MovieChat Forums > When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1971) Discussion > A Dissenting View

A Dissenting View

posted 16 years ago by georgegauthier
10 replies | jump to latest

I always liked this movie, absurd as the premise is of dinosaurs and humans together. Especially silly is the cukoo sequence when the mother dinosaur takes the girl for her own offspring.

I found it easy to follow the conversations among the cavepersons. In context, with broad gestures, facial expressions, and only 27 words, the dialogue did not require subtitles.

I also admired the gumption of the young male lead who willingly pranced around in the skimpiest costume I had ever seen to date on screen. I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s when actors portraying Indians and African natives wore swimsuits under their generous loincloths. From the side, Hawdon's loincloth virtually disappeared. Even the back covered less than half his fundament. One brave young man. Or maybe a bit of an exhibitionist.

The producers evidently wanted the female and gay segment of their audience to appreciate him as a sex object. Robin Hawdon's slender build was a nice change of pace from the muscleman you might otherwise expect. The sparse beard was just right. Not a clean shaven caveman like Victor Mature in the 1940 version of 1,000,000 B.C. Not hairy like the elders either.

No, there was no toothy Allosaurus. Too bad. Still the stop motion animation was well done.

[–] JPfanatic93 16 years ago

I was too busy drooling over Vetri to notice Hawdon. But you're right about the animation.

Must have WDRTE DVD release!!!

[–] obit1 16 years ago

Originally, Jim Danforth, who directed the visual effects and handled all the matte paintings and animated most of the dinosaur models, brought with him to London an armature of a theropod...It could've been an allosaurus or a ceratosaurus... When he placed it on the table, Line Producer Aida Young said "Oh NO! We aren't going to have any of THOSE dinosaurs in the film...they look like a POOF wearing high heels!"

A poof was British slang for a homosexual.
http://www.woodywelch.com

[–] Woodyanders 16 years ago

I think this film is a great deal of infectiously silly fun. You really can't go wrong with the delicious Victoria Vetri in a skimpy two piece fur bikini, now can you?

"We're all part Shatner/And part James Dean/Part Warren Oates/And Steven McQueen"

[–] hobnob53 15 years ago

Victoria Vetri's bikini was not fur -- Raquel Welch's connected bikini in One Million B.C. was fur, but VV's was -- well, I'm not really sure...but definitely not fur. Probably dino-skin. Pounded cactus? Either way, she looked sensational, her bikini was much skimpier (and consequently much better suited to such a hot environment) than Raq's, and, apparently, far more easily removed...probably because the two pieces weren't hooked together by a needless strand of material in front, a la Raquel's.

Best go back and take 20 or 30 more slow-motion looks at VV's 'kini just to satisfy yourself that it isn't fur. I know this is asking a lot, but it's imperative we settle this once and for all. I'd better go re-check too.

[–] obit1 15 years ago

Because of the tropical desert/oasis type of settings for the movie (and the fact that there were no fur bearing creatures wandering about) it seemed only natural that the prehistoric people would make their clothing out of lizard skin and such....although I think Kingsor (Patrick Allen) the leader of the mountain tribe, had a big old furry toga...well, rank has its privileges.

Some of the bikinis and such were made out of leather and some of them out of thin, cured latex, by the costume department, although I can't tell which is which. The cave girls' clothing, designed by Carl Toms, was quite good except....

Jim Danforth said that Vickie's breasts kept popping out of her top...Now where are THOSE dvd "extras" ???

http://www.woodywelch.com

[–] hobnob53 15 years ago

Oh, come now, obit, what do you take us for? You and I both know they didn't have latex in olden days.

By the way, was Danforth complaining???

[–] obit1 15 years ago

Your humor strikes me in a jugular vein! LOL

I looked at the suits again on the dvd (and boy, my arms are tired!) and it LOOKS like the suits that they made for the girls are the latex ones that Carl Toms designed but I can't be sure.

And no he wasn't...LOL! (Jim and the guys used to joke about frequenting the Kit Kat Club in Hollywood.)

One of the things that always bothered me about the movie's publicity was those neat and nifty pictures of a totally nude Victoria Vetrie running from the big green mother dinosaur and posing underneath a gaint crab. The posing shot was obviously a "paste-up" but the running scene looked like a Jim Danforth composite and when I worked with him at Cascade pictures I asked him about that and he laughed and said..."That was just a paste up too...."

Then he chuckled, and said something to the effect that the producers couldn't afford to cut out ANY completed shots....and he turned away from me and mumbled, "They wouldn't dare."

The nude paste ups (as well as a lot of straight nude photography of Vickie hanging out on the rocks and stuff at Fuerteventura (where most of the film was shot) were featured in a Playboy article that year, the annual SEX IN CINEMA article, and they made a big deal out of Vickie because, under her "stage name", Angela Dorian, she was a Playboy centerfold and Playmate of the Year after that.

Anyway, here's some Hollywood gossip....Victoria Vetri and I have/had the same doctor....Dale Prokupek of Beverly Hills...he knows her as "the gal that they threw out of the window in Rosemary's Baby."

Yeah well, ok.

But more apt, she is that jiggly Jurrasic cave girl to millions. And that's the way it is.

Oh, by the way, he was schedualing her for a colonoscopy (true)...I guess Victoria Vetri is a woman whose body of work is worth looking into.

Ahem!

http://www.woodywelch.com

[–] hobnob53 15 years ago

I'd rather be her gynecologist.

[–] The_Dying_Flutchman 15 years ago

Ho ho. Do you own a rare copy of this in the uncut version? And hob, are you, perhaps, in the muvie biz cuz you know so much.

What is the sound an imploding pimp makes?

[–] hobnob53 15 years ago

I did manage to buy a copy of the uncut DVD of this film before it was withdrawn from circulation last year. First time I saw its infamous nudity (apart from b&w stills of a couple of scenes). Adds nothing to the plot, but gives one a broader perspective on Ms. V.

O! This rampant sexual innuendo.

No, not in the movie biz. Just a lot of trivia acquired during a misspent youth.