“It can only be one thing! Prehistoric!”

Drake’s rating: Teetering on the edge of a wardrobe malfunction

Drake’s review: Amicus Productions was on its last legs in 1977, and that fact is most evident in The People That Time Forgot. Their third Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation, following The Land That Time Forgot and At the Earth’s Core, this movie was in fact the last gasp for the studio before it closed its doors after a 15-year run as a producer of low-budget science fiction and horror. Unfortunately, they didn’t go out on a high note.

A direct sequel to The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot sees American Ben McBride (Patrick Wayne, Young Guns) sailing to the mythical island of Caprona in search of his good friend Bowen Tyler. Unable to sail underneath the isle since he lacks the submarine Tyler had commandeered in the previous film, McBride instead flies over the frozen mountains of Caprona with a four-seater airplane that he had the foresight to bring along on the voyage.

And because it’s a four-seater, McBride is accompanied by three other adventurous souls, including Lady Charlotte (Sarah Douglas, Superman II) and her camera, mechanic Hogan (Shane Rimmer, Rollerball) and the professorial Norfolk (Thorley Walters, Trog).

But because this is Caprona, it’s not long before McBride and the rest encounter a rubber dinosaur. In fact, after their flight over the mountains a pterodactyl takes no small offense to sharing its airspace with a biplane and goes on the attack, which abruptly ends when the dinosaur gets its beak tangled in the propeller. That finishes the attack pretty quickly, but it also means a rough landing for the plane, which is going to be grounded until Hogan can get it working again.

Still, this is Caprona, so there’s places to go and new dinosaurs to see, right? Well, that may have been true in 1974, when Amicus had merely been on the ropes. By 1977, however, they were out of steam creatively and financially, and instead of a lush jungle populated by scads of dinosaurs and warring tribes of cavemen, we get scrublands with only a few prehistoric creatures and an attack by some neanderthal types who sport very unconvincing latex prosthetics.

And then there’s the pseudo-samurai tribe that eventually captures McBride and company, and I still have no idea where they came from. They’re sporting steel weapons and mass-produced costumes without even a hint of being much more technologically advanced than Caprona’s other humanoid denizens, and following a green guy who looks like he might have been Bruce Banner’s alter ego if he laid around and ate Twinkies all day instead of lifting weights. They also worship the volcano that’s going to explode during the final reel, because of course they do.

This is obviously a low-budget flick and it really shows, but if there’s one things about it that’s truly impressive, it’s Dana Gillespie’s costume.

To backtrack just a bit, Dana Gillespie was a popular singer of the era, and she had done a bit of acting here and there as well. In The People That Time Forgot she shows up as Ajor, a native of Caprona who evidently hopped, skipped, and jumped her way right up the evolutionary ladder past her fellow cavemen. Lacking the both the latex foreheads and the overall hirsuteness of her peers, she in fact looks as though she just came from a relaxing day at the spa, with a deep tan and permed hair that rivals Farrah Fawcett’s on her best day.

But it’s Ajor’s choice of daily wear that truly made an impression upon many a viewer who saw The People That Time Forgot at an impressionable age, since it’s right out of a comic book. Even more impressive is that, even though Gillespie is very active throughout the film, jumping over rocks, running through rough terrain and fighting with cavemen, that costume never even moves a fraction of an inch. If there was an Academy Award for “Most Judicious and Careful Application of Double-Sided Tape in a Motion Picture,” this film would have earned itself an Oscar.

As it is, however, The People That Time Forgot is instead an antiquated finale from a studio that had simply failed to move on with the times. When you watch this film, it looks and feels like something made a decade or two earlier. And then you realize that it was released three months after Star Wars, and that somehow makes it feel even more anachronistic.

There is a bit of fun here and there, but on the whole The People That Time Forgot is more content to wander around in the forest than to duke it out with dinosaurs and cavemen. Honestly, Dana Gillespie’s costume deserved a better film.

Intermission!

• Granted, I may justifiably complain about the production values on hand here, but the airplane and ship models are very well done.
• Sarah Douglas rocking mini-hair buns. What was in the water in 1977?
• Good thing Ajor already knows how to speak English, or that first meeting would have been all kinds of awkward.
• The sparse forests of Caprona are not as visually interesting as its jungles were.
• Caveman attack! But Patrick Wayne just doesn’t have that joy in brawling that Doug McClure had.
• Look, all I can think is that Amicus picked up a few boxes of discount samurai costumes on the cheap and just had to use them. Nothing else makes sense.
• So, the Frazetta posters in the throne room, right? No, they were not licensed. Frank Frazetta himself laughed it off in an interview when he found out about them years later, but did mention that the producers were lucky that his wife and business partner Ellie hadn’t seen them.
• That’s a lot of green makeup. A LOT.
• That is in fact Darth Vader himself, David Prowse, under the executioner’s mask.
• A volcanic explosion? Who saw that coming? Aside from everyone, I mean.