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

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 People That Time Forgot is directed by Kevin Connor and adapted to screenplay by Patrick Tilley from the novel of the same name written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. it stars Patrick Wayne, Sarah Douglas, Dana Gillespie, Thorley Walters, Shane Rimmer and Doug McClure. Music is scored by John Scott and cinematography by Alan Hume.

A sequel to The Land That Time Forgot, plot finds Wayne as Major Ben McBride who arranges a mission to go and search for his missing friend Bowen Tyler (McClure). As the party go beyond the Antartic wastes they find themselves in a world populated by prehistoric creatures and primitive tribes.

There are a group of film fans of a certain age that were exposed wilfully to the joys of Kevin Connor and Doug McClure Creature Features, the four pictures made with low budgets (see also The Land That Time Forgot 1975, At the Earth's Core 1976 & Warlords of Atlantis 1978) were simply put together with a standard structure of humans discovering an unknown land, who then encounter beasties and savage races and then try to escape said world of wonder. Back then in the 70s with youthful eyes these films were magnificent things, we didn't care about clunky animatronics and miniatures, staid dialogue and poorly constructed scenes of men grappling with a man in rubber make up. Nor did us boys pay any attention to the considerable heaving bosom factor, which is here supplied with a different kind of wonder by Dana Gillespie! But they are a group of films that once loved, is a love that lasts forever, yes, it's true love.

As it is, The People That Time Forgot is often thought of as the weakest of the four, yet it's every inch the equal of "Land", primarily because the cast attack the material with great spirit (Douglas is rather splendid and not just a posh girl with a pretty face), the film stock it's shot on is of better quality and John Scott's score is bursting with vitality. There's also a ripper of a finale here, with the pyrotechnics department creating merry hell. Explosives aplenty. While the Santa Cruz de la Palma location used for the world of Caprona is perfectly bereft of civilised leanings. As with the other's in the series, the ideas at the heart aren't fully realised because of the budget restrictions, so we basically get some talk between characters, then a fight with a beast, some more talk, another fight with a beast, a meeting with a uncivilised tribe, a fight with a beast, and on it goes until the derring-do escape. There will be peril and actually this one has a very noteworthy turn of events that might surprise a few of the uninitiated.

1977 of course was the year of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which changed things considerably in the creature feature/sci-fi fantasy stakes. Thus the Connor/McClure movies were relegated to being antique relics of monster malarkey cinema. Yet still they retain a quaint uniqueness, they are able to continually imbue many of us with waves of nostalgia, taking us back to a time when the likes of Connor made fantasy films with love and basic tools. The Land That Time Forgot was badly adapted to film in 2009 (C. Thomas Howell directing and starring), which begs the question on why Burroughs' Caspak trilogy has not been taken on by a big studio? As yet the third part of the trilogy, Out of Time's Abyss, has not received a filmic adaptation, can you imagine what someone like Spileberg could do with Burroughs' wonderful source ideas?

Ah well, we can but dream, in the meantime we will happily make do with our cheesy antiquities. 7/10

With a plot like this one, it's hard to go wrong. A post WWI expedition sails to the Antarctic to try tofind a lost man in a prehistoric land tucked between the high icy mountains. Prehistoric dinosaurs keep popping up throughout the film. Then there's always the evil tribe of bad guys causing plenty of trouble. I can't forget to mention the scantily clad cave girl. I doubt if prehistoric women ever looked like this. Throw in a volcano and you have an adventure movie called 'The People That Time Forgot'. The characters and situations are not entirely believable or realistic and the dinosaurs could have used more work on them, but all in all, it was a pretty good, fun movie that's worth watching.

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