When The Land That Time Forgot ended, it left hero Doug McClure and heroine Susan Penhaligon stranded in the tropic prehistoric lost world of Caprona in Antarctica, fated to wander the strange world of dinosaurs and cavemen while wearing big-ass furs and mukluks. Would rescue ever come? Would their hopeless message in a bottle thrown into the tumultuous seas at the end of the earth ever be found. If so, would it be believed? Well, we know from the first film that the account of the strange adventure to Caprona was found (though how the account, written by one man, could include detailed descriptions of things that happened while he was not around, is a question best left not asked in a movie about a u-boat crew fighting dinosaurs). Two years later, the answer to whether or not anyone would believe it was also answered. Unfortunately, the answer came in the form of The People That Time Forgot, a phenomenally boring follow-up that reduces Doug McClure’s role to little more than a cameo, kills off Susan Penhaligon in between the two movies, and seems to think that what people really wanted from a sequel to The Land That Time Forgot was fewer dinosaur fights and caveman rumbles, and more scenes of people walking across gravel-strewn landscapes.

The inaction begins with Ben McBride (Patrick Wayne, son of John), airplane pilot and friend of Bowen Tyler (McClure, remember — his character did have a name), preparing to mount a rescue mission after having received word of the message-in-a-bottle account of the events from the last film. McBride encounters relatively little skepticism either from the scientific community, the Navy, or the press. It seems accounts of Caprona have popped up from time to time in the past, and this is their best chance, using the navigation information Bowen recorded from their journey on the German submarine, to pinpoint the exact location of the mysterious land and, if possible, rescue Lisa and Bowen. But unlike the ill-fated experiences of the Germans and Brits who wound up there by accident, McBride is determined to mount a properly provisioned rescue mission, employing the latest cold weather ships, radio equipment, and an airplane. Accompanying him, besides assorted stoic British sailors, are his trusty sidekick mechanic, a biologist, and Charly Cunningham (Sarah Douglas), a reporter for the London Times whose inclusion in the expedition was one of the provisions of the newspaper financing the mission.

Things start off well, both for the film and the expedition. The ship gets McBride close enough to use the plane, and after successfully navigating through the high mountains, the pilot and his crew soon find themselves on the unmistakable outskirts of Caprona. The weather turns warmer, there are a few more trees (though nothing like the lush primordial forests in the last movie), and they are attacked by a stiff, fake-looking pterodactyl. Truly we are home. The battle forces the plane to make an emergency landing, and while the mechanic repairs the damaged rudder and makes “comical” comments, McBride and Charly set out on foot in a basically random direction in hopes of finding Bowen and Sarah. They encounter a dinosaur here and there, but for the most part, their trek is exceedingly dull.

I can’t really put my finger on why, even when there are dinosaurs on screen, it seems like there aren’t dinosaurs on screen. I think it’s because there’s no real sense of interaction with the creatures. The last film had all sorts of crummy looking composite shots so we could see Doug McClure sneaking around dinosaurs. This time, it feels like we’re watching stock footage. In fact, yeah. That’s exactly it. With the exception of one scene where Sarah Douglas takes a photo of a stegosaurus, the whole film feels like one of those old impoverished jungle adventures, like White Pongo or White Gorilla — films comprised almost entirely of shots of the cast walking through a set, intercut with stock footage of elephants and giraffes. This isn’t stock footage (though I suspect one or two shots of being unused footage from The Land that Time Forgot), but it feels like it. Until the very end, the dinosaurs are little more than parts of the set that cause the cast to make terrified faces, except for Patrick Wayne, who makes the same face for the entire film, regardless of what terrors or wonder might be confronting him. At the end, they finally fight a dinosaur, but it’s really too little too late. This movie needed to be packed with scenes of our heroes fighting dinosaurs, and it’s not.

Eventually, they begin to reach the more temperate regions of Caprona, here realized by location shooting in an actual forest (the Canary Islands, to be exact). Where as the last movie relied largely on a mix of location work with sets to create a believable if somewhat fantastic jungle, this movie looks like it was filmed in a pretty average clump of trees. Funny how that happens sometimes. The actual tropical island isn’t a very convincing tropical island, where as the last film — which I think was filmed on a set and probably in a London park — was more interesting looking. Sort of like how The Greatest Story Ever Told was shot in Arizona and Utah, because the filming they did on location in the actual Holy Land didn’t look Holy Land enough.

However, the location shooting also lends the film a more wide-open feel, though given how little impact that has, it would have been nice if they’d skimped on location shooting and used that money to buy more crummy dinosaur props or a tiny fur bikini for Sarah Douglas.

It’s also notable that, from this point on (which means, for most of the movie), the dinosaurs are gone until the very end. Instead, our intrepid trio (one forgets that the biologist is even along for the ride, from time to time) encounters big-breasted cavegirl Ajor (former David Bowie backup singer Dana Gillespie, who played a similar role in Hammer Studio’s 1968 lost world adventure film, The Lost Continent). I wouldn’t normally make a point of mentioning the breasts of a female character (or really, I probably would, but just play along), but in this case they seem to be the primary reason her character exists. Ajor is far more advanced and bosomy than the cavemen we saw in the last movie, and what’s more, she speaks English! At least that’s an improvement over the last film. When faced with choosing between a big-boobed cavegirl who speaks in pidgin English or a thick-browed caveman who shrieks a lot, I think the choice is clear. Also, she understands feathering and advanced hair-teasing techniques. All of these skills were taught to her, McBride discovers, by Bowen Tyler, who Ajor reveals has been captured by an even more advanced race, the Nagas.

It turns out that the Nagas are so advanced that they, completely isolated from all cultural influence in the rest of the world, have evolved to dress and fight exactly like medieval Japanese samurai, right down to the katanas, flag bearers, and big kabuto helmets with gruesome face masks. Despite all those advances, however, they still live in caves and are ruled over by a fat, hooting, grunting dude in a fur loincloth (big Milton Reid, once again). It’s as if the nation of Japan decided one day that they wanted to be ruled over ruthlessly by George the Animal Steele. But instead of ripping open a turnbuckle cover with his teeth, Sabbala pencils in Charly and Ajor for sacrifice to the…wait for it…yep, the angry volcano god. Then he throws McBride and the biologist, Norfolk (Thorley Walters), into his skull wall prison. In the prison, McBride is finally reunited with Tyler. And now, with a couple of two-fisted, good ol’ American boys on the job, these merciless rulers of Caprona’s crappy non-dinosaur infested southern region are primed for a beat-down.

By 1977, England’s Amicus Productions was dead. The People That Time Forgot was really not so much a production as it was one of those nervous twitches a corpse sometimes makes. The only thing that even got the movie finished was money from American International Pictures, who had already been propping up Amicus for their last two Kevin Connor directed adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ adventures. The People That Time Forgot feels much more like an AIP film than it does an Amicus film, and the budget must have dwindled to the point where even Kevin Connor couldn’t scrape together enough crappy special effects to fill the movie as he had in The Land That Time Forgot or 1976’s At the Earth’s Core. So almost all the action involves people. Sometimes they are cavemen, sometimes, for some inexplicable reason, they are samurai. There are only a couple of really crummy dinosaurs. It turns out that if your movie has dozens of crappy looking dinosaurs, it’s probably going to be pretty cool. But if your movie only has one or two crappy looking dinosaurs, then all you can think about is how crappy it is that you are getting so few crappy dinosaurs.

And even if you make your peace with the fact that you’re not going to get any dinosaur action, you still have to deal with the fact that there’s really not much caveman action either. McBride has a run-in with a tribe that has been chasing Ajor, but it’s short-lived and fairly thrill-free. So even if you reconcile yourself to the fact that there is no dinosaur action and precious little caveman action, then you find yourself depending on John Wayne’s son versus lost world samurai ruled over by a mostly naked fat guy painted green.

And even then, you’re going to be disappointed, because most of the samurai action is restricted to scenes of guys walking back and forth. That they are wearing samurai armor for no good reason doesn’t make it any more interesting. Also, I don’ think samurai wore their armor 24/7. Like, if you are on guard duty in the cramped caverns of your poorly lit cave dungeon, you really don’t need battle armor and a giant helmet with a faceplate. I guess they took the time to evolve the ability to think of Japanese armor, so they decided they were going to get their money’s worth. While I imagine samurai armor would help you in a battle against cavemen, it’s probably less effective against a T-Rex or any of the other monsters we know inhabit Caprona. Or at least, that inhabited it in the last movie. So maybe this is really the only time they get to break it out and show it off, since even though it’s effective against cavemen, they are probably too primitive to admire your craftsmanship. At least John Wayne’s son will appreciate your craftsman’s effort.

The lack of dinosaurs without anything to fill the void is the film’s major misstep. The next major misstep is reducing Doug McClure to a cameo. The structure of The People That Time Forgot is very similar to another colossal letdown, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. OK, so maybe Planet of the Apes was a more prestigious sci-fi film than The Land that Time Forgot, but the overall result for someone like me is the same. Beneath the Planet of the Apes is about a guy who wasn’t in the last film, who travels to the mysterious lost world-esque planet of the apes, has some dull adventures, then ends up underground in a jail where he meets Charlton Heston reprising his role in a cameo. And then they break out, there’s some fist fights, Charlton Heston dies, and everything explodes.

The People that Time Forgot plays out almost identically. Patrick shows up in Caprona, has some dull adventures, finds Doug McClure in a cave. There’s some fist fights, Doug dies, and then stuff explodes. Aping Beneath the Planet of the Apes is not a good move, and reducing your single remaining interesting character to a ten minute cameo at the very end of the film is even worse.

Actually, scratch all that. This film’s major misstep is that it casts Sarah Douglas in a role, has her character set up to be sacrificed to a primitive volcano god, and never puts her in a cavegirl outfit! Having almost no Doug McClure action is justifiable if you say, “Sorry, but we spent the little money we had on convincing Sarah Douglas to wear this tiny loin cloth. We couldn’t afford any more Doug McClure after that.” That’d be fine. But no. She stays fully clothed the entire time. Doug shows a little more flesh, which is welcome, but he’s grown out that big Jeremiah Johnson beard, so it’s hard to even tell. A travesty! Sarah Douglas, in case you weren’t around at the time, is probably best known either as the evil woman in Superman II or as the evil woman in Conan the Destroyer — two films in which she was more skimpily clad than she was in this movie, where she was in a land of scantily clad cave people. Still, despite my dissatisfaction with her sacrificial attire, Douglas is the closes thing this movie has to a good performance. She has an easy charm about her — surprising since I’ve been taught from all her other roles to be terrified of her.

In her place, the scantily-clad chore goes to Dana Gillespie. Gillespie was a former future pop icon. The one-time girlfriend of Bob Dylan, she was supposed to be some sort of folk rock star. That didn’t pan out. Some years later, she became David Bowie’s pet project after she sang back-up vocals for him during the Ziggy Stardust days. She completed an album, but I don’t think it flew off the shelves. I heard it and think it’s pretty crummy. She had slightly better luck on stage, appearing as Mary Magdalene in the original run of Jesus Christ Superstar. In 1968, she appeared in one of Hammer’s several “lost world” mini-epics, The Lost Continent. It was nearly ten years later when she appeared in The People that Time Forgot, allowing her breasts to do most of the acting for her. Still, it should be noted that her feathered hair is almost as big as her boobs, so it’s not like I’m reducing her to a single, degrading aspect of her physical appearance instead of judging her performance more rationally. But then, it’s also hard to judge a performance when your only lines are, “Tyler!” and “You are…friend of Tyler?” Given my druthers, I would have had Gillespie and Douglas switch costumes. Or I would have dropped Gillespie entirely and just given more screen time to Douglas, no matter what she was wearing.

Oh yeah, somewhere in that mix is Patrick Wayne. I can’t remember how unclothed he gets, because I’m more of a Doug McClure man. Coincidentally, much of Patrick’s filmography seems comprised of small parts in the films of John Wayne. What are the chances, huh? Well, Patrick Wayne is about as good an actor as his old man, only he doesn’t have any of the charisma or macho allure than compensated for the elder Wayne’s limited range. In 1977, Patrick had arguably his biggest role, that of Arabian sailor Sinbad (he’s even less Arabian than John Phillip Law!) in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. In the greater scheme of Sinbad movies with special effects by Ray Harryhausen, Eye of the Tiger is a lesser affair, though still plenty of fun. Plus, it features a pretty solid supporting cast that includes Jane Seymour and scruffy Patrick Troughton (the second Doctor Who).

That along with a bunch of stop motion monster effects was more than enough to make most people fail to notice how stiff an actor Patrick Wayne was. Thing is, a movie like that needs a stiff in the lead. It needs a piece of petrified wood off which it can bounce all its fantastic stuff. After all, those are Ray Harryhausen movies. Few people remember who directed them, or starred in them. Heck, I was out of college before I even realized different guys had played Sinbad in the various movies. Because everyone remembers the special effects, and everyone went to the films for the special effects. To have some talented lead actor getting in the way would have distracted from the films’ appeal.

The People that Time Forgot should operate under the same premise. Unfortunately, there’s very little fantastic stuff to distract from Wayne’s stiffness. With no dinosaurs and minimal caveman action, all we’re left to focus on is Wayne’s performance. Well, Wayne’s performance and Dana Gillespie’s gravity-defying breasts. I failed to be sufficiently interested by either (as a scantily-clad cavewoman, Gillespie is passable, but she’s no Caroline Munro or Raquel Welch). And there’s no talented supporting cast to pick up the slack. Sarah Douglas gives it her all, but there’s only so much you can do with a script that gives you nothing but “your character walks across a field, then across a gravel pit.” Patrick Wayne is a wooden hero with no charisma and no awesome monsters to make you forget he’s there. People who knock Doug McClure’s one-note performances should take a look at Patrick Wayne to see what stiff really is. McClure exudes an effortless charisma and believability. A movie teaming up McClure and Sarah Douglas would have been way better. Patrick Wayne exudes nothing. Plus, he looks a lot like Charlton Heston, way more than he looks like his own dad. I have some conspiracy theories about that one, and I consider them at least as likely to be true as theories about super-powered WWII Nazis operating UFO bases at the North Pole.

Some people consider this movie better than its predecessor. I cannot count myself among those people. While I love The Land that Time Forgot, I hate this movie. Well, maybe I don’t hate it, but I sure don’t like it. I was bored silly through most of the film, and it falls into that rare category of film I say you could give a miss. In fact, it reminds me in many ways of War Gods of the Deep, another surprisingly disappointing film I want to like more than I do and that sounds much cooler in summary than it actually is to watch. I mean, John Wayne’s son and the evil chick from Superman II versus samurai cavemen is a good pitch, but Amicus was too broke to deliver even the cheap-ass fun they delivered with The Land that Time Forgot, and AIP seemed to be interested in little more than getting something on the screen and ending their relationship with the doomed British studio.

It would have been nice to see Amicus, who had given the world so many entertaining films go out on a higher note. But then the same could be said of Hammer, who bit the dust around the same time and with a similarly wretched film to serve as their swan song. If Amicus was the scrappy Hammer wannabe, then The People that Time Forgot is their ode to Hammer going out on To the Devil…A Daughter. In retrospect The Land that Time Forgot would have been a poetic place for Amicus to end — with volcano erupting, boat sinking, and its stars facing a seemingly hopeless situation. Instead, they decided to show us the aftermath of the collapse, and give us Milton Reid in a skimpier outfit than Sarah Douglas (or Dana Gillespie, for that matter).

Release Year: 1977 | Country: England, United States | Starring: Patrick Wayne, Doug McClure, Sarah Douglas, Dana Gillespie, Thorley Walters, Shane Rimmer, Tony Britton, John Hallam, David Prowse, Milton Reid, Kiran Shah | Writer: Patrick Tilley | Director: Kevin Connor | Cinematographer: Alan Hume | Music: John Scott