Please don't spend money on this.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Released in 1970 and directed by Val Guest, "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth" is a prehistoric adventure/fantasy starring Victoria Vetri as a blond cavebabe who survives her tribe's sacrificial ritual to their sun god. She then tries to join another tribe where she attracts the attention of one of the dudes (Robin Hawdon) and the jealousy of one of the brunette babes (Imogen Hassall).Wow, this flick is painfully bad. I was seriously tempted to fast-forward through the second half. This was surprising because it's basically the follow-up to Hammer's most successful film, 1966's "One Million Years BC." Unfortnately, it's nowhere the same quality. Things go wrong right away when the camera switches from excellent Canary Island locations to an obvious indoor set when it focuses on close-ups of the tribe on top of a hill. Worse, the story is dull and there's WAY too much cave-babbling, e.g. "Akita, AKITA!" The stop-motion F/X work is good, but there isn't as much as in the former film, like the great T-rex versus triceratops and the allosaurus sequences. While I like the friendly baby dino and Hassall is significantly hotter than the overrated Vetri, neither makes up for the movie's mortal flaws.The film runs 96 minutes and was shot in the Canary Islands and England (sets).GRADE: D

The Cave Man vs Dinosaur movie is ridiculed as unscientific. Harryhausen came to the defense of the concept in his Film Fantasy Scrapbook-casually suggesting archaeological evidence was pushing back human origins or closing the gap between them and dinosaurs. We will never prove 100 percent what was living in prehistoric times and I could not care less one way or the other. This is supposed to be a fantasy film. The idea of humans alongside dinosaurs isn't meant to be historical fact, but imaginative fun.In watching this film and its predecessor, what strikes me the most is the total professional manner the actors treat the subject matter. Especially impressive is Patrick Allen who spends a good deal of time shouting Neekro but handles it like he's doing Richard the Third! He behaves as professionally as Frank Langella playing an evil toy in Masters of the Universe.These days people would wink at the camera or have a joke-filled script--claiming that its the only way to deal with such nonsense. One thing about the 60s and a studio like Hammer was that they treated their films seriously.My only real criticism is the inclusion of a quick shot from Irwin Allen's despicable Lost World where in two reptiles were mutilated and killed for the film. Other than that I think the movie does its best with its budget and resources and its unfortunate movies today are too uptight and unimaginative to try something like this.

This is one of my all-time favorite schlock films. The plot is flimsy, the babes are hot, the historical aspect is all wrong, and it is in color (a rarity for a Hammer film) When I first saw this film on late night cable, it was the uncut version. In the uncut version, Tara (played by Robin Hawdon) fell down on his back in one scene, his loin cloth flipped up, and out popped his family jewels in their entirety for all to see! I have the DVD and this scene was deleted (darn it he was quite the lad!) Even though the scene lasted a few seconds, you still got a good look under his "kilt." And besides, he was the only male actor in that film that had a little tuft of pubes poking out of the top of his loin cloth. I guess he was the hunka-hunka of the day. Sanna is gorgeous and is the object of Tara's eye since she wondered into caveman camp. The language is made up of gibberish. For days, we were going around the apartment after watching this film yelling "AKEETA! AKEETA!" which seems to be the primary word in the film next to Neecro. I don't want to tell more of the plot, get the DVD on Amazon or EBay. Too bad it isn't the uncut version where you can see all the flubs including the cables that held up the pterodactyl's legs as he snatched Tara and took him to the nest.

Hammer's follow up the successful One Million Years BC concerns a tribe that sacrifices blonde women to appease their sun god. Sanna a blonde woman escapes during said ritual, the tribal leader Kingsor makes it his duty to find her searching high and low throughout his domain. Sanna (Victoria Vetri) is rescued by an alpha male Tara, from a nearby fishing tribe, he falls for her immediately, but Kingsor turns up to cause trouble. Rather silly caveman social drama that uses annoying caveman talk as a means of communication throughout, it does get repetitive and tiresome towards the end. The plot also involves the creation of the Earths moon which naturally causes more concern for the primitives and also a rather unusual use of a Tsunami, well before they became popular. Another positive is the lovely females whose fur and leopardskin bikinis are very easy on the eye, if you're lucky the first edition of this DVD includes nudity from playboy centrefold Vetri.