It is hard to believe that Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women was made in 1968. The vast majority of films made two decades earlier have better production qualities – sound and visual – than this shocker that was presumably made on less than a shoestring budget.
The dialogue is awful, the ‘acting’ leaden; there are interminable shots of the sea hitting rocks, and a bizarre semi-psychadelic soundtrack whenever the ‘prehistoric women’ mope about in their clam-shell bras and flared leggings. The ‘special effects’ are the anathema of special. Perhaps the film was intended as a vehicle for the then thirty-something ‘sex symbol’ Mamie van Doren – if so, it lets her down badly.
To give you a specific example. The fantastic Forbidden Planet was made twelve years earlier in 1956. In it there is the famous ‘Robbie the Robot’. Prehistoric Women also has a Robbie-like robot – but rather than be an advance on Robbie, it looks as if it had been regurgitated from the 1930s. Perhaps it was.
Prehistoric Women scores 2.9 out of 10 on IMDB. Given it makes Starcrash look vaguely average, I’d say it was lucky to get 2…
Ian Gouge - Writer 