Notes for
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)
This Hammer Studios Film moved heavily into the area of “skin flick” exploiting largely the attributes of model Verna Lisi by dressing her in as timy a costume as could be handled.
This film adds a good chunk of religion and starts off with a sum worshipping group in which blondes (whose hair is like the sum) At the very start of the film, an explosion of some sort and as a result one of the potential sacrifices slips away and finds herself rescued by a group of men on a raft from another group.
This seems to be the beginnings of a kind of reversal in the film. Here the woman makes the journey and it appears that her tribe appears to be the more primitive.
In the course of the travels between the two groups, a third tribe – very primitive is found in a cave. There seems to be little involvement in with this group although fimically they seem more related to the people who live in the caves who worship the sun. Both appear to be cave dwellers and both have skulls decorating their abodes, albeit the more primitive group seems to have more human skulls while the humans seem to have bear skulls.
In terms of costumes, they have become even briefer for both en and women.
The language is made up of about 70+ words, actually made from up from words from some ancient languages.
Special effects are animated, and some motherly information is coded in in order to move the film to more interest of the female component of things
As the film ends, another catastrophe strikes. The moon which seems to have been forming since the films opening now appears accompanied by a huge wave which seems to engulf almost everything and to wipe out much of what exists on land.
The raft on which the main characters flee and are saved, lands on the side of a mountain, suspiciously like Noak’s Ark coming to rest on Mt. Ararat. A new day dawns and the surviving people from the raft look up and see the moon. They kneel down and begin to worship both the sun and the moon. These are generally seen as masculine and feminine principles. The slight shift in the films narrative seems to imply the shift is rather deliberate.
The film indicates that there may have been some serious possible ideas behind the film that deals with gender and a shift to some kind of equality between the sexes. However, the film disintegrated into a skin film and loses track of any real ideas,