounces off -- it
doesn't look like it was shot with any velocity, but Christ, the man could have
lost an eye -- that's amateur hour stuff.
And amazingly, they kept it in the movie.) The dinosaurs are rubbish on just about every
level (they look like junk, they're barely used, not relevant to the plot, etc.),
and the panache and cleverness that dressed them up in the first two movies is
absent. So, what works in this movie?
The location
shooting is pretty good. Apparently they
trucked on down to the Canary Islands, so they managed to get some pretty
impressive visual terrain, not so impressive that the actors couldn't climb all
over it, but impressive. Good locations,
where you get some actual geography to put your actors in, can make a hell of a
difference. As opposed to location shooting
where you shoot in a parking lot or some generic hayfield.
It's likely
that the Canary Island locations explain all the cavemen and the shortage of
dinosaurs. The Dinosaurs are 'sound
stage' based critters. Hard to do them
well or convincingly on location. And
hard to make sound stage dinos match up with your location footage.
On the other
hand, there were a lot of Canary Island natives, they worked cheap, so you
could get lots and lots of caveman value.
Thinking back, they must have had dozens of extras as generic cavemen or
Nagas. So kudos to that.
Of course, the
caveman costumes and make up are pretty slapdash. And let's face it, with the possible
exception of Quest for Fire no one goes to see Prehistoric Epics to watch
Cavemen. It's all about the
Dinosaurs. Or at the least, it's about
the giant prehistoric critters.
Think about
it: "Explorers travel to
mysterious land and are chased by dinosaurs." "Explorers travel to mysterious land and
are chased by smelly guys in fur."
Which movie do you want to see?
The
pseudo-Japanese costumes of the Naga are pretty good (the costumes and make up
of the other cave men are definitely not good), but I'd bet dollars to donuts
they were rentals.
Beyond that,
there are a couple of fairly well-produced sets, or maybe one set
redressed. There's a cave interior with
lots of stalagmites and stalactites that actually had me wondering for a half
second if they'd found a cave to do location work in. And there's the evil overlord throne room,
and some of the Naga chambers. I'll give
you a hint - lots of skull motif.
But more than
anything, as I sit here thinking about this movie, I find myself wondering what
the point was? Why did they bother. The whole thing is so utterly perfunctory,
the dinosaurs so slapdash, the plot so utterly lifeless, that I find myself
amazed. Was this some sort of
post-modern existentialist juvenile adventure movie? Was the whole point of this movie, was that there
was no point to the heroes struggles, that their actions could only make things
worse? That they were all isolated
characters journeying together with no hope for anything more than moderately
inoffensive company.
Seriously,
grown up film people actually wrote this?
Directed it? Nobody stopped for
a second and thought: Hey, shouldn't
this movie be about something? Shouldn't
this thing end with something actually being accomplished by someone?
How did they get
this stupid? This movie was made by the same people who did the Land that Time
Forgot and At the Earth's Core. No one would call those great movies - but they
are competent, energetic and the bring genuine flare. They know what they're
doing, they have a target and they hit it.
So.... same crew:
John Dark produced. Kenneth Connor directed. There's Doug McClure.
They've got the same special effects technicians (and maybe even a couple of the
same dino costumes) from previous movies, I assume a lot of the same crew. They
know all the beats - dinos, cavemen, women in fur bikinis. Even the writer Patrick Tilley was competent, as a
screenwriter, he'd done Wuthering Heights, and he was already established as a
science fiction writer. He'd go on to do the post apocalyptic Amtrak Wars
series.
So how did they
drop the ball? Lack of money? Lack of time or resources? Or just went wrongheaded, and got off on the wrong
foot? Too much interference? But still, you sort of expect a little bit better,
especially by 1977.
I'm not sure. I
almost want to do a meta commentary, as each movie in the series seems to have
a different take on the genre.
Obviously, I’m
thinking way too much about this.
| INTRODUCTION |
LAND THAT TIME FORGOT |
AT THE EARTH'S CORE |
PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT |
| ALL ERB NOVELS |
LAND THAT TIME FORGOT |
AT THE EARTH'S CORE |
PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT |
BILL HILLMAN
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