Prehistory Month Quick Picks and Pans

 

Iceman (1984) An arctic surveying team finds the discovery of the century, a perfectly preserved Neanderthal (John Lone) in an ice cave. Back at the base, a group of doctors somehow manage to revive the frozen caveman. Now the big question becomes what to do with him. Dr. Stanley Shephard (Timothy Hutton) seems to be the only member of the research team with an unwavering moral compass, befriending the caveman, whom he calls Charlie. Separated by his family and comrades by tens of thousands of years, Charlie is a man out of time and without a home. The researchers jump at the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn about his physiology, but at the cost of his freedom. Charlie becomes the team’s lab rat, contained in the base’s vivarium like a zoo animal. Outside of Shephard and Charlie, most of the characters seem underdeveloped, with little to distinguish one from another. The central dilemma, and thoughtful depiction of Charlie, however, make this worth watching. 

Rating: ***½. Available on Blu-ray and DVD

 

Dinosaurus! (1960) Producer Jack H. Harris’s (The Blob, The 4D Man) adventure film is aimed at kids and the kid at heart in all of us. While using dynamite to make room for a new harbor, a construction crew inadvertently dislodges a trio of prehistoric relics: a tyrannosaurus rex, brontosaurus, and a caveman. They’re in for a big surprise when they soon learn that none of them are as dead as presumed. The dinosaurs create havoc for the crew, while the Neanderthal (Gregg Martell, in a fun little semi-comic performance) tries to make sense of the modern world. Forget about scientific accuracy or plausibility. Dinosaurus! is best enjoyed with your favorite junk food and your brain switched to neutral. 

Rating: ***½. Available on Blu-ray and DVD

 

Caveman (1981) Ringo Starr appears as Atouk, a meek caveman who’s unlucky in life and love. He lusts after Lana (played by Starr’s real-life-wife, Barbara Bach), the voluptuous object of his desire, but one thing that stands in the way – her hulking boyfriend Tonda (John Matuszak). Cast out of his tribe by Tonda, Atouk befriends a group of outcasts, including Lar (Dennis Quaid), Tala (Shelley Long) and her blind father Gog (Jack Gilford). The real attraction in this amiable comedy are the cool stop-motion effects by an uncredited Paul Gentry and Hal Miles, featuring cartoonishly goofy but surprisingly lifelike dinosaurs. 

Rating: ***. Available on Blu-ray, DVD and Tubi

 

Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) Think a dumbed down version of Quest for Fire, and you won’t be too far off the mark. Director Michael Chapman’s adaptation of Jean M. Auel’s best-selling novel aspires to be an epic tale, but falls short. When Ayla, a young Cro-Magnon girl, loses her mother and is separated from her people, a roving tribe of Neanderthals take pity on her, reluctantly accepting her into their group. The now grown Ayla (Daryl Hannah) grows up an outcast because of her “unattractive” appearance (not unlike Marilyn on The Munsters), but learns the ways of medicine from her accepting foster parents. The iffy Neanderthal makeup with bad wigs is easy to excuse, but where Quest for Fire required its audience to connect the dots, The Clan of the Cave Bear shows contempt for the viewer, with unnecessary narration describing what we’re already seeing, as well as subtitles for the various grunts and shouts. Some nice cinematography from Jan de Bont and a decent score from Alan Silvestri can’t save this film from its own mediocrity. 

Rating: **½. Available on DVD

 

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) A better title might have been, When Peroxide Ruled the Earth. According to this movie, being a blonde woman in prehistoric times was a death sentence. Fair-haired Sanna (Victoria Vetri) escapes ritual sacrifice to make a life of her own, befriending a fearsome dinosaur and finding the love of her life along the way. The stop-motion effects aren’t quite up to Harryhausen’s standards, but they’re passable enough (at some point, the Hammer production must have run out of time and money, as one scene resorts to the old lizards with wobbly headpieces trick). There isn’t much in the movie that hasn’t been done better in similar flicks (including One Million Years B.C.), but there are worse ways to spend an afternoon. 

Rating: **½. Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Creatures the World Forgot (1971) It wouldn’t be hard for the world to forget this tedious movie. 90 minutes of bad wigs and grunting does not make a compelling story. You have to give the film some credit for not depicting early humans walking with dinosaurs, but what’s left onscreen is so deathly dull. If you can stay awake long enough, there are some unintentional laughs when a caveman is mauled by a guy in a bad bear (or is it supposed to be a giant sloth?) suit, but there’s no other reason to recommend this lesser Hammer film. 

Rating: **. Available on DVD 

 

Prehistoric Women (1950) Okay, this one is just plain awful. A tribe of clean-shaven cavemen with terrible wigs lord over cavewomen who appear to be fresh from the beauty salon. Tired of being abused and subservient to the men, several of the women rebel, setting off to form their own tribe. They take a few of the males as captives, and nature takes its course. The worst part of Prehistoric Women is the incessant, inane narration, basically describing everything you’re seeing as it occurs onscreen. Add the film’s casual attitude toward animal cruelty, and there’s no reason to waste 90 minutes of your life with this stink bomb.   

Rating: *½. Available on DVD and Tubi

Quest for Fire

 

(1981) Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud; Written by Gérard Brach; Based on the novel by J.H. Rosny Sr.; Starring: Everett McGill, Rae Dawn Chong, Ron Perlman, Nicholas Kadi, and Naseer El-Kadi; Available on Blu-ray and DVD 

Rating: ****½

 

“I thought I was making this crap caveman movie. I found out that this guy (Jean-Jacques Annaud) had won an Academy Award for ‘Black and White in Color,’ and he was a distinguished filmmaker. By the time I got nervous, I already had the role, so I didn’t trip myself up.” – Ron Perlman, on auditioning for Quest for Fire (Excerpted from 2017 Variety interview)

It’s no big surprise that most film depictions of early humankind are somewhat lacking in veracity. Whether due to lack of budget, research, or by design, most caveman movies end up looking silly, bordering on self-parody, or straight-out comedies. By default, filmmakers and production companies preferred a more fanciful recreation of primitive people, grunting gibberish, wearing very little, and more often than not, walking amongst dinosaurs (even though the mighty beasts died out many millions of years before our earliest ancestors were on the scene).* Few filmmakers bothered with a “serious” depiction about our early ancestors. One notable exception was Stanley Kubrick’s “Dawn of Man” segment of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which served as a point of reference for French director Jean-Jacques Annaud. Far from the norm, Quest for Fire would reflect the combined efforts of anthropologists, linguists, and many other talented researchers and artists to create a more authentic experience. After three-and-a-half years of development, and an exhaustive search for locations around the world,  filming** commenced in Glencoe, Scotland, Nairobi, Kenya, and Northern Ontario, Canada.*** Budgeted at $12 million, Annaud’s film faced numerous hurdles to overcome, not the least of which were strict Canadian regulations, requiring a certain percentage of Canadian actors, makeup artists and editors. 

* Fun Fact #1: According to Annaud, he purposely wanted to avoid making something like Hammer’s One Million Years B.C. (1966) or Prehistoric Women (1967). 

** Fun Fact #2: In his DVD commentary, Annaud noted that everything was shot live, without post-production trickery. There were very few second takes. 

*** Fun Fact #3: Original plans were to film in Iceland, with its primordial landscape, but shooting was called off due to delays from an ongoing actors’ strike and bad weather.

Set 80,000 years in the past, when early humans were just gaining a foothold at the top of the food chain, they endured multiple threats from creatures and hostile tribes, in defense of the one rare commodity that determined who would survive – the possession of fire. When a Neanderthal tribe (the Ulam people) is ambushed by a savage clan of pre-humans (the Wagabou tribe), they set out to make a new home, carrying their precious fire in a crude lantern fashioned from animal skin and bones. In their haste to relocate, their fire is accidentally extinguished. Three are chosen to bring it back to the tribe: Naoh (Everett McGill), Amoukar (Ron Perlman), and Gaw (Nameer El-Kadi).* As our intrepid protagonists set out on their adventure, dangers lurk around every corner, including a pair of hungry sabretooth cats,** who chase our intrepid protagonists up a tree, a stately herd of wooly mammoths,***/**** and a hostile tribe of cannibals (the Kzamm). But all isn’t misery and strife, when they find a new friend with Ika (Rae Dawn Chong)***** a representative from the Ivaka tribe. Over the course of their travels, they will learn to cooperate with each other, and not only gather fire, but learn to create it.******  

* Fun Fact #4: Nameer El-Kadi had a twin brother, Naseer, who played a fellow member of the Ulam tribe in early scenes. Naseer also stood in for Nameer when his brother was unavailable to shoot a scene involving the tribe’s run-in with a bear. 

** Fun Fact #5: Ligers (half-lion/half-tiger), equipped with prosthetic teeth, were utilized for the “sabretooth” cats. 

*** Fun Fact #6: In a scene when the trio of Neanderthals encounter a herd of wooly mammoths, the filmmakers employed children made up to resemble the leads, so the creatures would appear more massive. 

**** Fun Fact #7: The “mammoths” were 14 circus elephants fitted with masks, specially created hairpieces made from knotted yak hair, and enlarged prosthetic tusks. 

***** Fun Fact #8: According to Annaud, Chong wasn’t an actor when he discovered her on the beach in California, but he persuaded her to act in his movie. 

****** Fun Fact #9: For a pivotal scene in which an Ivaka tribesman creates fire…the filmmakers hired a Masai tribesman

While McGill, Perlman, and El-Kadi do an extraordinary job as the three Neanderthal leads, Rae Dawn Chong deserves special mention for one of the film’s most challenging roles as Ika, a Homo Sapiens woman, who spends a large portion of the film clad in nothing but body paint (actually layers of clay and charcoal, inspired by modern tribes). Much to the delight and dismay of her somewhat dim Neanderthal counterparts, she schools them in the ways of making fire, humor (reacting to a rock falling on Amoukar’s head with laughter), and instructing Naoh in the art of lovemaking. The sex and nudity depicted in the movie are presented in a matter-of-fact manner, not intended to be titillating or exploitive, but reminiscent of an anthropological study.

Quest for Fire invites us to immerse ourselves in the prehistoric world, starting with Annuad’s insistence on no subtitles (despite the urging of a short-sighted film executive). Instead, the filmmakers trust us to infer what’s happening onscreen through the characters’ facial expressions, gesticulations and body language. One of the film’s conceits is that not a single word of modern language is spoken. Instead, author/linguist Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange), devised a language*/** for the Neanderthals, based on Indo-European roots. British zoologist Desmond Morris arranged sessions for the cast to mimic apelike behaviors, and Canadian mime Gary Schwartz (who appears as Rouka, from the Ulam tribe), instructed the actors on movement. Great care also went into the makeup,* to ensure the characters appropriately resembled their parts.   

* Fun Fact #10: The language used by the Ulam tribe included 350 distinct words. 

** Fun Fact #11: Because Burgess was only available for a relatively short time, there was no time to devise a completely different language for Ika’s tribe. Instead, the filmmakers recorded native Inuit speakers for their dialogue. 

*** Fun Fact #12: The elaborate Academy-award-winning makeup (by Sarah Monzani and Michèle Burke) for the principal characters, comprised of five separate pieces, took five hours to apply and two hours to remove. The wigs were designed in three pieces instead of one piece (as in most other caveman films), to make the characters’ hair look more authentic. 

45 years after its release, Quest for Fire remains the gold standard of caveman movies – the touchstone that all other films like it are compared against. While no one alive has ever heard a Neanderthal speak or watched sabretooth cats relentlessly pursue their prey, Quest for Fire’s compelling images are probably the closest thing to a documentarian traveling 80,000 years into the past to observe our ancestors.  

 

Sources for this article: DVD commentary by Jean-Jacques Annaud; “Quest for Fire – Pretty Department, Dirty Work,” by Suzanna Plowright (Cinema Canada, September 1981); “Final Cut: My First Time in Variety – Ron Perlman” (Variety, Sept. 20, 2017); “Canadian Regulations Under Fire As ‘Quest’ Shoot Continues,” by Gloria Kissin (The Hollywood Reporter, May 5, 1981)