Primitive Passions

'Prehistoric Women' is a brilliantly bonkers film. It starts off as a jungle movie, then there's a very odd sequence in which an execution culminates in some involuntary (but welcome) time travel. As a result, our big white hunter hero (Michael Latimer) finds himself thrown back into a primitive society where busty brunette cave girls worship a rhino and enslave buxom blonde women. Oh, and all the men work in the mines and are impotent.

The narrative doesn't so much twist and turn as career off the nearest cliff at the first possible opportunity. Martine Beswick is the villainess, Kari. She's lithe and lethal, prone to a bit of bump and grind, and looks like she's about seven feet tall. Her way of life may be primitive and savage, but her underwear is exquisitely made, not an uneven seam or loose stitch to be seen. She's deadly, deranged and dirty - exactly what you want from an evil queen.

In addition to the vicious Ms Beswick there's human sacrifice, a couple of dance routines, reincarnation, a workers revolt and a man dressed up in a gorilla skin (he's not pretending to be a gorilla, by the way, it's just his 'look'). I love it. Think 'She', think 'One Million Years BC' (it uses the same costumes), think 'Monty Python' with a little bit of 'West Side Story' and 'The Time Machine' thrown in. This crazy cocktail is classic declining years, chuck every thing in Hammer, and never fails to make me smile whenever I think of it, and I can be a right miserable bastard.