User reviews

One of the pleasures of watching cheap sixties sci-fi movies was that they did the future so much better in those days, as witness the snug ski pants and stylish hairstyles worn by the women in this glossy colour quickie with cardboard sets and hilarious monsters that must have cost several dollars and evokes Maria Montez rather than Stanley Kubrick.

It's pretty awful and the special effects may not be very special but it's always a pleasure to see the lovely Merry Anders while the discussion of the effects of time paradox display at least a rudimentary knowledge of science fiction concepts on someone's part.

There is only one way to watch this film...and that is with witty commentary.

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.

The chance to comment on this film(?) finally made me register.

I saw this late at night and watched with delight, wondering just how bad it could get. That was thirty years ago, so if you're looking for accurate scene descriptions and dialogue quotes, don't expect them here. But here's my hazy, loving memories.

1. Wendell Corey, playing the captain of the space ship, half plastered and obviously paying off a bet with a one afternoon performance, standing in front of a blank wall with a porthole in it while someone on the other side waves a sparkler.

Corey: "Looksh like another meteor shtorm..."

2. The spaceship crashing in the swamp... The miniature they used must hve been about the size of a pencil stub, since it went "bloop" and tossed up one single drop of water which on that scale would have been considerably bigger than a bungalow.

3. The prehistoric woman herself, a dark, hirsute beauty, wearing a bearskin teddy and looking hopefully at the director for direction after each line of dialogue.

4. One set, obviously built while they still had twenty seven dollars to burn, that consisted of a cave full of giant toadstools and human skeletons. After sneaking around outside for what seems to be several days, a patrol from the spaceship enters.

The patrol leader's perplexed comment: "There's something suspicious about this place..."

That's where I lost it completely and rolled around on the floor.

Well, you had to be there.

Somewhere in space, where no one can hear you scream, the Cosmos 1 is heading off to somewhere else. The crew have been on this 6 month mission. They are an advanced space faring race with their futuristic lockers and guitar-looking radar wall screen and the tendency to do space/time conversion formulas. Somewhere else another space vessel, Cosmos 3, has problems. The ship and crew are being held hostage by Centaurians (think of Klingons without the brown paint and sash, but all Asian) and because of it they crash onto a "prehistoric" planet.

The commander of Cosmos 1, Admiral King (played by the walking corpse of the late Wendell Corey), disobeys orders and goes on a rescue mission to Solaris.

3 months later .....

Cosmos 1 arrives at the planet, where 18 years have gone by. A rescue party is sent down, lead by Commander "I don't like Centaurians" Scott with Dr. Farrell (played by the incomparable John Agar), Lt."Why won't he shut up" Bradley, Stuart Margolin as the Chief and some nobody who's expendable (think of the red shirt security officers from the original Star Trek series). At the same time, Linda (Irene Tsu) escapes to the planet to stretch her legs.

On the "prehistoric" planet below, they find the crash site and the lone survivor; a Centaurian named Tang (Robert Ito). The rest of the movie is just a "stew" containing paper machete sets, stock footage of an iguana, a rubber iguana on fire, a sock-like jumping tree snake, a hopping spider plush toy, animal cruelty towards a chimpanzee (Teeko), stock footage, the admiral's slurred confused alcoholic rants and a trio of cavemen brutes. We top this with scenes upon scenes of the lecherous, chauvinistic, sexual harassing, karate practicing Lt. Bradley (who never shuts up). Visualize the Watney Smith character from Outlaw of Gor .... CABOT !!

Though the budget of the movie (and by proxy the intelligence of the write/director) was low, the movie still manages to be infused with a thought provoking plot about race relations, cultural differences, not being understood, being different, going through turmoil and finding a resolution. As a rule, you probably won't need more than 5 or 6 shots of SoCo to be able to see this.

You will probably recognize some of the actors. They had long and fulfilling careers, but you would not have bet on that after seeing this movie. Riveting performances like "crossing the log when we could go around or jump over the liquid" scene and Irene Tsu's unforgettable banana scene. This scene is both erotic, inappropriate and confusing (the skin of the banana ,and by proxy the banana itself, is bite-proof, yet not peel proof). Robert Ito's "hopping" interpretation of Tang will haunt me for the rest of my days.

I highly recommend this movie if you are not alone, not on any sleep inducing medication nor in possession of a dissection kit and are watching the MST3k version of this movie. In my final thoughts I noticed a similarity between this movie and another MST alumni, The Clonus Horror. Now to a bit of SAT deja vu :

The Clonus Horror is to The Island as The Women of the Prehistoric Planet is to ….

a) Star Trek

b) Star Wars

c) None of the above

d) Battlestar Galactica

.... for those even remotely interested the answer will be in my next review.

-Celluloid Rehab

And it's a real pity that it was in the first national, Comedy Channel (pre-Comedy Central) season of MST3K (before Josh Weinstein left to work on THE SIMPSONS, and before Mike Nelson signed on as a utility actor), so it presumably won't be reissued on home video in their version, while my off-cable VHS tape is on its last legs. The cast makes the film, as several have noted here, as does the twist ending you know M. Shyamalan is waiting to spring on us again any film now...I won't reveal it, but its probably the oldest cliché in bad written SF, so ridiculously hack that even the usually shameless film industry hasn't bothered with it much over the decades.

However, quite aside from seeing Stuart Margolin beginning his long, deft, typecast career, and Robert Ito with surely no inkling of his similarly long television career to come, for this viewer, the female cast, led in this regard by Irene Tsu and Merry Anders, is remarkably lovely. Arthur C. Pierce, truly an undersung contributor to the Whacked tradition of film-making, provided us with so much in his few mid-'60s features. It's a pity we haven't given him more attention...or, perhaps, not. But these are wonderfully weird (not least in their utter lack of realization of how schlock they are), and often hard to find, films.

There's only one woman featured prominently in this movie...and she isn't from the prehistoric planet. What a rip-off!

There are a couple of hokey effects but you'll want to hit the fast-forward button to see them. The majority of this film, like so many bad sci-fi movies of the 50's and 60's, is extended walking sequences! No one ever imagined that a prehistoric planet would be this boring. Never did a film need process shots of alligators and lizards more. Or women, for that matter!

However, it is worth noting that this is the movie that started the popular "Hi-Keeba!!" catch phrase on MST3K.

There's also twist ending in this movie that the average viewer will be able to spot about 2 minutes into the film. John Agar's in this film, too. 'Nuff said.

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.

I watched this movie on a Monday night cuz nothing was on. In fact, I bought this movie. It's actually really good. It's about these astronauts who travel through space and the time shifting is off from real time. The main guys are kind of like scientists and there are a few women on this ship also. They are going to a planet that has dinosaurs and lakes made of acid. Very strange huh? Well some cavemen eventually torment the folks on this planet and there is an engineer who is really into doing stand up comedy in the middle of an expedition. He just talks and talks and at one point he does a FLIP for no reason. There is a Chinese man named TANG who is like ADAM and a woman named LINDA who is like Eve. As the astronauts leave, they look behind at the planet and name it Earth. It was a goosebump moment for sure!

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.

Wow. A very cheesy space flick with corny humor to boot.

Apparently, Centaurions aren't feeling good about being mistreated, there's a mutiny, nice model ship crash and the film mixes into a caveman/futuristic/love story. I was hoping for Wendell Corey's demise, but it doesn't happen (rats). The hotty Linda meets a guy named Tang. That's mostly all I can recall or all I want to. Do not reveal the ending of Biblical proportions!

Loved the space age weapons...I think they were 38 calibers. What a vision to see a future with no lasers or disintegrators!

Another one of those 1960s sci-fi movies whose poor production standards set your teeth on edge -- but in this case the cast is a hoot!

A space expedition comprised of the prolific John Agar, Wendell Corey ("Cyborg 2087"), Lyle Waggoner ("The Carol Burnette Show"), night club comedian Paul Gilbert (the comic relief), and Stuart Magolin (Angel from "The Rockford Files") lands on an alien world (a studio set), populated by dinosuars (stock-footage lizards) and prehistoric humanoids.

The astronauts provide assistance to two local inhabitants, a man and a woman who serve as a kind of Adam and Eve for this strange world -- which turns out to be Earth! This twist ending was done so often on the Twilight Zone it will never surprise anybody again.

The male humanoid's name is Tang and the female's is Linda ( . . . Linda?). Admittedly the story attempts to interject a few interesting elements; in addition to the roaring lizards, there's a carnivorous plant and a king-sized spider. Remember, I said they TRIED, okay?

We just watched this on Mystery Science theatre 3000 and there were absolutely NO prehistoric women. I don't know every thing edited out as I'd not seen the original version. But this version had more holes in it than you could count. Since it was on-demand you'd assume you'd get the whole thing. No prehistoric women, no fights with prehistoric people, original lost crew found but no explanation of why their condition was the way it was. Truly a Weird Cut.

Perhaps the worst movie ever shown on MST3K. Misleading titled, actors who aren't believable as humans. A Cardboard set, and outright laughable special effects. I guess one could list the plot as a goof. There was something that came out of this movie that started a trend. Something we see today. Prop Advertisements. Tang, a children's fruit drink, was the name of the only one left on the planet. subliminal advertisement! What a concept.

I wonder how Tang's sales were after this movie. Wait, I guess that really isn't a positive. I guess as far as this movie is concerned, the glass is really half empty. Kinda like the people's head who starred and those who wrote it. half empty. No brains, just space for rent.

I had expected to see a variety of fur bikinis being worn in this film but there were none to be seen. An interesting plot but badly executed in this very cheap and cheerful effort but it was in colour which made it a bit more bearable.

A bit lacking in action and with the usual type of lizard standing in for a prehistoric monster. The "outdoor" sets were not too bad but lacking in variety to make it a bit cheaper to make the film. Odd that the characters in a Sci-Fi film fire a conventional gun and not some kind of ray gun.

Not really worth watching for any reason other than idle curiosity.

Hoping to rescue the survivors of a crashed starship, the crew of the 'Cosmos 1' travel to an inhospitable primitive planet inhabited by primeval beasts and people. The film, which I stress is terrible, must have been written (at least in part) by someone with a background in science (or at least in science fiction). The premise is that due to time-dilation, the rescue ship (which is travelling at relativistic speeds) will take six months (ship's time) to get to the crash site while 18 years will have passed on the planet, time enough for another generation to be born. Unfortunately, this bit cleverness is undermined by Dr. Farrell's (B-movie fixture John Agar) nonsensical attempt to explain the phenomenon to 'redshirt' crewman Sgt. Allen. The film also references gravity generators that provide the 'Cosmos 1' with an 'up and down' (a frequently ignored concept even in good sci-fi films), the opening shots of the ship's 'bridge' are pretty good (for the apparent budget and if you ignore the upholstered 'love seat'), and the backstory about racial (colonial?) conflict between the starship's civilization (played by Caucasians) and the Centurions (played by Asian actors) is intriguing (unfortunately, little was done with it beyond some facile and heavy-handed 'can't we all just get along' messaging). Other than these pluses, the film is a cheap-looking and dull. The special effects (especially the model work and pyrotechnics) and the sets are borderline amateur and the 'highlights', such as the crash of the starship or the attack of the giant iguana, are laughable. As Admiral King, character actor Wendell Corey (who supposedly had some issues with 'the bottle') appears slur his lines at times and neither Agar nor Keith Larsen (Cmdr. Scott) do much with their characters (Scott's conflicted miscegenatious passion for sexy Centuri Linda (Irene Tsu) ends up trite and flat). Comedian Paul Gilbert provides some painful-to-watch comic relief, Adam Roarke (best known for various 60s 'biker' exploitation films) is in the ship's crew, and Stuart Margolin makes his film debut as 'Chief'. If 'Women of the Prehistoric Planet' had more action (especially of the prehistoric kind), it might have achieved true 'cult' status but as is, it falls into the Neverland of 'must see' for some people (like me) but 'must avoid' for most people (although the latter group might enjoy the MST3K version).