Technical data
- Title: ONE MILLION YEARS B.C.
- Year: 1965
- Production: Hammer Films.
- Country: United Kingdom.
- Direction: Don Chaffey.
- Cast: Raquel Welch, John Richardson, Percy Herbert, Martine Beswick, Robert Brown.
Description and synopsis
The volcanic landscape of Lanzarote serves as the backdrop for this legendary adventure film. The film tells the love story of two members of different prehistoric clans who are condemned to wander through inhospitable and exotic lands, facing fearsome dangers: volcanoes, earthquakes, dinosaur attacks, huge fights and so on.
This film in the fantasy genre was set in a sort of wild Palaeolithic, which had one of its main settings in the lava of Timanfaya, but which also chose other emblematic enclaves of the island, such as El Golfo and its peculiar lake of greenish waters, the paradisiacal beaches of Papagayo and the impressive sandy beach of Famara, the largest on the island.
This film has gone down in film history for several reasons. The director, Don Chaffey, was an outstanding author of fantasy cinema, although the legendary Ray Harryhausen, known for being considered the “father” of modern special effects in cinema, especially in the stop motion technique, achieved greater renown. Harryhausen, who was awarded several Oscars, including an honorary one in 1992 in recognition of the contribution of his career, made giant turtles and pterodactyls chase the stars of One Million Years B.C. around Lanzarote, with a veracity rarely seen before.
However, rather than the quality of the film, it was the impact of Raquel Welch’s scenes and her famous “Stone Age bikini” that ensured the film would stick in viewers’ minds forever. In her first film, the young American actress, later nicknamed “The Body”, became an international icon of the first order. It should be remembered that the bikini had only recently been invented and caused as much controversy as it attracted attention on a global scale. Proof of the influence that these scenes have had for decades is that in the famous film The Shawshank Redemption, nominated for seven Oscars in 1995, the main character, played by actor Tim Robbins, uses a Raquel Welch poster to hide the passageway through which he is digging his escape from prison.
One Million Years B.C. not only left unforgettable scenes in the minds of a global audience but also created plenty of rumours in Lanzarote’s internal history, with several intrepid local gallants claiming to have achieved what half the planet craved: the love of Raquel Welch.
