Reviews

This movie came out in 1967, a year before 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY . . . but they've always been related in my mind. Maybe it was just the time, maybe you had to be there . . . but back in the late 60's there weren't many big "science fiction" productions . . . or in this case sweeping epics about the past or the future.

One thing the two films share is a lack of dialog . . . in both cases the director's sit back and the actions tell the story. As well both films are happy to display their special effects moments as set pieces . . . "hey, we spent a lot of money on this?!"

Don Chaffey's long cuts and static landscape shots at the beginning of the film are very much like Kubrick's shots of Africa at the start of 2001 . . . and both films are literal and allegorical treatments of evolution as a theme.

Of course, that went with the times. The late 60's were a point where the evolution of society was a focal point of culture in general . . . both the Star Child and Miss Welch in her iconic bearskin bikini became the late 60's poster children for mankind's evolution.

Interestingly, though Ray Harryhausen did the special effects for ONE MILLION YEARS BC, the film isn't at all like a Harryhausen film, nor is it much like the films of it's production company Hammer Films (except perhaps for the two sequels WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH, and CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT.)

Hammer - with Harryhausen's involvement - had been interested in remaking KING KONG, but in the late 1960's RKO's rights to the Kong character were shared among Universal and Toho (KING KONG VS GODZILLA) and Rankin- Bass (the cartoon Kong which served as a basis for the Toho film KING KONG ESCAPES.)

In fact, right at the time that Hammer would have been inquiring, Toho would have been working on preproduction of a film in which King Kong met Mothra and battled a giant shrimp (Ebirah) in the South Seas. (That film mutated, Godzilla replaced KING KONG, and it became GODZILLA VS EBIRAH aka GODZILLA VS THE SEA MONSTER.)

So Hammer moved on to a remake of the Hal Roach 1(no YEARS) MILLION BC.

With it's lingering shots of vast landscapes, and the very Italian score by Mario Nascembe(with the percussion and use of a chorus it could almost be Ennio Morricone . . .), the film is pretty much unique in Hammer's oeuvre . . . and with it's focus on sex (well, possession at least) and violence in a harsh landscape of sharp desert light or fire lit darkness, it's pretty unique as a Harryhausen picture too.

Opinions about the film really depend on the point-of-view you adopt (again like 2001). Those who like their acting to be dialog driven complain about the acting, but actually everyone puts in a good performance here and I have no doubt that beautiful Napondi (Martine Beswicke) wouldn't think twice about impaling Luana (Raquel Welch) with that antelope horn she wields.

It's been speculated that the schedule was tough for Harryhausen, resulting in a scene with a photo-optically enlarged Iguana and Tarantula . . . although Harryhausen says the producers wanted those sequences added. (If you look closely you'll see a giant cricket in the scene with the Tarantula, probably the first giant cricket until 2005's KING KONG with it's herd of killer wetas, and doubtlessly in their to excite the Tarantual into a "performance.)

The fact that publicity photos show a battle between cavemen and a brontosaurus that never happens in the film probably backs up the story that the schedule was too short for Harryhausen.

Nevertheless, the stop motion on view is excellent . . . except for the Brontosaurus who looks about the size of Godzilla. The pacing and animation in the battle with the giant turtle Archelon is excellent, and most people just accept the turtle as real. The Allosaurus attack . . .possibly one of Harryhausen's most exciting sequences ever . . . is terrific. In many ways it holds up even today as a model of the integration of live action and special effects The classic Triceratops battle is interesting for utilizing a Ceratosaurus instead of Tyrannosaurus . . . but with our two heroes in the classic "trapped in a cave" position it's a bit static. However the Pterodactyl scenes, and the big volcano and earthquake finish are pretty riveting.

All in all, ONE MILLION YEARS BC is still a lot of fun if your in the right mood. Again, like 2001, the message seems to be that we can evolve and get better . . . but ultimately just as the monolith transforming Dave makes the standoff between Russians and Americans on the moon a non-issue, the battle between the Rock and the Sand tribe becomes . . . well . . . pretty irrelevant when the forces of nature - Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes - make mankind's aspirations tiny in comparison.

The film has been restored twice in the last decade, and the recent 20th Century Fox DVD has comparisons of the work done (the original negative was lost). The European version clocks in at 100 minutes . . . and most people say that it is an improvement, with more character scenes and a different order of sequences at the beginning of the film. The Fox version is the North American release version that is 91 minutes long. Spanish and English trailers on the DVD seem to be identical, with the narrator simply translated into Spanish.

Ultimately, any dinosaur or monster fan, fan of Ray Harryhausen's work, or fan of "Hammer glamor" is going to want to own this film.

"A creeping terror of destruction - a nightmare of HORROR and FEAR!"

I can't stand Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. My favorite Quatermass is Andrew Keir . . . in QUATERMASS AND THE PIT . . . who projects the right level of competency and human fallibility, while at the same time seeming, well, just approachable. The kind of guy who would have people lining up for his classes at University . . .

As for Donlevy, in an interview in 1995, Quatermass creator/writer Nigel Kneale said: "Donlevy played him like a mechanic, a creature with a completely closed mind. He could make nothing of any imaginative lines, and simply barked and bawled his way through the plot. A bully whose emotional range ran from annoyance to fury".

Luckily, Brian Donlevy doesn't seem as much of a bully in this film, mostly because he is too overwhelmed by the threat of alien invasion - usually finding himself threatened.

The beginning of the picture has always seemed a little too convenient . . . Quatermass and his rocket scientists are designing a base for the moon . . . and surprise . . . when he goes out for a drive he discovers that a similar base has already been constructed on Earth.

There are some nice optical of the base . . . though unfortunately they don't match up to the live action material shot at the Shell Haven Refinery in Essex. Still, the general look of the film is enhanced by the location shooting . . . as usual the Hammer production staff make the production look a lot more expensive than the 92,000 pounds spent on it (er, with an additional $25,000 for Donlevy).

This is the Quatermass film with the strongest sense of paranoia . . . besides creating an atmosphere conversion plant disguised as an artificial food production plant, the aliens have taken over humans (almost di rigeur  for any self-respecting alien invasion in the 1950s . . . and certainly a sociocultural phenomena of the era of spys and counter-spys, not to mention the McCarthy communist witch-hunts).

The people of Winnerden Flats are ordinary joes who try to keep working on the secret project while "overshots" - the miniature spacecraft in which the invaders are arriving - riddle their houses and land like swiss cheese. In typical 50's fashion though, the good people never question the Government, and are suspicious of Quatermass when he starts asking questions.

Though at first it seems that Quatermass' investigation will be stymied, he finds a sympathetic MP, Vincent Broadhead, who sneaks him into a party of Government officials going to look at the project. (One of the biggest shocks is when Quatermass finds Broadhead, who has snuck away from the "official tour" and fallen (we never quite understand how) into the "artificial food."

Covered with black, slimy, steaming muck, he begs Quatermass not to touch him and croaks, "The food, it burns!"

(Black and white photography probably make this scene much worse . . . you can really imagine how Broadhead feels as his flesh boils and steams away.)

Ultimately the "enemy from space" is a multi-organism monster that is assembling itself into huge colony creatures inside the dome . . . monsters that resemble nothing so much as Hedorah the Smog Monster from GODZILLA VS THE SMOG MONSTER. There's some good miniature work when the monsters smash out . . . and a great climax where Inspector Lomax and Professor Quatermass inspire the local workers to revolt . . . leading to another hair-raising moment when they realize that the aliens are forcing their human zombies to seal one of the atmosphere pipes by cramming their bodies into it.

As usual, you can find Michael Ripper in a nice little role. Somehow the politics and monsters fable, with it's hapless scientists and workers revolt, feels a little more politically sophisticated than similar American films like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Director Val Guest is a plus as usual because of his penchant for realism and ordinary life which makes the extraordinary events much more convincing (as in other Guest films like THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT and THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE).

This film was originally a BBC Television serial, like THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT and QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. In England it was co-billed with the first Brigit Bardot film AND GOD CREATED WOMAN . . . surely the reason for the later Hammer title FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN.

Unlike most Toho films, Varan just doesn't have much subtext. He's not a "walking nuclear firestorm" or even a pterodactyl version of the WW2 aerial attacks (RODAN). He shares some of Mothra's qualities . . . natives do revere him as a God . . . but unlike Mothra whose devotion to her human charges and pheonix-like ability for rebirth edge her into the "maybe she really IS a GOD" category . . . well, Varan is pretty much revealed to be an confused prehistoric survival once he emerges from his watery home.

The film starts when an unusual butterfly is discovered. Researchers head to the"Japanese Tibet" and are killed in a mysterious accident - - - could it be a landslide or is it something else?

A second group, this time a lady reporter and a photographer (characters soon to become a central item of many Toho monster films) join the scientists. When a child breaks the village taboo . . . er, don't go near the lake . . . to find his dog, the villagers and priest-headman give him up for dead. But the visitors break the taboo and save the little boy.

Well, Varan emerges . . . a prehistoric survival of the Varanopod family . . . and wrecks the village. The military is sent in and basically succeed in making Varan angry and sending him on a second rampage. Towards the end of the first battle (and if you've only ever seen the Myron Healy version, this will be new to you), Varan spreads his arms to reveal membranous wings. Stretched between his upper arms and legs, this led some reviewers to consider him a mutated flying squirrel, but he is clearly supposed to be a dinosaur.

After flying away, Varan participates in a number of battles at sea, which climax when he comes ashore at Haneda airport. Most of the footage is original - but there are some out-takes of military hardware, and even one shot of a tail smashing a building, which are from GODZILLA. These, plus the score by Akria Ifukube which features both old themes and music that would come to be associated with the Godzilla series, give one a pleasant sense of deja vu.

The original North American VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE, edits in Myron Healy as a U.S. Navy Commander on Kunish Hiroshima island doing anti-saline experiments in a salt-water lake. This version is one of the poorest "reedits" of all time. Probably the ONLY reason to watch it, is to prove to yourself that - comparatively - the Raymond Burr re-cut of GODZILLA is a fine work of art . . . sustaining dramatic tension, keeping the integrity of the characters, and delivering most of the message of the film. In comparison, Myron Healy and friends act superior to the Japanese, do nothing suspenseful, and occasionally gaze in the direction of stock footage.

The new DVD of Varan on Media Blasters Tokyo Shock label, does not include the Myron Healy curiosity, but features a pristine print of this widescreen black and white feature from 1958, and extras that include a (very) cut-down version that was originally made to air on television, a commentary by creature-suit maker Keizo Murase, and also a terrific show on molding and casting in which Mr. Murase shows Godzilla suit-maker (and Varan fan) Fuyuki Shinada how Varan's skin texture was made.

I'm in the part of the audience that would gladly pay the price of the disc just to watch this special.

Varan is, after all, a GREAT monster. Very convincing walking on all fours or standing upright, Varan is just a monster with a lot of personality.

However, as Toho monster films go, Varan is very much a lesser effort and seems strangely - well - American. Apparently the idea was that the finished film was going to be sold to an American television network, but the network pulled out so that the film could be made as a theatrical release.

Oddly, that makes VARAN historically interesting. Since the film was made for the American market it follows a very set pattern. People disappear, a monster is blamed, more people search, the monster appears, monster fights Army, scientist thinks of solution, monster is killed. It's the story featured in THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS and crystallized in any number of later 50's SF films.

And it's this pattern, without the subtext and poetry of most Japanese monster films, that makes VARAN an oddball Toho film.

If there is any subtext in the film, it's that all of this mess was created by the scientists who ignored the traditional village priest in the first place. Varan had apparently lived in his lake for hundreds of years before the scientists decided to break the village taboos. Let one kid and a dog sneak past a fence and . . . before you know it . . . you're bringing in tanks, battle cruisers, and death from above.

However, this really doesn't seem to be the overt message of the film, as our villagers are pretty much forgotten once VARAN heads south to the big city.

Some of the script elements here would be reused to better effect in KING KONG VERSUS GODZILLA . . . the little kid who has to be rescued by the village from the monster, the lone girl who is almost trampled by the giant monster and only just saved by her scientist girlfriend . . . even the trip to the village of people who worship a monster God. These similarities are made even more evident by sections Ifukube's score for KING KONG VERSUS GODZILLA that were clearly built upon pieces from VARAN.

This is one of my more pleasant discoveries in the MGM MIDNIGHT MOVIES series. It's the kind of movie that's a happy surprise to find on DVD, blending "so bad they're good moments" with genuinely creepy moments, and with a different approach to Voodoo (and shrunken heads . . .) than most genre pictures.

First of all the print is EXCEPTIONAL. (In fact, I'm sure the scene painters never realized that the spackle painting or faux marble paint jobs on the Drake's family's WOODEN CRYPT would ever be seen so clearly.)

Made in 1959, it was directed by Edward L Cahn who helmed a lot of my favorites such as Invisible Invaders (1959) Curse of the Faceless Man (1958) It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) Voodoo Woman (1957) The She-Creature (1956) Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)

JONATHAN DRAKE's effects are surprisingly strong for the time . . . a headless corpse in a coffin, many "shrunken head" close-ups, a henchman with his lips sewn shut, the preparation of shrunken heads and a freezer to keep the heads in . . .

Effects are by Charles Gemora . . . who also played Gorillas and created the Martian for George Pal's WAR OF THE WORLDS.

The film is oddly shot . . . it feels like a B-movie TWILIGHT ZONE episode with all the action being shot on inside sets (cars always drive either five feet onto or off of the set and then the action cuts). If it wasn't shot for television (and given the level of the grue it probably wasn't) it sure feels like an extra long episode of THRILLER.

The story concerns the Drake family, whose great-grandfather led an expedition to free a Swiss trader in the Upper Amazon and, after a massacre of the natives there, were cursed for all eternity. At age 60 (it's a pretty benign curse) the Drake men die - of shock - their heads disappear, only to have their skulls show up later on in the family vault.

One of the joys of the film is that Jonathan Drake has to make a 2 day journey by train to his brother's house because "no planes fly there" but the cop who shows up to investigate the brother's death . . . a tough talking guy in a pork-pie hat . . . is clearly American, as is the brother's Doctor . . . though they seem to have a British Butler. Are they somewhere in South America . . . hmm, the plant life looks like a studio version of Maine. Frankly, the whole story is happening in some delirious alternate reality . . . somewhere between Ed Wood land and the Roger Corman continent . . . and that just makes things more fun.

Henry Daniell, as Dr. Zurich, chews up scenery and spits it out. He's creepy and great. (His greatest genre role was probably in the 1945 THE BODY SNATCHER.) And the ultimate revelation about the villain is just . . . well, very cool and . . . well, lets just say you'll probably have a hard time guessing what's going on even if you have been wondering about Dr. Zurich's gloves.

Katie found the film genuinely creepy at times, but this is balanced out by some earnestly played hokum that will probably have most people smiling more than they're cowering in fear.

So, put on the popcorn, settle back, and enjoy the kind of movie that "they just don't make like that anymore." It's double-billed with Karloff's VOODOO ISLAND on the MGM MIDNIGHT MOVIES DVD, a great thematic pairing but THE FOUR SKULLS OF JONATHAN DRAKE is definitely the film that will bear repeated viewings.

BEST STan

MGM brought this film out as part of their Midnight Movies series in 2001 on tape . . . it just cries out for a good DVD release now.

The first of 3 film versions of Nigel Kneale's Quatermass BBC serials, the odd choice of Brian Donlevy as lead may ultimately end up what is the most distinctive element of Val Guest's direction for the first two films.

My copy of the tape is the MGM/UA film from 1996 . . . the International Version - which apparently has 3 extra minutes. I know watching "THE CREEPING UNKNOWN" on TV when I was young, there were none of the fairly grisly corpse-shots.

Oddly enough, one of the CREEPING UNKNOWN posters features a creature that is somewhat reminiscent of Godzilla (though I suppose it's suppose to be an unseen phase of the creature that exists after it absorbs the lion and other big cats in the zoo).

Richard Wordsworth (who is also very memorable in REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN and CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF . . . as well as THE TRIPODS on TV much later) is great as the astronaut possessed by an other-worldly presence. At times his performance seems a bit inspired by Boris Karloff's Frankenstein . . .as do events like his brief encounter with the young girl by the bank of the river. Wordsworth is not only great at conveying the pain of the transition, but also at getting across the impression that the mind of astronaut Victor Carroon is still fighting to gain control at times.

Of course, the thing that struck me when I was young was the fact that he could absorb other life-forms, squeezing a cactus to bring about the thorny,gray cactus hands that he (off-screen) uses to clobber and absorb others. But then there's the horrific shot of his face from the bushes and the trailing whatsit (his pants, his leg, a tail) as he goes hunting for the zoo animals. The piece of Carroon that Quatermass finds and later feeds white rats to (until it's big enough to break out of a glass aquarium and crawl around the room) is a really clever touch that helps us visualize just how BAD the monster probably looks . . . and of course it's a touch of genius to have the BBC crew doing a documentary on Westminster Abbey, where the monster ends up finally, so that details can be obscured on the small screen. (Of course by this time the monster leaves a slug-like slime trail wherever it goes . . . and like the Thing it's going to let loose spores.) Apparently Les Bowie used bovine entrails and tripe to help embellish the monster - tripe is a quality it shares with it's later cousin, the ALIEN, of course.

As well, cut-away edits to an Octopus eye are quite effective and pretty much consistent with what we see of the monster.

There's been frequent talk of a re-make of this film, and I worry a bit about that, since the fairly restrained details and the generally competent cast are what make this film scary. Like Jan de Bont's awful re-make of THE HAUNTING, a bunch of CGI details and too much viewing of the monster could make the events seem a bit laughable . . . it's the actors like Jack Warner and Lionel Jeffries that pull the film off, as their reactions make you believe.

That said, my favorite Quatermass is Andrew Keir, and I find Brian Donlevy a nasty piece of work (he was nicer in GAMMERA). Basically Quatermass seems like a blustering thug . . . completely unapologetic for the near disaster he has created. Admittedly sometimes, as when he stalks past all the police and government officials to find his men and "start again" on his deadly Xperiment - the film has a kind of giddy noirish quality.

So I guess in some ways, I am interested by the way that Val Guest plays Quatermass like a monster himself. (When Carroon's wife springs him from the hospital, she has to hire a private detective - again, very noir - and tells Carroon she's going to "get you out of his (Quatermass') clutches!")

Still, I'm sympathetic to writer Nigel Kneale, who felt his sympathetic scientist had been turned into a bully.

Anyway, this is a great, atmospheric, and scary science-fiction horror movie, and well worth catching up with.