The legendary Hammer studios had a wonderful policy when it came to creating movies. Come up with the poster, title and tag line and the rest will follow. This is exactly what they did with Prehistoric Women (aka Slave Girls). To help with keeping budget cost down, they reused costumes and sets from their hugely successful prehistoric epic One Million Years B.C. Only problem, every so often the script would never match the strength of their original idea.
Guide for hunting in the deepest African jungle, David Marchant, goes heading off to kill an injured wild cat. He is captured by a tribe who want to sacrifice him to their white rhino god. Before they can fulfil their plans, Marchant manages to freeze time and an opening in a wall appears, leading into a lost world where a brunette woman rules over her slaves, the blonde women. The Queen, Kari, wants Marchant to be hers but he refuses and sides with the blondes, falling for one slave, Saria. Angered by his rejection, Marhant is thrown into the dungeons with the other men but can he escape and will he ever return to his time?
You could say this is Alice In Wonderland for those who like to see women half dressed. The story certainly doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and things aren’t helped with what I would call the fillers. Whenever there seems to be a lapse in the plot, the blonde slaves put on a dance routine to fill the time.
Hammer were the kings of camp horror and ludicrous adventure films and this falls very neatly into the latter camp but its almost instantly forgettable, thanks to the poor performances. As Marchant, Michael Latimer must be the drippiest romantic lead there has ever been. With no real personality, he completely lacks any real passion or for that matter any real conviction to the role. It’s as if someone has given him the script, told him to learn the lines and just say them on set.
More in line with Hammer’s usual quality for camp, over-the-top performances is Martine Beswick as Kari. More famous for being a Bond girl, she relishes in her lead role, getting the opportunity to look sultry, shout orders and generally follow the rule book for baddies. Everyone else is fairly non-descript. Edina Ronay is pretty enough as Saria but I guess the only reason for falling for Marchant is because all the other men are locked up and have the standard uniform for jailed males, the long ZZ Top style beards.
Without giving too much away, there is a very clever use of a key prop that is prominent for the finale (re: white rhino statue). If you see it, you will understand.
The Hammer back catalogue has some very classy works and some not so classy. This is probably one of their weakest entry and if you were after a night of bad movies, then may I recommend this. At least we now know that Hammer Films were a green company, with all this recycling going on.