‘Creatures the World Forgot’ or — ‘2001’ with Assholes?

I always resented the hell out of Hammer’s ‘Creatures the World Forgot’ (1971) when I was a kid. Why? Because it was the prehistoric movie with NO dinosaurs in it, that’s why. Sure, like every eight year old kid I was a world class paleontology expert so knew full well that humans and terrible lizards never co-existed but that wasn’t the point. A lack of dinosaurs in my movie was the point and, quite frankly, there’s nothing all that interesting about watching some grunting cave-people getting up to shit without them (it’s like the opening of Kubrick’s sci-fi epic but stretched out to an entire movie).

And a film that’s nothing more than grunting cave-people getting up to shit presents director Don Chaffey and scriptwriter/producer Michael Carreras with several problems, specifically — how do you come up with an interesting yarn and, more importantly, how to tell it purely visually considering there’ll be zero dialogue? It’s quite a conundrum. So does Chaffey pull it off?

The surprising news (and this certainly shocked me) is that not only does Chaffey do a decent job of keeping everything visually interesting and coherent but frequently does so with remarkable style, something that’s helped by the fact the entire film is shot entirely outdoors on location in some spectacular African landscape. This means there’s a huge sense of space and scale to everything and a real openness that completely fills the screen. Goodness, this is really pretty impressive!

Chaffey and cinematographer Vincent Cox exploit this environment wonderfully with almost every shot containing an interesting composition, fascinating detail or stunning geological backdrop to the extent I’d have been quite happy if the film didn’t even contain a story at all and consisted purely of these glorious visuals (it’s a bit like watching Ron Fricke’s ‘Baraka’ or ‘Samsara’ except some bearded dickheads have accidentally stumbled in front of the camera).

There’s a moment near the end when the two rival cavemen are fighting each other over a woman in a fur bikini on top of some dangerously high cliffs and the height and scale of the panorama is absolutely breathtaking with vast, jagged mountain ranges cutting right across the horizon in the distance. It’s really something else and, hang on! Did I say I resented this movie?! I’m enjoying this WAY more than I was expecting.

The film’s also surprisingly violent with some seriously nasty, completely-out-of-nowhere, moments of grisly brutality that very much provide the sensation of how precarious prehistoric life must have been (I’m obviously speculating here as, for all I know, it might’ve been a delightful picnic). A great example of this fragility is when the elderly tribe leader is bonding with his adult son only for a warthog to suddenly come dashing out of nowhere and savage the poor fucker to death. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t laughing my ass off at the extremity, surprise and hilarity of it all.

There’s also an incredibly effective decapitation that’s done completely in camera and with no special effects used other than some very smart camera placement. As I said, this is a constantly and consistently visually interesting movie.

I was genuinely stunned at how much I dug ‘Creatures the World Forgot’ and it’s very possible that its lack of dinosaurs forced the filmmakers try their damnedest to make sure everything else hooked the attention. It also gives the film a bizarre “authenticity” even if what we’re looking at often feels like watching a bunch of hippies getting lost on their holidays.

It might not have the dinosaurs of ‘One Million Years B.C.’ (1966) but ‘Creatures the World Forgot’ might be the more interesting movie. It’s certainly not a great (or even good) film by any means but I no longer resent it and might, just possibly, now somewhat love the bloody stupid thing.