I'm not really sure what the filmmakers were thinking when they made "Prehistoric Women". Was it a latter-day male fantasy movie? Was it intended as a feminist drama? Did the screenwriter like brunettes more than blondes? Whatever the motivation, you really must watch the film to believe what I'm about to write. A great white hunter in Africa (David, played by Michael Latimer) gets lost and blunders into a female civilization in which brunettes have enslaved blondes. I mean, they really have. The brunette queen Kari is none other than Martine Beswick. When David rejects her advances, he's thrown into a dungeon with enslaved and shackled males who perform menial chores. While there, David meets an old slave (Dido Plumb) who shows him the ropes while being mercilessly beaten by sadistic male guards. There are lots of ceremonial native dances, a bizarre marriage ritual involving a white rhinoceros, and much inane dialogue before the men are fed up and finally decide to revolt. After much cartoonish violence (none of it very convincing) the evil queen is impaled on the white rhino's horn, after which David eventually returns to his hunting party and experiences a very predictable twist ending.The interactions between Latimer and Beswick, and especially between Latimer and Plumb are the highlights of the movie. Some of the most laughable scenes ever committed to film occur in the dungeon and during the female tribe's rituals. One of the best lines: David (after watching a dungeon guard beat the old slave): "He hates you! Why?" Old slave: "The man he used to hate died last week." The scene in which the old slave's shackles are removed after 50 years are especially amusing, since Plumb asks "Are we free?" several times before dropping dead. It's impossible not to laugh when you hear dialogue like that.Depending on your taste for bad cinema, "Prehistoric Women" will either leave you shaking your head or make you laugh during the entire movie. I laughed like a hyena, and I think you will too.

Michael Latimer stars as a hunting guide in Africa who runs afoul of a tribe that worships a white rhino god. Through a fairly silly turn of events, he gets chucked into the distant past where a tribe of brunette cave women lead by Martine Beswick have enslaved a tribe of blonde cave women making them do nifty dances and work in the mines and stuff. Nobody seems to like this one ... I do. I admit that it's incredibly silly, but I refuse to dislike a film where Beswick dances in an animal hide bikini. Shame on anyone who thinks otherwise.

A lot of scantily clad women showing off their pulchritude and doing some exotic dance moves is the best reason I can think of to watch Prehistoric Women. If you find others let me know.Michael Latimer white safari guide in 19th century Africa gets caught by a nasty tribe who's been that way for several centuries ever since someone took their white rhinoceros god away. Latimer goes into some She like fire and emerges back in time when the social pecking order was brunette amazons rule with blond slaves and an even lower caste, men.But Queen Martine Beswick is getting a booty call and she thinks the newcomer Latimer is the best who can scratch that itch. But Latimer has decided to throw in with the blonds and overthrow the social order.That's it folks, about as dumb a plot as you'll ever find in a film. I'm sure even the great rhinoceros didn't approve of this sacrilege to his name.As for the ending, all I can say is that someone was reading Mark Twain or seeing the Bing Crosby classic, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court. You do better to see that.

"Prehistoric Women" is the most endearing and lovable of Hammer Films' Cave Girls In Trouble films. I fell in love with it instantly during a late night creature feature screening at the age of 14 or so and pursued it for years before finally managing to tape it off cable. Now there are wonderful DVD releases of restored widescreen prints & home entertainment really never had it so good. It's garbage for sure but exquisite garbage, a kitschy sendup of Great White Hunter films that is so poker-faced that one is often tempted to conclude that Hammer was trying to be serious here.Mesmerizingly filmed on interior soundstages made up to look like what a juvenile might think a jungle resembles, the film packs the visual authority of a classic "Star Trek" episode with a plot more fitting for a Playboy magazine cartoon. It's fun, sexy, campy, never boring, and perhaps the ultimate (sic) Jungal Trash movie, where white Anglo types go to exotic jungle locations to have all sorts of fascinating adventures, while the natives carry the luggage.Martine Beswick may have found fame as a Bond girl ("From Russia With Love", "Thunderball") but her iconic image as a topless primal sex goddess rising from a dappled fake studio jungle pool will stick with me at least for the rest of my days. One might have wished that the movie had been made a couple years later so she could have turned to face the camera with her wonderful breasts, but half of the film's charm is that it was made during a different era. The tension between the juvenile sex fantasy it suggests and the need for staid British respectability (cough) adds to the fun.A word must be said about the slack-jawed, lunk-headed portrayal of the native population of wherever this film is supposedly set. It's not racist so much as ignorant, or rather accuracy and cultural sensitivity were not the objectives. Same goes for the misogyny and sexism of the movie, which is buffoonish and groan-inducing, but hey, the target audience was white European males between the ages of 12 and 75, or whenever men stop responding to suggestive fantasies about cavorting with blond slave girls or being dominated by mean, leggy, shapely brunettes. Hubba-Hubba.If you don't fall into that demographic you might want to try something else a bit more sober, or even better yet just down a couple of adult beverages & have fun laughing at the movie. And surprisingly there really isn't any content that goes beyond PG sensibilities and is actually wholesome enough for subversively twisted family entertainment. Just explain to the kids that it's a cartoon, really, and has about as much in common with the real world as a Three Stooges short. Great escapist guilty pleasure fun, and just as silly as it was in 1967. May it stay just as silly for another forty two years.7/10; Check out something called "Luana - The Lady Tarzan" for the Italians' take on the themes at work here. The two would make a marvelous double-bill for a kitsch film festival or DVD rental night.