The People That Time Forgot

Forget Me Not

The People That Time Forgot
Directed by Kevin Connor
UK/USA 1977
Amicus/AIP
Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Another near end spoiler.

The third film in Imprint’s wonderful Tales Of Adventure Collection Volume Nine, following on from my favourite in the box, At The Earths Core (you can read a very old DVD review I wrote for that years ago here... be kind) is the direct sequel to The Land That Time Forgot (reviewed here). Namely, The People That Time Forgot, which was actually the very last, uncredited, film co-produced by Amicus studios. And once again, of course, based on the book by Edgar Rice Burroughs (the second of his Caspak trilogy of novels).

This one takes place a few years after the events of the first movie which, if you remember, left Tyler (played by Doug McClure) and Lisa (played by Susan Penhaligon), stranded on the island by the end of the picture. This sequel, which I did see at my local cinema back in 1977, felt a bit of a let down as a kid, mainly I think because I hadn’t seen the first one in the series at the time. And, I have to say that, looking at it now, a film I can barely remember through the intervening  years, it’s not a good movie and certainly inferior to the much more fun first film.

Again, though, it’s a bit of a star studded cast, as four loyal crew members are taken to near the Island from the first film in search of Doug McClure... having received his flask with the message washed up from the sea. Four of them fly a bi-plane above an ice wall and onto Caspak (the name of which, again, gets no mention) and crash there, after an aeroplane and machine gun battle with a pterodactyl takes a turn for the worse. The four are Tyler’s old friend Ben, played by Patrick (son of John) Wayne, photographer Charly, played by the great Sarah Douglas, sporting the same hairstyle as Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie (although this one beat it out in the UK and it wasn’t a deliberate lift, it would seem), dinosaur expert Norfolk, played by the always watchable Thorley Walters and, as Ben’s fellow American, the great Shane Rimmer.

And from here on it’s shenanigans as the four try to find Tyler, dodging dinosaurs and fighting various species who want to kill them or sacrifice them to their volcano God. Luckily, they stumble upon Ajor, played by the glamourous Dana Gillespie who here, it has to be said, manages to be wearing a costume even more revealing than the one she wore in Hammer’s The Lost Continent (reviewed by me here). And in some ways I have to say ‘thank goodness for that’ because, although it’s not really a good thing to say that Gillespie’s huge assets are a better special effect than any of the dinosaurs (or the matte paintings) here, it does at least give a certain percentage of the film’s audience something interesting to look at when the film is flagging and... yeah, it flags quite a lot. 

And when they do finally catch up with Doug McClure’s Tyler towards the end of the film, after they’ve been captured by a masked race of people who, for some reason best known to the production designers, are all dressed in something very similar to samurai armour and have Dave Prowse as their chief executioner, it’s all for nothing. Not long after finding Lisa has formerly perished at the hands of the leader of these Samurai people (played by Milton Reid, who tried to kill James Bond in a scene in The Spy Who Loved Me, reviewed here), Tyler himself sacrifices his life trying to get his rescuers to safety. They take Ajor with them back to civilisation as the island starts to get all volcanic again. 

And yeah, this is by far the inferior of the two Caspak movies from this period and, although I found John Scott’s score to The People That Time Forgot much more interesting, it doesn’t really save the film. It’s not too badly made as a piece but it does seem like it’s badly paced and, yeah, not enough dinosaurs on the rampage... only Dana’s rampaging bosoms, which are pretty good but not something you can really hang a movie on, no matter how much you can appreciate her performance here. I did like her better in the aforementioned The Lost Continent, it has to be said. Not a recommendation but, it is at least an interesting choice for a sequel and worth watching the once, I reckon.