Tony Mastroianni Review Collection

There's Miss Welch -- After That, a Couple of Pterodactyls

Cleveland Press May 19, 1967

You see, there are all these people -- Loana, a young Shell girl; and Tumak, second son of Akhoba; and Sakana, first son of Akhoba; and Nupondi, who's in love with Tumak; and Sura, who's in love with Ahot; and Akhoba, leader of the Rock tribe, who isn't in love with anybody.

And so help me, you can't hardly tell one from the other, except for Loana who is Raquel Welch in an animal skin bikini. And anybody who can't recognize Miss Welch hasn't seen a magazine cover in two years (or today's Page 3).

ANYWAY, it's a long time ago, like a million years and nobody speaks English because that would be terribly inaccurate, so they just grunt at each other. It's a wonderful thing about accuracy -- the way the moviemakers would worry about a few grunts but can go ahead and have people battling anachronistic dinosaurs.

Now there are the Rock people who are sort of mangy looking and have dark hair and are real uncouth, like when the strongest tear at the roasting animal and the less strong go hungry. This obviously is the forerunner of the boarding house reach which shows you how educational movies can be.

Then there are the Shell people who have fair hair and are very couth indeed and they fish, and eat vegetables and sew. They have even invented the spear about which everyone makes a great fuss and you know that from this time on warfare will never be the same

THERE is some sort of plot in which the son of the chief of the Rock people gets booted out and wanders around in the hot sun and is discovered by all these blond girls in the Shell tribe. One of them, Miss Welch, makes a great fuss over him. I suppose it's because he has dark hair which is very astute of her and is probably the start of that adage about how blonds have more fun.

Every time "One Million Years B. C." lags, which is frequently, a prehistoric animal appears. There are giant lizards, an allosaurus, a couple o£ pterodactyls, a ceratosaurus, a triceratops and a brontosaurus and a lot of others with long names.

These are supposed to be rather breathtaking, but in that respect they run a poor second to Miss Welch and after a while interest in her even fades.