I see where Lon Chaney Jr. made this picture right after the Oscar nominated picture "Of Mice and Men" in 1939. Talk about a reversal of fortune.
So gee, where to start. Probably the best thing this picture has to offer is the faux dinosaur battle between the tricked out alligator and the spotted lizard some way into the picture. I love the way these old flicks took ordinary animals and made it look like they were monstrous dinosaurs. Also can't forget how patching up your ordinary every day elephant with a mohair suit qualified them as woolly mammoths and mastodons.
You know, those prehistoric cavemen were a hardy bunch weren't they? When Tumak (Victor Mature) went over the cliff in his battle with Akhoba (Chaney) he should have been a goner, don't you think? Instead, he just brushes himself off long enough to get sideswiped into a river by one of those mammoths. That might have been bad news if he hadn't run into Loana (Carole Landis) of the Shell People. Loana spends some time teaching Tumak the benefits of sharing food and even introduces him to the folks once she figures he might be a handy guy to have around.
What struck me was how a hardy bunch like the Rock People didn't have their own spear tips fashioned from stone or how they hadn't caught on to the concept of fire, even though they lived a mere stone's throw up river from the Shell folks. Oh well, no use wondering about such things when so much other zany stuff was going on. Like Tumak wrestling a mini-triceratops or teaching the youngsters at the Shell camp how to shake apples out of a tree.
The finale was pretty exciting and I couldn't believe the scene where the fleeing cave-girl got smothered by the lava pouring out of the volcano. The rock slide that killed the big lizard was thrilling too, but I did have to wonder why agile creatures like iguanas couldn't avoid falling into those crevices when the ground started separating. But for 1940 I guess this was pretty amazing stuff, so who am I to judge.
So gee, where to start. Probably the best thing this picture has to offer is the faux dinosaur battle between the tricked out alligator and the spotted lizard some way into the picture. I love the way these old flicks took ordinary animals and made it look like they were monstrous dinosaurs. Also can't forget how patching up your ordinary every day elephant with a mohair suit qualified them as woolly mammoths and mastodons.
You know, those prehistoric cavemen were a hardy bunch weren't they? When Tumak (Victor Mature) went over the cliff in his battle with Akhoba (Chaney) he should have been a goner, don't you think? Instead, he just brushes himself off long enough to get sideswiped into a river by one of those mammoths. That might have been bad news if he hadn't run into Loana (Carole Landis) of the Shell People. Loana spends some time teaching Tumak the benefits of sharing food and even introduces him to the folks once she figures he might be a handy guy to have around.
What struck me was how a hardy bunch like the Rock People didn't have their own spear tips fashioned from stone or how they hadn't caught on to the concept of fire, even though they lived a mere stone's throw up river from the Shell folks. Oh well, no use wondering about such things when so much other zany stuff was going on. Like Tumak wrestling a mini-triceratops or teaching the youngsters at the Shell camp how to shake apples out of a tree.
The finale was pretty exciting and I couldn't believe the scene where the fleeing cave-girl got smothered by the lava pouring out of the volcano. The rock slide that killed the big lizard was thrilling too, but I did have to wonder why agile creatures like iguanas couldn't avoid falling into those crevices when the ground started separating. But for 1940 I guess this was pretty amazing stuff, so who am I to judge.