One Million Years B.C. (1966)

"Their laws are simple: the strong take everything."

Tonight I have learned a valuable lesson. A film may have great special effects, by no less a creator than the great Ray Harryhausen himself, showing his usual genius even within the consraints of what is clearly a lower budget than he's used to... and still be a terrible film. If you want Ray Harryhausen, watch The Valley of Gwangi. It's a much better film, and has cowboys in it to boot.

There are some awesome monsters in here- a family of pterosaurs; a giant tortoise, a saurapod, a tyrannosaurus and a triceratops being the highlights.They all interact with humans, so... yes, let's gloss over the histotical accuracy and move on to briefy praise the location filming. I suppose there's also amusement value at the start as we see Robert Brown, a future M to Roger Moore's James Bond, as a Palaeolithic chieftain. But that's literally all the positives.

Because this is an awful film. Other than some cringeworthy narration at the start there's no dialogue. The plot consist of M's son beng banished, encountering various monsters, joining another tribe where Raquel Welch's character likes him for some reason, being banished again, fighting more monsters at the end, and finishing off with a bit of natural disaster action. There's a lot of visual spectacle. The film looks good.

And yet... it's just dull. Without dialogue, it simply isn't possible for any of the characters to be interesting, or for us to care about them. And without charactesr to care about we have nothing to watch but empty spectacle.