"When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth" is Hammer Studios' sequel to/remake of its "One Million Years B.C." After such an outstanding film as the latter, the sequel is bound to be a letdown, such as this one is. Fortunately, it does have some decent prehistoric monster stop-motion creations (only one of which, incidentally, is actually a dinosaur in the technical sense) - brought to life by Jim Danforth, they don't have quite the excellence of Ray Harryhausen's creatures, but are still well above average. Their presence here accounts for about five of the six stars attached to this review. The problem is the rest of the film. The prehistoric world is fairly bland and boring, and none of the "stars" has Raquel Welch's screen charisma. The plot itself is a rather lame rehash of the first film's love story. But the most objectionable feature is, oddly, the "language" invented for script by British speculative fiction writer J.G. Ballard. One would have expected so much more from a writer of the calibrate of Ballard, but the "language" consists of about five words repeated over and over again ("akita" being the most repeat offender); this is indescribably irritating. All in all, fans of palaeo-cinema should find the dinosaur sequences worth a look, with the remainder of the film being dispensable.
Review of When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
