Written by: Gerard Bach
Starring: Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nameer El-Kadi, Rae Dawn Chong
Synopsis: In the prehistoric world, a Cro-Magnon tribe depends on an ever-burning source of fire, which eventually extinguishes. Lacking the knowledge to start a new fire, the tribe sends three warriors on a quest for more. With the tribe's future at stake, the warriors make their way across a treacherous landscape full of hostile tribes and monstrous beasts. On their journey, they encounter Ika, a woman who has the knowledge they seek.
I love prehistoric stuff. There is something very fascinating about the world's past before civilization. Whether it be dinosaurs, mammoths, cavemen, or Precambrian jellyfish, it's all interesting. Someone recommended me this film, and as soon as I learned of it's existence I had to watch it. Safe to say, it's as much as you could ask for in a story of this caliber.
With no intelligible dialogue, mostly grunts and an artificial ancient language created by A Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess, it allows for a purely visual form of storytelling. It's my favorite form of storytelling. The movie feels sort of like the Dawn of Man segment from 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of cinematography and pacing. Considering most people believe that's the best part of 2001, I think that's a good thing. The whole movie is hypnotic, allowing the viewer to get lost in the prehistoric world the story takes place in.
It has everything you need in a movie too. We've got a hero, a love subplot, some action, humor, some human tension, and character development. And it's all executed very, very well. It's thoroughly entertaining. Even though this movie was made in 1981, before CGI, we still get sabre-cats and mammoths! Of course, the sabre-cats are lions with fake teeth and the mammoths were unconvincing puppets (they may have also been some sort of animal wearing costumes during the far off wide shots, but I'm not sure. They weren't elephants though), but they were there and I wasn't expecting it. Also, while they weren't particularly convincing, they did look ten times better than stop motion and I'm glad we didn't that. The acting is also very good, it's hard to take people dressed up as cavemen seriously but they managed to do it. Ron Perlman is in this movie, and he was born to play a caveman.
I recommend this to anyone who likes prehistory. It's not particularly accurate, especially now, but it captures the essence of early humanity. It's available on netflix.
8/10
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