Creatures The World Forgot (1971) was the last “cave girl” film that Hammer Studios produced. Don Chaffey, who directed One Million Years B.C. (1966), returned to the sub-genre to helm producer Michael Carreras’ script. In promoting the film, Hammer attempted the same strategy as they had with One Million Years B.C. by trading upon the allure of former Penthouse Pet Julie Ege. For Hammer the formula for the prehistoric spectacle hinged more on girls in fur bikinis than in stop-motion dinosaur effects.
Not as fanciful as One Million Years B.C. or as brutal as the later Italian made caveman epics like Master Of The World (1983), Creatures The World Forgot is tame for an exploitation film while also being too self-serious. Carreras script about a dynasty of caveman chiefs attempts to imbue Hammer’s “cave girl” franchise with a touch of the Shakespearian. But caveman movies are inherently campy and unable to support a complex dramatic framework.
Although Creatures The World Forgot is the least compelling of Hammer’s prehistoric adventure films it does manage a sense of authenticity that is all too rare in the sub-genre. Chaffey and company shot Creatures The World Forgot on location in Southern Africa (as evidenced by the wildlife present throughout the film). Such authenticity or the illusion thereof can only go so far in making Creatures The World Forgot a palpable cinematic experience.
As suggested above, all that these films needed to do as far as Hammer was concerned was to fulfill the promise to viewers that a bevy of scantily clad beauties would be paraded around the screen. In this respect Creatures The World Forgot is a resounding success. Yet, it’s important to note that the women in Creatures The World Forgot function primarily as damsels in distress as opposed to Raquel Welch’s heroic Loana in One Million Years B.C. which had no shortage of fur bikinis.
This drop in quality in Hammer’s “cave girl” flicks was indicative of an overall crisis at the studio which led to its temporary demise in the late seventies. Creatures The World Forgot, like so many Hammer films of the late sixties and seventies, was neither sexually explicit nor gory enough to compete with other exploitation films. Hammer’s cultural relevance was waning steadily which casts Creatures The World Forgot as a desperate bid for a hit on the scale of One Million Years B.C. rather than as a unique variation on a beloved sub-genre.
