I
was tempted to do a review of One
Million B.C. (1940) with Victor Mature and Carole Landis as it introduced
Victor Mature as a hunky leading man. Carole Landis wasn’t hard on the eyes,
either. What was hard on the eyes was its horrific special
effects. Thankfully, the director did what he could to hide the rubber suits
behind lots of studio shrubbery. With the help of Ray Harryhausen, the
historically inaccurate dinosaurs featured in the 1966 remake of One Million Years B.C. were far better.
(Please note the slight name change.) There still were real critters blown up
large on the screen as in the earlier movie, but Harryhausen claimed he did
this so that the audience would think the creatures were real. I don’t think
anybody bought that explanation, but they did buy tickets. This is no
historical drama. This is a caveman movie. A flick that’s guaranteed to show a
lot of skin under skinned skin. It was the highly unrecognized wardrobe efforts
of Carl Toms that produced one of the most recognizable images from One Million Years B.C. , Raquel Welch
in a fur bikini, that would go on to be a pop-culture icon.
