One Million Years B.C.

1966 caveman movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Tumak can't find any friends, probably because he acts like a caveman, spending all his time grunting and fighting over food. He's thrown out of his tribe of cavemen (the rock people) and finds refuge with another group of cavemen (the cave people) who happen to include a scantily-clad Raquel Welch. The cave people end up not liking him very much either and boot him out of their home. Tumak's forced to buy a book--How to Win Friends and Influence Cavemen--and try to survive with Raquel Welch as giant turtles try to devour them.

I don't want to sound like a pervert or anything, but Harryhausen's dinosaurs are really sexy in this thing. After some embarrassing stock footage of volcano spewing, the effects do pick up with big lizards and big spiders and some stop-motion turtle action. The dinosaurs are really well done, and I was especially impressed with the human-creature interaction. Smooth. These may be Harryhausen's most realistic dinosaurs, and as always, it's fun to watch him play with his toys. The real stars of the show are probably Raquel Welch's parts though. There's one scene where she's stabbing at a fish right before Tumak falls into a lake. I'm not an expert on psychology or anything, but I'm pretty sure I know what Freud would have say about that. In a way, it reminds me of every single dream I had as a middle schooler. As a movie, this is a lot more boring than good. It's an hour and a half of dirty fur-dressed people grunting in a desert, and if I wanted to see that, I would have gone to my family reunion.

First Men on the Moon

1964 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: International lunar landers touch down at the same exact spot on the moon where they'll find a piece of paper and a withered flag proving that people had actually already visited the moon seventy years before. Back on earth, they visit the elderly and likely cuckoo former writer/amatuer astronaut to get the scoop. The scoop turns out to be really silly!

Here's a movie featuring Ray Harryhausen's effects where the effects don't completely steal the show. The effects you'd see and say, "Oh, that's Harryhausen alright," are even more of a distraction than anything else. At times, the moon beings, anthropoids with bee features, are animated but most of the time they're costumed people. Kind of weird. You also get a skeleton and a pair of monstrous centipede things. With the latter, it's almost like Harryhausen said, "Hey, I still have some time. Let me throw another creature in there." Now, the space effects and the moon atmospherics are impressive. I really like this version of the moon, one that would no doubt annoy the type of person who looks for scientific accuracy in their sci-fi films. I really enjoyed the set design though. This is better acted and written than your typical B-picture, dialogue peppered with some humor and good characterization. Edward Judd and Martha Hyer bust out of what could have been pretty generic roles as a pair of lovers, and Lionel Jeffries is very good as a crazed scientist character, very reminiscent of Back to the Future's Dr. Brown actually. I figured I'd mention him since I'm seeing Back to the Future references everywhere these days. I like the story despite the goofiness (Jeffries' character has created an anti-gravity paste which he applies to a metallic bulb in order to travel to the moon; the characters wear diving outfits for the trip), and it's only a big moment and a much better ending away from being really good. That ending, which just sort of grabs you and jerks you out of the story before throwing a "The End" on the screen, really is a stinker. Definitely worth checking out for fans of Harryhausen, H.G. Wells, and creatively preposterous science fiction movies.