When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1971)

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is a surprising Oscar nominee. While the special effects for which it was nominated are certainly well done for the time period in which it was made, the rest of the film is rather a mess and too simplistic. The dinosaurs are intriguing examples of stop-motion animation, and it’s fun to watch them. This work isn’t at the level of Ray Harryhausen, to be honest, but it works within the context of the film. The plot involves a love story between a blonde named Sanna (played by Victoria Vetri, barely contained within her fur bikini), who escapes from an attempt by a tribe who lives on a mountainside to sacrifice her to the sun god, and a caveman named Tara (Robin Hawdon, tan and lean), who saves her when she falls into the ocean. Tara and the others on his raft take Sanna to where they live, a beach community. He tries to move Sanna into his beach hut, but his brunette girlfriend is insanely jealous of his attraction to the blonde woman. Tara and Sanna escape together and have to keep running away and hiding for much of the film, getting separated and reunited repeatedly. They also encounter a series of dinosaurs, including one that thinks Sanna is its mother, I think, and the actual dinosaur mother, who seems to think that Sanna is her baby. That’s a bit of a stretch by a writer, but coherence isn’t necessarily the script’s strongest attribute. For example, having dinosaurs and humans existing side-by-side is a historical anachronism, but we are willing to forgive a great deal for our entertainment. By the way, quite a bit of the plot is actually somewhat of a guess since the dialogue is not in English and there are no subtitles for the language they made up for the film. Some words become recognizable after repeated listening. For example, “neekro” (trying to spell these words correctly is rather futile) seems to mean “kill” as “kill her” or “kill him.” Akita (?) seems to be an all-purpose directional word: “come here” or “go there” or just “here” or “there.” None of the performers were famous, and none of them really became famous after this film was released, but it would be difficult to make a career on a film like this. But they are all relatively attractive and barely clothed, and this Hammer Studios production includes a couple of sex scenes that makes one puzzle how it received a G rating. Reportedly, Steven Spielberg was inspired by When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth to make his own dinosaur movie, Jurassic Park; there’s even a tribute to the earlier film near the end of the first Jurassic Park film. However, if you put the two films side-by-side, you’ll see just how remarkably far the technology progressed in only a couple of decades.

Oscar Nomination: Best Special Visual Effects