CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT (1971)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, sociological*

CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT was the last of Hammer Studio's "prehistoric films," the most well known of which is still 1966's ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. Unlike YEARS, there are no "creatures" beyond naturalistic ones here, so it's often been suspected that some publicist came up with the title to suggest the presence of dinosaurs amidst the film's Stone Age protagonists.

It's hard to imagine why director Don Chaffey and writer-producer Michael Carreras thought audiences would line up for a prehistoric flick in which none of the principals can communicate save in grunts and gestures. True, a few of the males and females are played by good looking actors, such as the male lead Tony Bonner and the female support-character Julie Ege. But CREATURES doesn't offer lots of sexy cavepeople conflicts as YEARS did.

The decision to abstain from dialogue suggests that Carreras wanted to avoid some of the "baby talk" seen in earlier cavepeople flicks. Yet without dialogue, it proves difficult for a viewer to invest any importance to the seemingly endless quarrels between cavemen butting heads with one another. There's a vague quasi-ethnic myth in an intermarriage between a dark-haired tribe and a blonde-haired tribe, which in part results in a pair of contentious brothers, a dark one named Rool (Robert John) and a fair one, Toomak (Bonner). Guess which one is the nice one? Toomak is also the one who gets the girl Nala (Ege) and the leadership of their tribe. Rool doesn't seem to envy his brother's wife but he does want to be the chief, and Rool goes to great lengths, including the kidnapping of Nala, to dispossess Toomak.

The most interesting unused potential of CREATURES is that it might have dramatized the way early man formulated religion. There's an early scene in which the Dark Tribe loses its home thanks to an erupting volcano, but there are no further references to this momentous event. Halfway through the film we learn that the tribe has a female shaman of some sort, because when a cavewoman brings forth a mute girl, the shamaness adopts the girl and perhaps teaches her arcane ideas. There's a tribe that paints itself white and wears weird headgear, but what they mean is anyone's guess. At the film's climax the mute girl utilizes clay dolls in some sort of forerunner of voodoo, but it's ambiguous as to whether she causes ill fate to befall her victims, or just believes that she does. 

The musical score and photography are solid, but I can't picture anyone watching CREATURES for any reason but to speculate on said unused potential.