transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] You're listening to The Common Descent Podcast. Hello, Will.

Speaker 2:
[00:20] Hello, David.

Speaker 1:
[00:21] Hello, listeners, and welcome back to Silver Screen Science, the special side series of Common Descent, where we talk about the science in movies. This year, throughout the month of April, we are doing our Silver Screen Science on the theme of old school dinosaurs. So far in this series, we have remained firmly in the first half of the 1900s, but now we are moving into firmly in a little bit past that, we're in the 60s now, only slightly less old school. And actually, today's movie is an interesting one because it bridges this gap. Today, we are discussing the movie One Million Years BC, which was released in 1966, directed by Don Chaffee. It is a remake of the 1940 One Million BC.

Speaker 2:
[01:13] Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1:
[01:15] Which came out the same year as Fantasia. This movie has a bunch of dinosaurs, stop motion dinosaurs. The special effects in this movie were done by Ray Harryhausen, who is famous for a lot of his work in like monster movies. He was also the protégé of Willis O'Brien, who did the special dinosaur effects in the earlier movies that we've talked about.

Speaker 2:
[01:38] Which is very fun. It's a very nice generational connection.

Speaker 1:
[01:43] Yeah, one million years BC., like I said, effects by Harryhausen directed by Don Chaffee, starring Raquel Welch and Raquel Welch's fur bikini, among other stars. In this episode, we will be discussing the movie and the science in this movie. If you are interested in hearing more about our personal experience with watching this movie, we will be releasing a bonus episode of More Thoughts over on our Patreon for our subscribers. So go check that out. And before we get any further spoiler warning, we will be discussing this movie in its entirety. So if for some reason you're dying to watch this movie unspoilt, go no further.

Speaker 2:
[02:28] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[02:28] Will, what it what tell what happens? What's this movie? What's up with this movie?

Speaker 2:
[02:34] This movie, it's an interesting one. It starts kind of similar to Phantasia, where it seems like we kind of start with the formation of Earth.

Speaker 1:
[02:45] Yeah, the narrator says one one million years ago when the Earth was new or something to that effect.

Speaker 2:
[02:53] Yeah. And we get some images of lava and cooling Earth and the early primordial planet. And then we're introduced to the world of one million BC, where humankind is already walking around, not very numerous and spread out in disparate tribes. And we are focused on the Rock tribe, who are a very violent, very aggressive group, constantly fighting, constantly competing over resources and rank. We follow the main character Tumac, who is the son of the Rock tribe chief and gets run out when they fight over some meat. And he is banished. He wanders the wastes encountering a few beasts and then makes his way to the Shell tribe, which are super chill, get along, much easier going. And that's where he meets Loana, who is his counterpart protagonist. He messes things up there because he's too fighty and gets kicked out again and twice banished to mock the twice banished.

Speaker 1:
[04:09] He has to go regain his honor.

Speaker 2:
[04:11] Yes. She decides to leave with him. And they once again go on a number of creature adventures until he like comes back to kind of take his rightful place in the Rock Tribes, it seems. But then him and his brother have one final fight, which is interrupted by a volcano. And then the movie ends.

Speaker 1:
[04:30] Yes. And then and then the two tribes like what's left of them comes together.

Speaker 2:
[04:34] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[04:35] As like, and now we are one tribe, I guess there is I personally, as far as like science and depictions of ancient time goes, I think the most interesting part of this movie and the part that we'll probably talk about the most is the depictions of ancient people.

Speaker 2:
[04:53] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[04:53] But first, let's start where we always start, and that is with the creatures. So this movie takes place, it is said to be one million years BC, which is a description that does not match anything in the movie. I don't think that doesn't quite fit anything, and it fits this very, this is another one of those very classic archetypes of prehistoric film, which is movies about cave people running around with dinosaurs and stuff. It's a caveman movie, very much in that vein.

Speaker 2:
[05:29] It's the classic model of ancient cave people surrounded by just monsters.

Speaker 1:
[05:35] Yes, it is very much the big movie, BB movie version of what the Flintstones is doing.

Speaker 2:
[05:44] Yeah, yep, yep.

Speaker 1:
[05:45] To that effect, there are a bunch of ancient creatures in it. Let's start with dinosaurs, because this movie has a bunch of dinosaurs in it. The main dinosaurs in this movie are the classic. It's the favorites from the early 1900s, continuing on what appears to be Allosaurus, I guess. It's got it's got three fingers. So I guess it's Allosaurus.

Speaker 2:
[06:12] Yes, it's it's it's one of those where like generously it's Allosaurus. If I was making if I was betting money T-Rex.

Speaker 1:
[06:22] Yes, it's not me. None of them are named in the film.

Speaker 2:
[06:27] There's very little actual dialogue in the film other than some narration at the very beginning. And then that's lets up the rest of the film.

Speaker 1:
[06:35] And the dialogue isn't in English. It's in like made up cave people words, which we'll talk about later.

Speaker 2:
[06:42] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[06:42] But we get at least two big theropods because we get our Allosaurus question mark. And we also get what appears to be Ceratosaurus.

Speaker 2:
[06:51] Yeah, it's got the nose horn and everything. It's delightful.

Speaker 1:
[06:55] It had the nose. It's funny because the nose horn on the Ceratosaurus reminded me more of the old Iguanodon reconstructions where the horn didn't look like a horn. It looked like a claw that was popped on the nose.

Speaker 2:
[07:08] Well, because Ceratosaurus is one of those interesting ones. We're like Ceratosaurus has a like definitive nose horn. It's got a bony protrusion above the snout that likely had some sort of keratin or skin covering or scale covering like likely had something over it. And then it's got two eyebrow projections that aren't like horn horns. They're real thin. So they're more like just press.

Speaker 1:
[07:34] Yeah. More like what Allosaurus has.

Speaker 2:
[07:36] Yeah. This one definitely had like a little itty bitty rhino horn, like like just little hooked horn on the snout, which is what a lot of classic like a lot of my old books of Ceratosaurus gave it. Just this little little spiky horn on the nose.

Speaker 1:
[07:52] You know, the theropods in this movie, right? They're big, they're monstrous. All they do is attack and eat stuff. They are also classic upright pose. Although I did notice that they they didn't do a lot of tail dragging. Yeah, we're in this interesting period where, and I assume that this helps with the anime, like getting them to move around the way that you want them to. They still have that like snaky tail, like the King Kong T-Rex. But whereas the King Kong T-Rex, it's on the ground, it's snaking around, that these, the Allosaurus, question mark, in this movie is wiggling its tail in the air.

Speaker 2:
[08:34] Yeah, it's this interesting kind of middle ground because most of the shots, like there's a couple of shots where you see that drag, where like a close up of the tail shows it drag the ground or something. So it's still leaning that way. And the tail is still very near the ground, like and horizontal to it. And it's moving in that serpentine path in plane with the ground, but it's not in touch, which I do wonder how much of that was like a design choice or an animation of like, would it have been difficult to have it in contact with the ground and in rotoscope with the humans that like, and like having them both interacting with the same ground. So we're gonna just put the tail a foot above the ground so that it's not actually touching. And I don't have to try to mix scale dirt with human dirt or something.

Speaker 1:
[09:28] Yeah, I was thinking, I like that's an interesting thought. My other thought was, I wonder if that just made it more, because these are very active big dinosaurs. They're jumping around, they're chasing stuff. I think the Ceratosaurus is the one that has a fight with the Triceratops and it's climbing all over it and biting it all over the face. And my thought was does the tail being up off the ground just flow more nicely? Like it just looks more smooth and realistic, which is one of those fun things about what happens when you do animation and you discover more intuitive ways for these animals to move. The Theropod, they have sort of the sharp tooth stance from Land Before Time. Like it's still upright, but the tail isn't actually down on the ground all the time.

Speaker 2:
[10:20] Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, it's one. It's interesting watching them walk around in this one, because the the stop motion is notably updated from the previous films we've discussed.

Speaker 1:
[10:31] Yes. Yeah, the animation in this and I guess we should take a moment just to appreciate the animation. This is awesome.

Speaker 2:
[10:39] It's so cool. The creature is classic Harryhausen.

Speaker 1:
[10:42] Yeah, it looks fantastic.

Speaker 2:
[10:44] So it's a ton of fun. But it also means that you get a much clearer look at the movements because the frame rate is better. The images per motion is increased, so there's much smoother motion. But it also means that watching them walk, the thing that kept standing out to me for the Theropods was the kind of bouncing and a little bit awkward of their steps because you're making them walk in a posture that doesn't actually work well. So it's like the famous thing from the T-Rex chase in Jurassic Park that the speeds they're quoting are wrong, but the pace the animal is actually moving in the animation is correct because physically, that's how fast, that's as fast as you can make it move without it looking ridiculous. Because it's like if you made an elephant sprint like a dog, everyone would go, no, that's not how a body like that can move. This has a little bit of that of it's walking in a way that to me, at least feels very obviously doesn't actually fit the way an animal should be moving.

Speaker 1:
[12:00] Yeah, because it looks like you're having a kangaroo stomp around.

Speaker 2:
[12:04] Yes, exactly. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[12:05] But it's very much kangaroo shaped and kangaroo pose, but that's not how kangaroos move.

Speaker 2:
[12:11] No.

Speaker 1:
[12:11] They don't walk one foot after the other because they are this very unusual shape.

Speaker 2:
[12:16] If they did, I'm sure they would look as awkward as this looks.

Speaker 1:
[12:22] Yeah, the dinosaurs look awkward, but it's not the animation's fault, it's because the dinosaurs are wrong. You did the dinosaur wrong.

Speaker 2:
[12:30] Yeah, which is a very interesting feature.

Speaker 1:
[12:35] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[12:36] I've had that before in other films, like as a kid watching an animal do something, and it do things that I'm like, but that shouldn't be possible based off of the way you're shaped or the way your blah, blah, blah works. Then I'll watch an actual video of the actual animal doing, go, oh, that's not how you do it. You do it in a way that makes sense for your body. You are being animated in a more simplistic way.

Speaker 1:
[12:59] The first thought, because I was like, I was trying to think what other example can I think of? And the very first thought that comes to mind is Ghostbusters.

Speaker 2:
[13:07] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[13:08] The demon dog creatures, which the animation in that is kind of shoddy. Like it's very clearly, it's older animation, but it also, yeah, they don't move like animals. And so it looks weird because that's not how that would move. These dinosaurs have kind of that. And I think that the quadrupeds get off a lot easier.

Speaker 2:
[13:31] Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[13:32] Because they're still kind of awkward, right? They don't have a lot of range of motion, which is probably just a limitation of the models and the animation. But they do kind of move like quadrupeds. They kind of move like hippos or like elephants. They're sort of stepping around. They have more of a sense of weight because they have legs that can actually support the weight of the model.

Speaker 2:
[13:56] Yes. Well, and that was one that we mentioned when the Triceratops shows up, that the posture of the Triceratops, the tail is so tightly held to the body and points straight down toward the ground, that that was one of those where even without knowing how a Triceratops, because I'm not like a ceratopsian expert. Like if you asked me to like sketch a Triceratops skeleton, I would struggle, because I don't actually know what they're shaped like.

Speaker 1:
[14:25] You would nail the skull and then the rest of it, stick figures.

Speaker 2:
[14:30] One, two, three, all right. Now, now we enter unknown territory. But even with this model, I was able to have the moment of like, how's your spine fitting in there? Your hips are higher than your spine is, and that shouldn't work. You shouldn't be able to have your legs go above your spine that far. And it's little notes like that. And it's those stories you hear of like skeleton reconstruction in museums. And then people going, that would disconnect the vertebrae for it to be standing that way. Like that's impossible. Now that we actually take a closer look, we've put too much of a bend. And that surely can't be how this animal lived because it would be paralyzed trying to have this posture. And the models show that a little bit.

Speaker 1:
[15:19] And I think it's an interesting feature of a lot of these old dinosaurs, is that they don't, in many ways, they don't look or move like animals. And part of that is, yeah, the limitations of the animation, limitations of what we knew scientifically, but they're also not meant to be animals.

Speaker 2:
[15:40] No.

Speaker 1:
[15:41] In the, especially in a movie like this, they're monsters. They show up, they scream. I don't know what they were using for those noises, but they were all the time, when the dinosaurs were screaming at each other were the times I most wanted to lower the volume on the movie. It's really grating. And they're fighting and stomping around. And I think that that unnatural posture and shape kind of both lends itself to that. These are weird monster creatures. But also, I wouldn't be surprised if that makes it less of a priority for filmmakers. It's like, yeah, it looks weird, but yeah, it's a big monster. It should be unsettling and strange. And that's what and so it's going to look that way.

Speaker 2:
[16:30] Well, and because this was at a time where there was a more common perception that these were bestial, monstrous creatures, that the world used to be more primordial and brutal, and that these these creatures are representatives of that less kind time in Earth's history.

Speaker 1:
[16:52] And less evolved, right? They're wrong. Because again, we still in the 60s, we didn't know why the dinosaurs disappeared.

Speaker 2:
[16:59] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[17:00] And there was this popular perception that they disappeared because they were just not good enough to survive.

Speaker 2:
[17:06] Yeah, these were faulty animals.

Speaker 1:
[17:09] One thing that I did find really fun, and I kept noting it when the Ceratosaurus and the Triceratops were fighting, the Ceratosaurus keeps going behind the frill.

Speaker 2:
[17:20] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[17:21] To bite at the neck of the Triceratops, which that's such a cool thing to display. They do have it biting at the horns and grabbing onto the frill, which is very dramatic. But they also have it try to go around the frill and bite the neck, which feels like a very authentic. Yeah, that's how you would have to, if you were trying to take down a Triceratops, that's what you'd have to do. That's what the frill is for.

Speaker 2:
[17:47] Yeah. Well, and it makes me wonder if there was like, did you watch animals hunting or was it just logic of, well, the weak point is behind the big head shield. So that's where the Predator is going to go for. Either way, yeah, it felt very, that felt more genuine behavior and actual, like this is a Predator seeking to take down prey.

Speaker 1:
[18:12] I think the only other dinosaur that we get, I mean, there's a vulture. So that's, that kind of works. There is a sauropod, a brontosaur type thing that we see very briefly, but it is the first dinosaur that we see. And it doesn't really do much, it's just there, but it looked great.

Speaker 2:
[18:33] And it does make kind of an interesting note, once again, with this being sort of the middle ground between things, that we noted in the first films that sauropods very much take center stage in Lost World.

Speaker 1:
[18:47] And Gertie.

Speaker 2:
[18:48] And Gertie, that they were seen as the star dinosaurs in those. And here, it doesn't even get a speaking role, it just shows up in the background. And then we have two different theropods show up, distinct theropods with two different main feature fights. And it does feel like this might have been, whether this was the start of or just a symptom of the shift toward theropods, big theropods becoming the star dinosaurs instead of sauropods.

Speaker 1:
[19:20] Well, and the star herbivore dinosaur in this movie is Triceratops.

Speaker 2:
[19:25] Yes, it is, very much so.

Speaker 1:
[19:26] And I think it does really reflect that shift. I also think it's really interesting that the first dinosaur we see is a big sauropod because that's also what happens in Jurassic Park.

Speaker 2:
[19:35] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[19:36] That like this sauropods have gone from being the star, but they're still like, if you want to bring in a dinosaur and make it a big impressive deal, you can start with a sauropod. You start with a big long neck dinosaur because they're gigantic and impressive and instantly recognizable. And so, yeah, we're seeing this shift in how different types of dinosaurs are utilized in these movies.

Speaker 2:
[20:03] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[20:04] We also have some prehistoric creatures that are not dinosaurs. Most prominently, probably, is what appears to be pteranodon. Big flying reptile swoops in. And now, you know, we've seen pterosaurs a couple times already in the series. We've commented on the way that they've been utilized. The pterosaur in this movie is, I think, the most quintessential type of old school movie pterosaur.

Speaker 2:
[20:37] Yeah, yep.

Speaker 1:
[20:38] This is how pterosaurs are. Like, this is the kind of pterosaur... You see this pterosaur in Star Trek, and this kind of pterosaur, it flies in. It flies in this oddly upright position. It flaps rapidly like a bat, grabs things in its feet, and flies off with them.

Speaker 2:
[20:55] Yep, yep, yep, yep. It's got too many digits in its wings. It's got bat-like wings that have fingers running down the inside of the membrane. It is, in all the ways that we praised the earlier pterosaurs in this year's series, this one is wrong in all of those ways.

Speaker 1:
[21:20] It's a classic mid-century pterosaur.

Speaker 2:
[21:23] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[21:24] It grabs things in its feet. It grabs Raquel Welch and picks her up and flies away with her. Fascinatingly, it has like parrot feet.

Speaker 2:
[21:35] Yeah. It's only got three thingies on its feet.

Speaker 1:
[21:37] Yeah. It's got nightcrawler feet, really.

Speaker 2:
[21:41] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[21:41] It's got two in the front and one in the back, and they sort of clamp together like the claw of a bird, which... And this is, I think, really what this pterosaur is, is a bird of prey. It clutches things in its talons, which pterosaurs didn't actually have, and then it carries its food off to go bring it to its nest. And there's a bunch of little pterosaurs, like, in the nest, you know, eyes up, mouths open, waiting for their food to be dropped in, which is a bird thing. Right. That's not even a bat thing. Bats don't do that. Insects don't do that. That's birds. That this is very, very much inspired and based on birds of prey. Yes. Yes.

Speaker 2:
[22:23] That's and that's very much what it is, just a big eagle, but in the shape of a kind of in the shape of a pterosaur.

Speaker 1:
[22:31] Yes. We actually get two different pterosaurs.

Speaker 2:
[22:35] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[22:36] Which was and it's not just two of the same model. They are two different models of pterosaur, which was actually kind of cool.

Speaker 2:
[22:42] Yeah. We start with a crested, Pteranodon style pterosaur with a short tail, and then it gets interrupted while trying to feed Raquel to the to its babies by a similarly sized but non crested. So just bare back of the head and a longer tailed pterosaur of some sort, you know.

Speaker 1:
[23:03] Yeah. I think the wiki page calls it Ramphorhynchus.

Speaker 2:
[23:07] Oh, that would make sense.

Speaker 1:
[23:08] And yeah. And it's shaped kind of like Ramphorhynchus, even though it is enormous and the same size as the pteranodon, which itself is also preposterously gigantic.

Speaker 2:
[23:19] Yeah. Yep, yep, yep, yep. That makes sense, because that's the other famous pterosaur from back in the day.

Speaker 1:
[23:26] This is real. This is before Quetzalcoatlus became a big famous pterosaur. It was like it was it was pteranodon, which got called pterodactyl and Ramphorhynchus. Again, mid-century. This is the mid-century status of pterosaurs.

Speaker 2:
[23:40] So, yeah, it's interesting that we got multiple species. They both have all the exact same wrong features like Ramphorhynchus also has the multi-digited wings. It also has the grabbing feet. It is identical in all but the fact that it's bald.

Speaker 1:
[23:56] Yes. And then we have a bunch of other creatures. The one other that we should make mention that there is what I guess is supposed to be Archelon.

Speaker 2:
[24:08] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[24:10] And I think, again, I think I saw this on the Wiki that I think the people even call it Archelon.

Speaker 2:
[24:17] Oh, gotcha.

Speaker 1:
[24:18] In the like, they shout that like that's their word for it. But that is also the actual genus of the turtle that it's supposed to be. And it is a preposterously gigantic sea turtle.

Speaker 2:
[24:30] Yeah, just just gamma sized. Like it is a Kaiju sea turtle. It does have a bit more of a hooked beak, which is like the defining. Like if you were to see an Archelon alive, probably the first thing you would notice is that they had like a eagle recurved hooked beak, like way more so than any like only turtle that alive today that comes close is the alligator snapping turtle. So yeah, it does have that a little bit. Otherwise, it just looks like just a just a normal sea turtle. There's nothing other way, which we don't know what the outside of Archelon look like. It might have been pretty standard looking, but it does very much just look like a loggerhead is roaming around the hills near the beach. And it's also a very funny sequence because it shows up and it just happens to be like coming back toward the ocean, it seems, and they are in its way. And Raquel Luana calls for help with her shell horn, and the tribe shows up and start attacking it. At no point does it seem like the turtle is attacking them.

Speaker 1:
[25:40] No, they're just having a big fight with it.

Speaker 2:
[25:43] Yeah, it very much seems like the turtle is just trying to get back to the ocean and they are getting in its way while they defend themselves quote unquote from it the entire time. And I was like, it just move. It's at no point has it like reached for any of you. But yeah, just get out of its way.

Speaker 1:
[26:03] It's a turtle and speaking of just get out of its way. It's just a big turtle outside of these stop motion effects. There's also a handful of classic slurpasaur animals. So slurpasaur is the name for the technique that was used famously in a lot of even earlier movies of taking footage of just a regular animal, like for example, the most prominent one in this movie is an iguana, and doing your movie magic to make it look gigantic. And it's terrorizing the tiny people. Yeah, this was very one of the most famous and most reused examples of this is from the original 1 million BC, where it was an iguana and I believe it's a baby alligator, right? Yeah, that's a young alligator, a crest strapped on it or something.

Speaker 2:
[26:58] One of them has like a dimetrodon sail on the back, and then the other one has like some horns and stuff attached to the back of its head. I think the alligator had a sail, but I don't remember. I've seen the clip. It's an uncomfortable clip.

Speaker 1:
[27:12] It's an uncomfortable clip because they just had an iguana and a baby alligator fight each other and they filmed it.

Speaker 2:
[27:17] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[27:17] And then they used that, but that clip was reused in a ton of different movies. So that it's a very famous clip. In this movie, fortunately, they appear to at least mostly be more responsible with the way that they use their animals.

Speaker 2:
[27:34] Yes. It does not get actively bit on screen.

Speaker 1:
[27:38] I think the only animals that get stabbed and injured are the stop motion ones.

Speaker 2:
[27:44] Yeah. There is a scene with a fish that looks like it could very well be an actual stabbed fish.

Speaker 1:
[27:50] Yes, because I remember that because they showed it and I went, Oh, no, that looks like you just speared a fish.

Speaker 2:
[27:56] Yep, which yeah, not great on the film set.

Speaker 1:
[28:00] No. Hopefully, you at least ate that fish.

Speaker 2:
[28:03] Yes, yes.

Speaker 1:
[28:05] Hopefully, you only needed to do one take of that shot. But yeah, we have a giant iguana, which it's so funny watching this man just terrified running away from this iguana, and the iguana is behind it with the roars and hisses, and it's just an iguana walking around.

Speaker 2:
[28:26] It's just an iguana.

Speaker 1:
[28:27] It's doing nothing menacing. It's just being ch... Iguanas are such a funny lizard to do this with, because you understand why. They're iguanas. They're big, they're impressive, and they're extremely easy to get a hold of and work with.

Speaker 2:
[28:42] Yeah, they're decorated. They've got a bunch of spines and stripes.

Speaker 1:
[28:45] Yeah, but they're also one of the most chill lizards that you can ask for. They're not, they don't even look intimidating.

Speaker 2:
[28:53] And so it was interesting watching it because like from a modern perspective, very silly of here's this, you know, it's the same thing as in movies where it's like, oh, a ferocious lion. And then it's obviously a zoo lion that's just like, like yawning, yawning. And they're putting a roar in and stuff. So it's got a bit of that goofiness of you're having to fake that this thing is right here. But then also the way they achieve it in the movie is really well done. Like there's a whole bunch of shots where, like, absolutely, it does look like there is a giant lizard chasing this guy. That you you edit it together really well. And if this were if this were a fantasy setting, you know, where it was, yeah, you're being a D&D type setting where you're being attacked by a giant monitor lizard. Again, that actually I absolutely get why this was so popular because that's a cool image. It's a cool idea. And if it were a lizard that size, I'm sure it would be terrifying because it would just be like, yeah, you're just a bug that I'm going to just gobble up and eat you indiscriminately. So like, it was very interesting because it felt very silly to have this in a quote unquote dinosaur movie. But I fully get why it was such a popular movie monster technique, because it works.

Speaker 1:
[30:19] Yeah, absolutely. It's also, I imagine, pretty easy and cheap.

Speaker 2:
[30:23] Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[30:25] The only other giant animal that I think we see is we see a tarantula.

Speaker 2:
[30:30] Yes, he gets a glimpse of a giant tarantula, it seems.

Speaker 1:
[30:35] Eating a giant cricket.

Speaker 2:
[30:37] Yeah, which is extra funny to me because what almost surely was happening there is we need to get the tarantula to come out into the open and sit still. So give it a cricket and give it something to eat or a grasshopper or whatever it was. And so then we'll get our shot. But then it means that we have made canon that in this world, there also exists giant locusts.

Speaker 1:
[31:03] Yes. Well, I had the same thought with the because there's a couple of shots of the iguana where it like opens its mouth and sticks its tongue out a little bit. And I had that same thought where I was like, that iguana is about to eat something. Like you gave it a treat and you caught it on camera about to go, go grab it.

Speaker 2:
[31:20] That is also a note on the iguana is it is chasing after Tumac and the main guy, the main dude. And when it goes to actually attack him, it grabs him with its tongue and they have an effect. They have a model tongue wrap around his leg. And it was interesting for two reasons, because we both noted it's still a forked tongue, but they're having it use its forked, like Komodo dragon style tongue as a chameleon style tongue. And it was this weird just combination of lizard features.

Speaker 1:
[31:57] And it's an interesting, because it's not even actually using it the way chameleons use their tongues. It's using it the way you use like a whip, where the tongue wrapped around the leg, like multiple times wrapped around the leg.

Speaker 2:
[32:15] Prehensile tongue that is reaching out like an elephant trunk to grab on to him.

Speaker 1:
[32:20] Yes, which is also forked, which is very funny, because that is a combination of features that I am quite confident in saying has never existed.

Speaker 2:
[32:31] Yes, and it's this fun thing, because that happens with lizards all the time. Lizards have, there's so many types of lizards, so very often a lizard thing will show up, and it can change color like a chameleon, shoot its tongue out like a chameleon, lose its tail like a gecko, and all of the lizard things, yes, all at once. And it's funny that that happened even when this lizard was being a dinosaur.

Speaker 1:
[33:02] Yes. Other than that, we do get a handful of normal sized animals. We get vultures, which are there to represent the danger and the, oh, everyone's gonna die. There is a warthog, pretty sure that was a warthog. That is normal sized, and the people hunt it.

Speaker 2:
[33:23] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[33:24] They very cleverly lure it into a trap and then very cleverly choke it to die.

Speaker 2:
[33:32] Like put it in a headlock and choke it out.

Speaker 1:
[33:35] Yes. They trap it in a hole, and they're like, we did it. We trapped this warthog. Now it's ours to do with what we want. And then the way that they just they're all standing around the hole with spears. And yeah, the way that they dispatch it is the guy jumps into the hole and puts it in a headlock and chokes it out, which is so funny.

Speaker 2:
[33:58] It was it was very, very like of all the things that I was expecting to happen. That was the last one is that they one of them was going to jump in by themselves to now wrestle this. Wild pig into submission and it just in a pit now instead of out in the open.

Speaker 1:
[34:20] Yep. Incredible. And then I think the only other animal that we see is we get a very brief glimpse of some kind of python.

Speaker 2:
[34:29] Yes, we see python. They also hunt a goat.

Speaker 1:
[34:32] Oh, that's right. Just a straight up domestic goat.

Speaker 2:
[34:36] Very much. It's one of the four horned domestic goats. And it's also very clearly domestic as it just very nonchalantly like walks around as as a whole army of people is coming up to it with spears and stuff. Yeah, it's very funny.

Speaker 1:
[34:54] So yeah, all the animals in this movie are really put together in this sort of hodgepodge of the same sort of depiction of danger and wilderness. And we've got giant creatures because that's what existed in the ancient past. But then also we need our people to be able to hunt something. So it's like livestock.

Speaker 2:
[35:16] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it has that very classic feeling of when like a movie or a cartoon will be like, here's the establishing shot showing that we're in the jungle and have a snake slither by and something call in the distance and like eyes in the shadows. It has that kind of feeling of and now we are in wild lands with wild animals and whoo.

Speaker 1:
[35:43] And it is building upon it. This is this is another very classic trope, which is depictions of ancient times as being any combination of prehistoric creatures that struck our interest. They'll throw a bunch of dinosaurs and stuff in there and just gigantic things.

Speaker 2:
[36:01] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[36:03] This persistent trope of things in the ancient past being enormous versions of what we have today, which is like building off of and playing off of a perception that is quite common among people.

Speaker 2:
[36:17] And it's why you get the question, why were things so much bigger in the past? And it's yeah, because there are a lot of examples where the biggest member of a group is an extinct one, apes and crocs and snakes and a whole bunch of those, the biggest examples are no longer around. So this idea that things were just bigger. And I think the reason it's so intriguing is that logic gets applied to things, which I get, but then it also gets applied to things, to a scale that is insane, like the tarantula that's the size of a cow.

Speaker 1:
[36:54] And this iguana, to be clear, is maybe the biggest animal in the movie.

Speaker 2:
[36:59] Yeah, absolutely. It is massive.

Speaker 1:
[37:02] It's so big. It's way bigger than any of the dinosaurs. This isn't like an elephant-sized iguana. This is like an airplane-sized iguana. It's huge.

Speaker 2:
[37:12] Yeah, it's massive. And so it's that one. It's how a lot of other things will add in, like people eating plants and things like that. This one had that feeling where it's just giant turtle, giant spider, giant monsters, and everything's out to get you. And it's very Conan the Barbarian, more so than anything else in how a lot of the creatures feel.

Speaker 1:
[37:38] It's very Savage Lands.

Speaker 2:
[37:40] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[37:41] This very pulp adventure take on the Savage Ancient Times. And speaking of the Savage Ancient Times, the most prominent creatures, the most prominent beings in the film are the people. This is a movie where, once again, the stars are people, but instead of just being normal, modern people dealing with dinosaurs like in The Lost World, these are people who also are native to this ancient primitive savage world. We have, I guess, two different, possibly three different. There's a weird part at the beach where I'm not sure who those were supposed to be. But we have multiple different tribes of Flintstone style cavemen. Yes. These are, they're dressed in furs. All the men have beards and long hair because, you know, they didn't have barbers and they use rocks and spears to fight off the big animals and hunt things. They live in caves. Both of the tribes that we meet live inside of caves. We even get hints of things like cave art. They're pulling out all of the classic ancient people. These are things that ancient people do.

Speaker 2:
[39:04] And it's interesting because we've got the two tribes and the rock tribe and the shell tribe are notably distinct. And though they never like say this in the narration or indicate it very much has the classic distinction between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens, where the rock tribe are barbaric, violent, simple, like their spears are just sticks. They don't have flint heads on them, while the shell tribe are the ones that teach them the technology of stone spearheads. They are eating meat with their hands and no dishes. They are fighting constantly.

Speaker 1:
[39:48] Yeah, they're fighting constantly like over food. Yes, like they bring the warthog back, they cook it, and then it's just a free for all. Whoever can get some food, get some food.

Speaker 2:
[39:59] Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[40:00] Which is a really I found that really interesting at the time, because the first thing we see the people doing is apparently working together to take down this animal for food. Yeah, but then they don't cooperate in eating the animal. Yes, which again is not only historically incorrect, right? This is one of the defining attributes of ancient humans is that our species and our closely related species are highly social and highly cooperative. Even in classic modern examples like chimps who are renowned for being very violent and a lot of infighting, but they still share food. Like they're they're they still take care of each other. They're still working in in cooperation.

Speaker 2:
[40:45] Like even if it's only among their favored friends and family, like even if it's a situation where it's not communal per se, but a chimp will bring food back and then share it with its its comrades, its kin and friends, the ones it has strong bonds with. We don't even see any hints of that where like it seems like family members. And in fact, that's the inciting incident is father and son fighting over just a piece of meat and the fight gets so escalated, it drives the son out of the tribe. It is so contested. So yeah, it's this very, they are very clear. They are not civilized.

Speaker 1:
[41:27] And not civilized to a point as to be maladapted. Where like this is this is such a lack of cooperation that it doesn't, this is not sustainable. There's no way that you persist this way. And incidentally, I'm pretty sure we don't see any children in the Rock Tribe.

Speaker 2:
[41:44] Yeah, like we see like a teenager and that's it.

Speaker 1:
[41:47] Because yeah, how would you raise children in this?

Speaker 2:
[41:51] This is a self-destructive society. It is, like the other glimpse we get of their culture is when there's, it's supposed to be, I think, when the chief is thought to be dead and the other son's like taking up the mantle, they have like a ceremony at that night where they're dancing and like dressing up in skins and singing and drumming. And it is portrayed in that classic way of the barbaric ceremony, like that movie's so off, like King Kong did with the natives of Skull Island and where it's this. It is portrayed in a negative, scary way of that you're supposed to think what they're doing right now is creepy and off-putting is the way the movie's trying to portray this ritual.

Speaker 1:
[42:45] Yeah, they also have, and I don't remember if it was part of that same ritual. The other sort of classic thing of all the men are sitting around watching a woman do an alluring dance. Which is not necessarily an ancient people trope, but it is a non-industrialized society trope. That's something that you see a lot in movies, in depictions of like Amazonian people or African people, or basically anywhere that's not white people. People that are classically depicted is, oh yeah, these people live out in the jungle and they do these exotic dances with their women with very little clothes on. And I did find it very interesting that this movie, it felt like it was largely avoiding using explicit modern cultural tropes to indicate primitive savagery, but there were some, and that felt like one of the prominent examples of that. Yes, we show you that they're primitive and savage by making them behave the way that we think jungle people today behave.

Speaker 2:
[44:04] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[44:04] And so there is that. The other thing that's really interesting to me on that similar, like, what are you saying about human beings note, the rock tribe are all dark haired and the shell tribe, the artists and the ones with the technology and everything are all blonde.

Speaker 2:
[44:21] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[44:22] Blonde hair, blue eyed, beautiful people. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[44:26] And it's one of those where maybe that was just a way to distinguish the two tribes that coincidentally seems to follow some really, really interesting or notable, I guess I should say, cultural perspectives. But I had that thought the whole time of, and then here are the Aryan cave people.

Speaker 1:
[44:48] Yep. The ones who have children and are like raising their kids.

Speaker 2:
[44:53] And are level headed.

Speaker 1:
[44:55] Yep. Well, and this and now that brings me to the other thing that I thought was a really interesting difference between the two is that in the Rock Tribe, all of the action, all of the decisions were being made by men. But the Shell Tribe very much felt like it was the women who were either in charge or at least of equal voice.

Speaker 2:
[45:19] Yeah, like they still had a chief who they deferred to, but there are multiple moments where Raquel's character, Lawana, is like interjecting into a situation between, like, because like Tomac has a rivalry with one of the, the blonde cave people and is, is they are budding heads at times and there's multiple times where like, she steps in and will talk and the blonde guy fully listens and seems to take her words at face value. She beseeches the tribal leader for help in a scene and they're like, yeah, no, absolutely, Lawana, whatever you need, like it very much has a much more equal footing while in the Brock tribe, the men are like grabbing women and shoving them around and they're the ones making all of the violent decisions.

Speaker 1:
[46:12] Well, and I think that they're in the Brock tribe. I don't think we even ever see the women go out and do anything. I think they're in the cave basically the whole time. I believe they were the ones that cooked the warthog.

Speaker 2:
[46:23] Yes. Like we see them cooking the warthog. We see them like skinning, like preparing skins in one scene.

Speaker 1:
[46:30] Sure.

Speaker 2:
[46:30] And then like take some stuff down to the water. But we don't see them. They're never on the hunts. They're never doing any of the action things.

Speaker 1:
[46:41] Whereas our introduction to the Shell Tribe is we meet a bunch of women who are out foraging.

Speaker 2:
[46:47] Yes, fishing.

Speaker 1:
[46:48] So, and in fact, Lawana teaches Tumac how to fish.

Speaker 2:
[46:53] Yes. Yeah. Like they have their spear fishing and she shows them how to use their spears. And it's actually a very cool scene.

Speaker 1:
[47:01] And this is a really interesting, for a movie that is leaning on so many tropes of like, yeah, these are the bad humans and these are the good humans who are going to persist. It does seem to be making a statement that, yeah, the good version of human society is one where women are also of at least equal importance and decision making power to the men, which is very interesting, especially considering my absolute favorite thing about this movie, especially The Shell Tribe. Completely consistently, the men in this movie look awful. They're dirty, they're hairy, like they all got these big, like, the beards are actually well-kempt. Like, they're not like gross beards, but they're meant to be like scraggly and the beard is overgrown. The men, their faces are often like dirty and sweaty.

Speaker 2:
[47:59] And they all have, like, prominent, noted brows, like, that their makeup is done up to really emphasize that heavy brow.

Speaker 1:
[48:05] And the women are supermodels.

Speaker 2:
[48:08] Just full on.

Speaker 1:
[48:09] Like, Raquel Welch has the most beautifully done up hair for the entire movie. It's so funny. They're like, they're just, they're like models on a photoshoot.

Speaker 2:
[48:27] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[48:28] They're made up. She's got her lashes done. It's such a hilarious dichotomy.

Speaker 2:
[48:35] And they're prancing around, like, they watch characters.

Speaker 1:
[48:39] My favorite moment, I think, in this entire movie is the scene where she teaches him how to spear fish. Because she's like, here's how you do it. And she takes the, and it is, it is the most, like, old school sitcom girl trying to throw a baseball.

Speaker 2:
[49:01] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[49:01] Yes, exactly. And with the hand up and this just, like, dramatic hip movement. And she goes, uh. And it's so funny.

Speaker 2:
[49:16] It is very, and like, even the Rock Tribes women are still wearing cleavage-friendly clothing and-

Speaker 1:
[49:26] They are wearing, like, push-up cloths.

Speaker 2:
[49:30] Yes, yep.

Speaker 1:
[49:32] They're all very busty, supermodeled cave women. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[49:35] The Shell Tribe is just more notable because they're supposed to be the more refined, so they have them a bit cleaner. They're supposed to be less savage. So it's even more over-the-top there. But it's just every scene, you'll have all of these guys standing around with, like, slumped shoulders and bad posture and just staring at each other. And then it will cut over to these just- just Barbies. It's just cave Barbie. And every single time, it is funny just because of how absurd it is.

Speaker 1:
[50:15] And it's a really interesting, because so much of the depiction of the people in this movie is building on tropes of savagery and primitive life. But the women are 60s women tropes.

Speaker 2:
[50:29] Yes. Yep.

Speaker 1:
[50:30] They are contemporary tropes of these gorgeous... And it's really this jarring juxtaposition, because the women are depicted being capable and having decision-making power and all that. But then at the same time, they don't do physically impressive things. And Raquel Welch does get captured by the pterosaur and has to rely on Tumac at one point, and is like hanging on his arm in that old school adventure hero kind of way. So it really is trying to have both. And it's a very odd combination.

Speaker 2:
[51:15] Well, and it's doing the thing a lot of adventure movies would always do where we're gonna introduce the heroine in an awesome way to establish that she is cool enough to be in this adventure film. And then now when she joins the hero on the adventure, she's immediately a damsel.

Speaker 1:
[51:35] They're doing the Bond Girl thing. Yes. Yeah, that's, yes, that is very much what this does.

Speaker 2:
[51:42] Vonna finds Tuak exhausted from dehydration, completely helpless. She nurses him back to health. She calls for help for the turtle. She shows him out of spearfish. She shows him around her society. She's taking charge and leading the introduction and interactions with people. Then he, being a big old butt head, gets in a fight with the nicest people he's ever met, and gets kicked out of paradise. She's like, well, I'll join you because you're the protagonist, and you must now have the woman come along with you because the man must get the girl, as this is a film from the 60s. Then she is just a damsel, except for a couple of scenes. Basically, the rest of the movie, she is getting captured by Terasaur, by the Rock Tribe. She's getting scared, and he's having to show her the way out of situations. She almost gets them captured at one point, and she immediately falls into the classic, oh, no, my man, please save me trope of these old movies, and it's a jarring shift.

Speaker 1:
[52:56] They even have a scene where two women in fur bikinis have an extended wrestling match.

Speaker 2:
[53:03] Yes, they do.

Speaker 1:
[53:04] While all the men watch.

Speaker 2:
[53:06] I was very shocked, actually, that they didn't end up in a mud pit.

Speaker 1:
[53:10] Yes, same. There were a bunch of times in this movie where I was like, interesting, impressive restraint movie in not going as sexist as I thought you would be. Exactly 100 percent.

Speaker 2:
[53:25] I guess eggs on my face. Yeah, it's really, and it's this weird, like you said, because they're leaning on caveman tropes throughout so much of the movie. And then every now and then are like, but also modern sixties tropes.

Speaker 1:
[53:43] Yes, but also the shell women run into the water like Baywatch characters.

Speaker 2:
[53:48] Yes, the exact pose.

Speaker 1:
[53:50] Same pose, the hands up, the shoulders swinging. There is a moment, I forget where this, I think it might be back at the Rock Tribe or maybe it's at the shelter, somewhere where I think it's the two main characters are in the foreground, like interacting and then in the background of the scene, there are two women who are like working on the skins or furs or whatever. They look like they're knitting, or they've got these like stiff. And they're like sitting next to each other in the background, like leaning towards each other in just the most classic gossiping women in the background of the scene. And it was it's such a ma. This movie really puts in a lot of effort to not be modern. Yes, to to make sure that everything feels ancient. And I kept waiting for the two main characters to kiss, to have a little smooch on the mouth. And I was going to be like, when did, but they did it. Like they avoided doing any of these modern things. And then every now and then it's like, and then those two women are gossiping in the background. And it's a very funny.

Speaker 2:
[55:04] Because even at the beginning of time, surely we can all agree that that's what would have been happening, right men?

Speaker 1:
[55:12] Right, guys?

Speaker 2:
[55:15] Yeah, it's really, there's another moment that that reminded me of that was very funny to me from like the savage versus the civilized was where Tumac falls down in the water, failing to spear fish. And all of the Shell Tribe is laughing at him. And I was expecting him to be like, how dare you? But no, what the scene was, was to introduce the fact that this is where Tumac learns to laugh. Because laughter does not exist in the Rock Tribe. And that had one of those of like the, you know, like the John Smith type stories of what? You've never heard of a smile. Let me show you Noble Savage. I is this white. It had that vibe of, you know, we're introducing you to really basic human concepts. And it was it was weird.

Speaker 1:
[56:06] Yeah, they're all they're living in caves, which is, you know, another classic ancient people trope. There's also another super classic prehistoric Times movie trope. There are ape men. There is this tribe. We don't get a close look at them. They're sort of in the shadows and hard to see most of the time. But they are these hairy kind of chimp like, but they're standing up more like humans. And they're even more savage and uncivilized than the rock tribe. They're fighting. They don't have language, right? They're not talking to each other as far as we can see. And also, and I was really trying to get a close look to see, are you just dressed in dark furs? Or are you also being depicted as having dark skin?

Speaker 2:
[56:57] Yep. Yep. I was wondering if we were going to see their face.

Speaker 1:
[57:00] And I couldn't quite tell, but it is very much like, yeah, the ideal human society in this movie are the beautiful blonde people, and then the savage, uncivilized ones are the dirty, dark haired people. And then the even more primitive and uncouth transitional folks are extremely hairy and all very dark.

Speaker 2:
[57:27] Yeah. Covered in black hair.

Speaker 1:
[57:29] Covered in black hair. And the movie doesn't quite go again. You don't get a close up or anything. We don't see a lot of these characters, but the trope is there.

Speaker 2:
[57:40] Yeah. It's like this may not have been what you were doing, but this is definitely what you were building this off of.

Speaker 1:
[57:45] There is what appears to be a progression. Right. We see these are the stages towards what, you know, the good version, the ideal version of humanity very much in that classic, extremely racist depiction. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[58:03] And yeah, the eight tribe is, they're treated as monsters. Like, there's not even a conflict with them. They are so terrified. They don't fight them. Even though Tumak's willing to throw hands with every other cave person that he meets, these he just runs from.

Speaker 1:
[58:23] And not only every other cave person, Tumak runs right up to dinosaurs. Yeah, to like shove spears in their faces. Yes. But these he avoids entirely.

Speaker 2:
[58:35] And they're shown to be hyperviolent. Like one of them, two of them get in a fight. One of them starts loses that fight. The entire tribe turns on that individual, kills them and then puts their head on a spike next to other skulls, which are very clearly gorilla skulls in the shots. And they display their dead inside their own cave. And yeah, it's just this very typical thing of like, not only are they uncivilized compared to what we consider civilized, and not only are they uncouth, they are violent and cruel and twisted and evil. Like it's that you are sacrificing your own and displaying the corpses and just all of those very detestable depictions of savage society.

Speaker 1:
[59:25] Yes. That, this is certainly the place where this movie leans most into those tropes of how Western civilization depicts not just primitive society, you know, what is considered primitive society, but deplorable society. Like this is, this is how we, it's the mentality of what European colonizers went around the world, going up, going to places and going, hey, let us teach you how to act like good people.

Speaker 2:
[59:54] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[59:54] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[59:54] We will bring civilization to you.

Speaker 1:
[59:56] Yeah. You're acting in all these weird ways that we don't like. Come be, come be humans with us. It's very much that building on those tropes.

Speaker 2:
[60:05] Yeah. And the whole movie has that message throughout it, because it is scenes of teaching the rock tribe how to use their new technology, demonstrations of the proper way to interact and the.

Speaker 1:
[60:21] Yeah. Tumac is learning cave etiquette.

Speaker 2:
[60:24] Yeah, exactly. Like they give him some food and it's on a shell plate instead of just being, you know, a handful of food. And then he messily smacks his mouth as he eats it with his hands and is falling out of his mouth.

Speaker 1:
[60:37] He eats it like the beast.

Speaker 2:
[60:39] Yeah, exactly. Just just lapping up the porridge. And it is very, very much that, oh, he doesn't even know how to use the right utensils.

Speaker 1:
[60:50] Yes, doesn't even know how to feed himself.

Speaker 2:
[60:52] It the entire movie has that message throughout it. And it's very, very clear. Like it's very prominent.

Speaker 1:
[61:01] And then, of course, because it is ancient times, the movie ends with a volcanic eruption.

Speaker 2:
[61:06] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[61:07] Big volcano. This was this was going to be my mini rant, but I remembered a different one that I like better. So I'm going to say this here. The volcano is pretty cool. Like the effects for the volcano are clearly just them setting off a bunch of explosions. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[61:21] Yeah. Just a bunch of fireworks and a bunch of pyrotechnics. And it's very, very funny.

Speaker 1:
[61:27] And this is another one of those just absolutely extremely common ancient times tropes is a volcano goes off and destroys everything. The world is not just the animals, but the planet itself is cruel and dangerous and savage and out to get everybody.

Speaker 2:
[61:45] Yeah. And that is also clear throughout the rest of the film in that basically every set piece is barren. There's no forests that we see. We don't see any like grasslands. It's barren rock. Only the Shell tribes, people have like some trees and foliage that like looks nice and like flowers and stuff. Everywhere else is very, is leaning into that. On the early Earth, there weren't even nice things yet. That came later. And so there's no soft, it's just hard rocks and steam vents. And the volcano goes along with that. Yeah, the land also was primitive.

Speaker 1:
[62:29] Yes. Incidentally, because I don't think we said this explicitly at any point, all of this depiction of ancient people is incorrect. That's not ancient people. And it's also not true of modern communities that are non-industrialized or non- quote unquote civilized in the way we think of in Western society.

Speaker 2:
[62:49] Yeah. I think the only two things that they showed that I had a moment of, okay, yeah, were the cave paintings, which looked awesome.

Speaker 1:
[62:58] They looked great. They were very cool.

Speaker 2:
[63:00] They were intricate, which is what cave paintings actually are. Like, if you get to see them, they're not just simple stick figures. They're beautiful. Like, they are skilled pieces of art.

Speaker 1:
[63:11] I did think it was very funny that there's a moment where Tumac is investigating the cave painting and he, like, sticks his fingers into some of the pigment. And it is very clearly just a puddle of paint. Like, it's just like a modern paint. Just paint. It wasn't like ochre or anything. It's just it was bright pink paint.

Speaker 2:
[63:35] Yeah, that was very funny. And then we get to see, like, a bone needle for some sewing that they were doing and stuff. And it was like, all right, that's that's an intricate piece of tooling that I don't think the average person might think of ancient people using, but like, yeah, but they did.

Speaker 1:
[63:52] I have that.

Speaker 2:
[63:54] Yes, exactly. So like, there were a couple of moments like this. Their spearfishing spears actually looked like spearfishing spears. Like they have like two prongs and stuff.

Speaker 1:
[64:04] And they also had the Shell Tribe had throwing spears. Yes, which were and there's a moment where Ahut, I think is the other guy's name, is like, Tumak picks up the spear because he sees them, you know, practicing throwing or at least like overhand jabbing. And he grabs it and tries it himself. And the other guy like adjusts his grip to be way in the back of the spear so that you get the reach out of it. Like, they were using some fairly realistic technology, which was very cool.

Speaker 2:
[64:43] Yes. But otherwise, it is very much just cliches and tropes and misrepresentations.

Speaker 1:
[64:52] And also, we hinted at this, but all of, almost all of the women are wearing what are effectively bikinis.

Speaker 2:
[64:58] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[64:59] And it's very much the same thing as that superhero trope or like the the the ancient warrior women in fantasy movies, where it's like you do this woman is clambering over rocks in the barren desert, wearing a two piece bikini. And that is not remotely helpful for this person who is supposed to be an ancient person living out in the wild.

Speaker 2:
[65:25] I was so nervous for her knees the entire time she was scrambling around of just with her bare legs and arms and like her belly and just back and just everything exposed to this craggy rocky surfaces. And I was just like flinching every time she'd climb over something and like, Oh, you're gonna scrape your knees and you're gonna just like it looked so uncomfortable and unwieldy. I felt so bad for her. It's awful.

Speaker 1:
[65:57] And yet her hair looked great the whole time. Oh, her lashes looked great. And her body remained tastefully oiled.

Speaker 2:
[66:05] Yeah, yeah, absolutely bronzed. Yeah, it was, it was so, it's just every single scene was comedy that wasn't meant to be comedy. But it was hilarious.

Speaker 1:
[66:18] It would cut over to the women and we would just start laughing because they are, it was such a stark difference. They just stood out so much.

Speaker 2:
[66:27] Well, it's like the fantasy trope of like, when you go through different, different species, you know, demons and orcs and elves and humans in a fantasy setting. And the orcs are big and muscly and have tusks and the demons have wings and horns and tails. And then the women are just different skin colors of a bikini model of just Barbie, but with green, red, blue and pale skin.

Speaker 1:
[66:51] The women are all in Party City Halloween costumes of those. Yes, this is sexy demon outfit and this is sexy orc and this is sexy vampire. Yeah, these were sexy cave people.

Speaker 2:
[67:07] It was Party City cave woman. And this movie is very much where that trope like got a foothold.

Speaker 1:
[67:14] Yeah, Raquel Welch in this movie. You know, I joked at the beginning that this movie stars Raquel Welch and Raquel Welch's fur bikini.

Speaker 2:
[67:21] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[67:22] Raquel Welch in this movie is one of the most iconic pinup. Like this was, this is what she's known for. Like this was a huge deal. I saw, I think I saw a note somewhere that was like, it was her and Ursula Andress, who was the main woman in the first Bond film. Who walks out of the ocean in her bikini. And it was like, yeah, those, those two, that was like the beautiful women of the 60s. These two bikini clad action secondary characters.

Speaker 2:
[67:56] Yeah, yeah. It's very clear when you watch this, you immediately can harken back to, I mean, even in recent stuff, in comics recently, there's been a stint of rogue from X-Men in the Savage Lands running around in a cave person bikini version of her green and yellow spandex. And it is just Raquel Welch rogue in the Savage Lands of Marvel. And it's 100% harkening to this.

Speaker 1:
[68:28] Also, before I forget to mention it, there is a famous quote from Ray Harryhousen about this movie, where he makes a comment that he did not make this movie for, quote, professors who probably don't go to see these kinds of movies anyway.

Speaker 2:
[68:42] Yep. Yep. And that's very, this movie is meant to be, like I said, Conan the Barbarian is a more apt comparison to this film than it is to even like Lost World, which was whacking it over the top in a lot of ways. But that was trying to be what if we discovered that ancient things were still around and was leaning into that idea from a actual perspective of what if this really happened to a degree. This is very much just what if we had a adventure film with the flavor of Lost World, with the seasoning of Lost World. It's just meant to be in the costuming of prehistory.

Speaker 1:
[69:28] Yeah, indeed. Oh, that was the other thing I was going to say on the note of the importance of Raquel Welch in this movie. Raquel Welch's fur bikini has its own Wikipedia page.

Speaker 2:
[69:38] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[69:38] This thing with this is a big deal.

Speaker 2:
[69:40] Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's so such a it's such a fascinating movie from the perspective of tropes. Like it's just a time capsule of tropes just all bundled together in many of them to their most extreme. Like you will be pressed to find a caveman movie that's more caveman-y than this. And dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures that are more monstery than this other than like ones that have legitimate dragons and stuff.

Speaker 1:
[70:17] Yep. Also, the people have language. They have like very simple language that's mostly like one word at a time. I don't believe this is based on any particular real language. It's just like caveman speak.

Speaker 2:
[70:29] Yep. Yep. Yep.

Speaker 1:
[70:30] This movie is a real hoot. I think this would be a great party movie.

Speaker 2:
[70:37] Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[70:38] Turn this on and enjoy laughing at it with your friends.

Speaker 2:
[70:43] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[70:44] Fascinating discussions to be. I'm really glad we did this movie. We knew this movie was going to be very silly, but I think that there is so much juice to go through with the human depictions in this film. I think it's really interesting scientifically.

Speaker 2:
[70:59] Absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[71:00] Now, as of course is always the case with Silver Screen Science, we do not come on to the podcast just to nitpick the little technical things that they got right or wrong, because we like to go over the big picture. But nitpicking things is extremely fun. So we like to give ourselves a little section here at the end of every episode to do a little mini-rant about something sciency that just bugged us. Will, what mini-rant do you have for this movie?

Speaker 2:
[71:29] My mini-rant is back to their clothes, but instead of being about the blatantly ridiculous fur bikinis, it's the fact that every single caveman is wearing a over one shoulder toga style pelt. That their fur suit and every single one is covering one single shoulder. I ended up finding it so distracting because it was so consistent. No one has two shoulders covered. It's all just one shoulder. Where did that premise come from? Well, if they covered both shoulders, it starts to look too much like a shirt and cave people didn't wear shirts.

Speaker 1:
[72:11] It seems like a great way to get sunburn on one half.

Speaker 2:
[72:14] Yeah, absolutely. It was just so funny to me because it was so consistent how many of them wore that style. It feels like it's very much taken from togas, the idea of the, which I believe was like a Senate thing.

Speaker 1:
[72:35] It was like it was a decorative.

Speaker 2:
[72:37] Exactly. Yeah, it was like wearing powdered wigs, where I don't walk around in a powdered wig. I wear a powdered wig when I go to my job to be all fancy because it's a ritual. Togas were not just everyone going, man, my other shoulder is cold. It was like they had the technology to cover both shoulders.

Speaker 1:
[72:56] The breeze was only coming from one direction.

Speaker 2:
[72:59] Absolutely. You only ever walked with one side facing the ocean during day and then the other during evening. And it was just, it's very funny. And it's once again, that classic. If you go to Party City to get a caveman costume, you'll find one that looks exactly like their outfits. That was the set costume for most of the cast of this movie.

Speaker 1:
[73:24] Yeah, they could only make half of a shirt.

Speaker 2:
[73:25] Well, it's, you know, it's hard to stretch a saber-toothed cat far enough to get two sleeves.

Speaker 1:
[73:31] What are you going to do? Take down two saber-toothed cats? Well, my mini rant, I was going to mini rant about the volcano being just on fire, which is a very silly look for a volcano. But I was reminded about a thing that was bugging me the entire movie, which is that especially the Rock Tribe, but generally across all of these people, they are constantly moving around with these hunched postures.

Speaker 2:
[73:57] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[73:58] And that's another one of the, right? It's another one. Yes. Civilized people stand up straight with good posture. And uncivilized, they've got half a shirt, they've got half of the right posture. But being able to stand upright is the hallmark of our lineage.

Speaker 2:
[74:15] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[74:16] In much the same way that being social, like it doesn't make any sense that these rock tribe people are killing each other over scraps of meat because you don't survive that way. Why are you all hunched constant? You should, like, have good posture, I would imagine goes back a long ways. Because standing up relatively straight is one of our superpowers. And I think it's very funny and probably wildly inaccurate that cave people are constantly depicted like shoulders forward hunched and crouched all the time.

Speaker 2:
[74:52] Well, I feel like it comes from that old, very racist mentality of, well, but if they stood up, if they could look me in the eyes, if we could see eye to eye, then it'd be much harder for me to see them as a lesser version. And so they need to really be crouched below my eye line and looking up at me and moving a bit more like a chimp, please, because then that really makes it easier to see them as less than human.

Speaker 1:
[75:23] Well, and it is very much pulling on inspiration from things like chimps and gorillas and other primates, which are very hunched, but they're not hunched because they haven't learned how to stand up properly. They're hunched because their spines are shaped differently. Like they don't stand up straight the same reason a dog doesn't stand up straight, because that's just not the shape of their body. But we culturally, we have this sense that that is connected to a lack of propriety.

Speaker 2:
[75:52] Yes, exactly. That with enlightenment comes the stance of a human.

Speaker 1:
[75:58] Yeah, we talked about that with Planet of the Apes.

Speaker 2:
[76:01] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[76:01] Where it's like, yeah, especially in Rise, as the apes become more intelligent and more human, they also start to stand up more straight. Yeah, which is like, okay, but that's not how it works. Becoming intelligent doesn't change the shape of your skeleton.

Speaker 2:
[76:17] That would be so uncomfortable for you all. Like orangutans, stop, you're hurting yourselves.

Speaker 1:
[76:24] And now you're dragging your tail on the ground. You're going to break your hips doing that.

Speaker 2:
[76:30] So, yeah, it's it's very this movie is just so full of of glimpses into those old ideas and those I say old ideas, but those are cake ideas.

Speaker 1:
[76:43] This movie is only is less than 60 years old. Yeah, like this isn't this isn't that old.

Speaker 2:
[76:49] No, not as old as you'd like it to be like.

Speaker 1:
[76:51] This movie is not as old as our parents know, or around the same age. G'hoo. Listeners, thank you so much for joining us on this fascinating journey. We have one more episode left in Silver Screen Science for this series. If you'd like to hear us chat and ramble on a bit more about some of these less science focused thoughts, we are going to record more thoughts for our patrons over on the Patreon, if you would like to hear us. Also, there is, I believe, I put together a more thoughts collection that you can, if you want, you can subscribe just to that collection. There is an option on Patreon where you can just, I don't remember what it is, it might be like 10 bucks or something, and you just get all of the more thoughts to listen to at your leisure. So you can be a subscriber or you can purchase the collection.

Speaker 2:
[77:42] Yeah, if you're just interested in our movie tidbits, that's for you.

Speaker 1:
[77:47] So go check that out if you are inclined, and otherwise, stay tuned for the very end of April, we will release our fourth and final episode of our Old School Dinosaurs, Silver Screen Science. I'm very excited to talk about that one, because once again, it's very different. We've hit on a bunch of very different feeling movies, and I'm very excited.

Speaker 2:
[78:09] I had so much fun with this next one. I'm really excited to discuss it.

Speaker 1:
[78:14] Join us then. And in the meantime, goodbye.

Speaker 2:
[78:19] Bye.

Speaker 1:
[78:20] I don't know if they said goodbye.

Speaker 2:
[78:22] No, we made the joke. They opened the movie with the Akita. They opened the movie with early in the morning of time.

Speaker 1:
[78:30] That's right. I forgot to mention that. My favorite line in the movie. Early in the morning of time.

Speaker 2:
[78:38] So that's my favorite. Night time of time.

Speaker 1:
[78:42] Here at the night time of time. My favorite line in the movie. Early in the morning of time. My second favorite line of the movie, which is the sound of spearing a fish. Bye, everybody.

Speaker 2:
[78:56] Bye.

Speaker 1:
[79:06] Thanks for listening to The Common Descent Podcast. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and check our WordPress blog for pictures and links after each episode. Huge thanks to our patrons, whose support helps keep this podcast running and who get access to bonus goodies on Patreon. The song you're hearing is called On the Origin of Species by Protodome, which we found at ocremix.org. Thanks again for listening, we hope you'll join us next time.