The People That Time Forgot

I saw this film on a drive in double bill with THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT - and had read the books when I was 11 years old (Ace Paperbacks). LAND has hand puppet dinosaurs that don't move and look silly, PEOPLE has men in rubber suits as dinosaurs that look silly. Both films change the Burroughs stories (probably for budget reasons), but PEOPLE does something interesting - it combines the 2nd and 3rd book in Burroughs' series, using Act 1 of PEOPLE and Act 2&3 of OUT OF TIME'S ABYSS. The Weiros from ABYSS have been changed into Nagaas - a volcano cult dressed in Japanese Armor. (The Weiros were humanoids evolved from Pterodactyls - hard to do on a $1.98 budget.) This way they could take the old prisoner from ABYSS and turn him into Doug McClure's character.

PEOPLE is much better than LAND for a couple of reasons. LAND not only had crappy FX, it looked like it was shot on an indoor stage! So even when there isn't some bad process shot of a hand puppet T-Rex growling, the movie looks fake. PEOPLE was shot on location in Spain, and has some nice big panoramic shots - one amazing shot of the team crossing the crest of a mountain looks like something out of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. The other reason why PEOPLE is better - cavegirls! If you read the books (with Frazetta covers) there were always half-naked cavegirls. As an 11 year-old boy, reading these was like discovering your Uncle's Playboy collection. Half naked girls! LAND has no cavegirls at all, PEOPLE has the Ajor character from the novel in a laced leather outfit that fits the drive in AIP scenario to a T.

I love the books, and would love to do a modern adaptation (with today's FX).

• Bill

I remembered horrible performances, cheap sets, and a contrived storyline. It's amazing I bothered with this one again, but I'm glad I did. While this is no masterpiece, it is actually much better than I remembered. Continuing forward from the original installment, "The Land That Time Forgot," picks up the Bowen Tyler (Doug McClure) character after having been left behind by the crew of his original mission, and discovers what has happened in his life since his isolation began.

While this IS horribly dated, Patrick Wayne is actually quite good. You may remember Patrick Wayne from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. He is also John Wayne's son, who was offered the role as Superman in the original movie, but turned it down due to his father's accelerating cancer.

The sets were not as bad as I thought I remembered, either, but the dialog delivery is still pretty false and unnatural.

All in all? As a "B" flick, this isn't bad for a rainy day diversion. It's still not a masterpiece and is RIPE for a remake, but there is some entertainment to be derived from this work.

It rates a 4.7/10 from...

the Fiend :.

Not bad at all, despite the flat performances by some members of an attractive cast and the familiarity of it all. "This island never sleeps," says the full-figured DANA GILLESPIE to PATRICK WAYNE...especially when it's crawling with prehistoric creatures. She's clad in an outfit that looks as though Frederick of Hollywood had a hand in the costuming.

Photographed in Spain, the color photography is excellent, the creatures look fairly realistic, and the opening sequence with the plane being attacked by a huge bird is bound to hook you into the story. It's rather like a poor man's "Jurassic Park", but it has its moments.

John Wayne's son, PATRICK WAYNE, is certainly a handsome male lead but has all the animation of one of the dinosaurs, never making us believe he's the leader of the dangerous expedition. Others in the largely unknown cast are pretty good and John Scott's music is effective in creating the necessary suspense.

It's a diverting enough adventure, very watchable and suitable for family viewing.

Summing up: Not bad at all, the sort of film that kiddie matinees were all about.

Best line after a native attack: "I'm sick and tired of running away from those dreadful people!"

The Land That Time Forgot was a surprisingly decent entry into the lost world of cavemen / dinosaurs adventure genre of the 70s, but this paint- by-numbers follow-up is nothing special. Block of wood celebrity offspring Patrick Wayne leads a band of rescuers in search of first movie survivor Doug McClure. The resulting chases, fights, narrow escapes etc. are the usual stuff of adventure movies, but the stunt choreography comes off as ordinary and uninspired. Oh-so-British Sarah Douglas is along as one of Wayne's crew but she has little to do here other than stand around looking uncomfortable. And the Lost Land itself, an important and colorful presence in the first film, is less imaginatively conceived this time around. Not a bad time waster when you have nothing better to do for a couple of hours, but try not to expect too much in the way of visionary fantasy. It isn't here.

I first saw THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT in the early 1980s and as a sequel to the fondly remembered THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT I was very disappointed in it . Having seen it again over 20 years later I do realise that it's a very flawed movie/sequel but it's not without some value

Many of the problems are to do with the slow first half . We the audience know that the travellers are going to be meeting giant rubber dinosaurs but these rubber puppets aren't used to their real potential and the only sequence I can recall from over 20 years ago was when the pterodactyl smashed into the plane . What probably makes the sequence stick out in my memory is that this is one of the few times that a dinosaur does anything really bad in the movie but I guess that's because this isn't really a monster movie at all

The movie is far more similar to a half forgotten Hammer adventure film called THE LAST CONTINENT rather than a sequel to THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT , it's an adventure story featuring a lost kingdom and you can't help thinking that perhaps the story was once intended to be an original screenplay since Doug McClure's character seems to have been resurrected to kick off the plot but he's not given much to do and his role is even more superfluous than that of Charlton Heston in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES a film not a million miles removed from this one

The film does improve in the second half as the expedition comes across a kingdom of pseudo Samuri warriors even if does lead to some plot holes , I can understand the concept of parallel evolution but why would this only apply to one race and not the others . Think about it: One race in this lost land has the culture and technology of 16th century Japan but everyone else seems to be living in the stone age . Credible ? Probably not ( Was it just an excuse to have a busty red head run around not wearing much ? ) but it's not really a credible movie

It is a fairly entertaining one though and better than I remembered from a couple of decades ago . The fact that you don't need to have seen the prequel is both a strength and weakness for THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT but it stands firmly on its own hind legs for a non discerning audience