There is hype — Hollywood hype — when it comes to films that
are flights of imagination. In other
words, take it with a grain of salt if the title of the film screams One
Million B.C. and just happens to star Carole Landis and screen newcomer
Victor Mature (he had a small role in The Housekeeper’s Daughter the year
before this adventure classic was release in 1940).
VCI Entertainment announced this past week that One
Million B.C., a Hal Roach film production released theatrically in the
spring of 1940, will be available as both DVD and Blu-ray product offerings on
July 25. It has been given a 2K
restoration from the film’s original 35mm negative for this home entertainment
launch.
One Million B.C. is a Hollywood curiosity by any standard. An excellent read for some of the backstory
details on the production and casting of the film can be found in Richard Lewis
Ward’s 2005 book, “A History of the Hal Roach Studios.”
Hal Roach handled the direction (with Hal Roach, Jr. doing
some of the second unit work) and assembled a cast that included Carole Landis,
whose film career to that point did not hold a candle to her personal life —
love affairs with both Busby Berkeley and Darryl F. Zanuck — Victor
Mature, who had made his film debut the previous year in the aforementioned The
Housekeeper’s Daughter (also a Hal Roach production) and Lon Chaney,
Jr., who also starred in the Hal Roach production of Of Mice and Men
(nominated Best Picture, but for some odd reason Chaney’s performance was
ignored in the Best Actor category), which opened in New York City in December
of 1939 to qualify for Oscar consideration and then went wide in January of
1940.
The plot for the film cannot be taken seriously — the
1,000,000 B.C. part is pure hype — as it blends different epochs that would
send paleontologists into the night screaming in agony. We have cave people with few, if any,
language skills, dinosaurs (well, lizards enlarged for the screen) and rampaging
Mastodons. It’s pure adventure, nothing
more.
When the film had its first “out of town” sneak previews, it
became obvious to Hal Roach that the original voice-over introduction to the
story wasn’t effective in setting the mood for the story that was to
follow. So he recruited faded silent
film star Conrad Nagel to shoot a prologue that had him play the role of an anthropologist
who was working on a dig (a treasure trove of cave painting) when a group of
hikers sought shelter in his cave from a storm. He entertains them with his musings on what
the cave painting might represent.
Boom, we flash back to Tumak (Victor Mature) and his father,
Akhoba (Lon Chaney, Jr.) — who just happens to be the leader of a tribe of cave
dwelling people — who have a tiff over the sharing of a meal and Tumak is
beaten senseless and tossed over a cliff.
The fall doesn’t kill him, nor does the Mastodon who attacks him … unconscious
he floats down a river on the tree that the giant beast uprooted.
He is found by Loana (Carole Landis), a member of a group
that we come to know as the Shell Tribe, and he is cared for. Compared to his upbringing with the “Rock”
people, these are highly “civilized” humans, which confuses him at first, but
he eventually comes around to their way of living.
Tumak has little to no luck and gets tossed out of this
group too — for reasons he can’t quite grasp — but by this time Loana has
become enamored with him and joins him in his exile.
All of these events — and more — are interpreted from cave
paintings!! Either Conrad Nagel knows
his stuff or he is stark raving mad. No
matter, One Million B.C. is a
must-have on Blu-ray come July 25!
Of note, Hal Roach got a producer’s credit for the 1966 more
famous remake, One Million Years B.C., starring Raquel Welch as Loana. One thing is certain for both films, Raquel
Welch and Carole Landis were sex symbols of their time — that mutual status
far-eclipsing their common roles of Loana, prehistoric woman!
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