Women of the Prehistoric Planet (1966)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

How sad is this?

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

I'm sure some people will see my rating and think I've gone off the deep end on this one. Women of the Prehistoric World is another of those movies that gets points from me for entertainment value regardless of how bad it really is. And it's one of those cases where I can't really put my finger on what it is I like about it, I just know I had a good time watching the film. Because like most everyone else, I can see all the faults – bad special effects, a misleading title, ridiculous dialogue, annoying characters, cheap sets, poorly choreographed fight scenes, and (as someone else on IMDb has already rightly pointed out) almost no chemistry among the characters. Still, I found something in Women of the Prehistoric World that worked for me. A few examples: I enjoyed the scientific babble about space travel and time. I'm certainly no scientist, but it had an air of truth to it (at least the lines were delivered in an earnest enough manner that I bought it). The whole "three months in space equates to 18 years on the planet" bit is an interesting idea.I got a big kick out of the ending. I'm not going to give it away, but as cheap as it was, it worked on me. Caught me completely off guard.Despite the lack of a feeling of comrade between most of the characters, I still enjoyed many of the cast members. I don't know how many Wendell Corey fans there are out there, but I always like seeing him – slurred delivery and all. John Agar might not do much, but he's still a welcome face. Irene Tsu – Wow! Finally, Robert Ito probably gives the best performance of the bunch. I never realized how athletic looking he was. A far cry from his days on Quincy.As much as I hate the expression, maybe it's a case of a movie being "so bad, it's good". I do realize that a lot of the entertainment I found in the film was most likely unintentional. For example, I doubt that the set used for the spaceship crash was supposed to make me laugh, but it did. Okay, maybe I didn't laugh out loud, but it did bring a big fat smile to my face. And that's worth something, huh? Most people who have seen or will see Women of the Prehistoric World won't enjoy it as much as I did, but that's okay. I feel comfortable with my 6/10 rating.

With a title like "Women of the Prehistoric Planet" I envisioned a Lost World type movie in which scantily-clad amazonian beauties ride dinosaurs, fight against half-animal savages and a harsh, unforgiving environment. But with only one women, some forced perspective lizards that com-bust on impact, and a bunch of white guys straight out of the U.S. Navy, one can only wonder what the creators of this movie were thinking when they came up with the title.To be fair, there are some legitimate scientific ideas that are dealt with in the movie, even if the writers don't understand how they really work. For example, the writers were correct in saying that when you travel near the speed of light time slows down, so that a three week journey for the astronauts aboard the spaceship is perceived by those on the planet as taking eighteen years. However, the perception of the people down on the planet has nothing to do with the speed of the planet's rotation but the way in which the planet's matter distorts the space time continuum.The real plot of this movie is that a spaceship (Cosmos III) is hijacked by the primitive Centurions (a.k.a., non-white people) who probably perform menial domestic services for the crew aboard the spaceship. The ship crash lands on an unexplored planet with only a few survivors. Another ship in the vicinity (Cosmos IV?), moving at nearly the speed of light, travels to rescue the survivors (a three week journey on the spaceship, but an eighteen year wait on the planet). Once on the ground a group of idiots looking like U.S. Navy officers are dispatched to find the crash site. Meanwhile, a beautiful Centurion girl (the ultra-sexy Irene Tsu as Linda) wanders off and encounters a mysterious stranger named Tang who is also a Centurion. Obviously, he's the son of the survivors of the crash eighteen years earlier.The story of Linda and Tang is probably the most interesting aspect of this movie. Through their adventures together they fall in love but must still deal with the tension of growing up in two very different environments. The other aspect of the plot has to do with clumsy idiots falling off logs into acid pools and shooting at anything that moves with their ultra high tech .44 pistols. The ending of this movie will surprise no one.

I must be used to the STAR TREK series plus its affiliated spinoffs plus CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND or maybe ET etc, but with this film, I have problems.There really is no chemistry between the actors. They speak to one another, but there is no comraderie. Everybody is put into his or her little box and that is where they stay.The only good things about this movie, as far as I feel are Tang (Robert Ito in pre-QUINCY days) and Irene Tsu. I actually felt that they really cared for each other. There was the chemistry that was missing from the rest of the movie.I also liked Lt. Bradley (Paul Gilbert). Why would they have such a clown in the midst of a bunch of zombies. His energies were wasted.The ending caught me off guard. I won't divulge it, but I'm going to look at this movie again tonight to see if I can pick up any clues as to what was revealed at end time of this movie.

Yoy! Shouldn't there be laws against fraudulent movie titles? The movie's title suggests something like "Fire Maidens in Outer Space", with scantily-clad women prancing here and there, doing liturgical dance and generally acting as hunk magnets for the film's beefy, 1950s-era heroes. Alas, such is not the case. What you get instead is something along the line of "Beatniks" (which had none in the movie).The film's premise dealing with time travel is noble, but the continuous back and forth on how many years have passed since this or that event are confusing. John Agar stars along with Wendell Corey as leaders of a space expedition designed to both explore other worlds and revive the culture of a dying warrior society.Agar's ship attempts to rescue a sister ship that crash landed on a distant planet. Eighteen years of real time have passed since the crash, or is it 18 years of my life that have been lost watching this movie? Anyhow, Linda, the only woman on this "prehistoric" planet is the one brought there by Corey, whom it turns out is the love child of Corey and a woman from the Centaurian society that he's trying to save. Linda meets up with Tang (breakfast drink or hunter-gatherer, you decide), who is the offspring of two of the crash's survivors.The movie's ending leaves you groaning under the weight of the true premise of Tang & Linda existence on this planet. This premise comes from a decidedly non-Christian world view. Watch this if you are an MST3K fan; otherwise, skip this primordial soup starter.