S01E04 - Women of the Prehistoric Planet

Plot

A spaceship exploring the unknown cosmos crash lands on an unexplored planet after the Centaurian crew members attempt a revolt. Thousands of light-years away, the captain of the fleet makes a decision to attempt to rescue any possible survivors of the crashed ship. Upon arriving at the unexplored world, one of the captain's ship's crew, a Centaurian woman named Linda, manages to leave the ship and meet Tang, the son of two of the surviving crashed ship's crew. The events that follow will determine Linda's destiny.

Movie Review

Made in 1966, Women of the Prehistoric Planet is a pretty interesting film that gets a lot wrong and yet isn't far off from getting a lot right. Perhaps with some better polish and better acting - and maybe an actual budget - this film could've been a fairly decent movie. Sadly, that's not the case, so it ends up on the dust pile of bad sci-fi films made.

The most eye-popping inconsistency one would think of after watching this film all the way through is...what women? Oh, sure, there are several women in this film, but only one who actually sets foot on the prehistoric planet, and she isn't even originally from the planet. This film was actually originally titled just The Prehistoric Planet, but the studio apparently thought renaming it to its current title would better draw in an audience. To "justify" this change, a few shots of bathing half-naked cave-women were shot, though only European audiences got to see these scenes, leaving American audiences baffled.

Outside of the title, the movie itself is still a mess. For one thing, it's incredibly boring. In between occasional (and scant) scenes of action, we get a lot of talking and a lot of redundant and unfunny dialogue. A lot of the "scenes" feel like padding, which is actually interesting, considering the time could've been better used to flesh out the love story of our male and female protagonists.

Ah, yes, Linda and Tang. Linda is a Centaurian, a human-like race looked down upon by many humans. Tang is the son of a Centaurian mother and a human father. When Linda meets Tang, it doesn't take long for the two of them to fall in love; in fact, the rushed nature of the courtship is so telegraphed that one is amazed they aren't on top of one another in the first scene.

The courtship of Linda and Tang highlights another of my favorite talking points: sexism. Linda is portrayed as one incapable of defending herself and requiring someone to look out for her - had there been better pacing, she likely would've been the damsel in distress at some point. This sexism is at its peak right in one stunning scene: when she realizes that Tang had (innocently) undressed her to remove wet clothes from her body, she slaps him, making him slap her hard enough to make her fall. But instead of fearing him, she falls in love with him and they kiss. Yay abusive relationships, I suppose.

Still, though the film botches the love story gloriously, I feel they did (partially) get one thing right: their commentary on racism. In this film, all humans are played by Caucasian actors, while all Centaruians are played by Asian characters. Yes, using whites to play the "superior" race and Asians to play the "inferior" race can be seen as subtle racism in itself, but at least the film acknowledges this by using the casting to play on racism within the film's world. The racism between humans and Centaurians does play something of a role in the plot, though admittedly a lot of the potential is lost thanks to bad writing. Even so, the attempt is an admirable one, and though it doesn't work fully, at least it doesn't become absurd.

Outside of the protagonists, there are really no interesting characters to speak of. The one attempt to make a memorable character is in the form of a comic relief who thinks he's the next Bob Hope but fails miserably. The one upside to his appearance is his flailing attempt at karate, as it is the scene that gave MST3K their famous "Haikeeba!" running joke. Aside from him, none of the characters are remotely worth discussing.

In fact, the scenery is a more interesting topic of discussion, if only because it's so laughable. The spaceships, which are meant to carry a large crew, are far too claustrophobic for such an advanced civilization. The prehistoric planet is even worse, as the jungle and mountain shots all look like movie sets. There is one scene where a hiking group has to cross a lake of acid on a fallen tree trunk, and it's treated as a dangerous crossing when the lake is small enough for them to almost leap over. And did I mention that they could've just walked around the lake instead of crossing the fallen trunk?

So where would Women of the Prehistoric Planet fall on the bad movie scale? Surprisingly, despite all of its problems, it still has a bit of charm to it, mainly because a lot of the drama is so staged it's hilarious to see the actors push it through so seriously. It's good for a decent laugh, though certainly not because of the comic relief.


MST3K Review

Now this is more like it. While in The Mad Monster Joel and the bots came close to sounding disinterested, here they sound a lot more into the riffing. Joel even gets up several times to do shadow puppet-esque motions on the film. Their timing sounds a lot more consistent and sharper, while their jokes are sounding more subtle.

For a season one episode, this one is definitely a keeper.