PREHISTORIC WOMEN

Director: Michael Carreras

Starring: Martine Beswick, Edina Ronay, Michael Latimer

THE VIKING QUEEN

Director: Don Chaffey

Starring: Don Murray, Carita, Donald Houston

THE VENGEANCE OF SHE

Director: Cliff Owen

Starring: John Richardson, Olinka Berova, Edward Judd

It seems fair to lump these three mid-sixties Hammer movies together. Two of them are poor relations or direct sequels to better Hammer movies (She and One Million Years B.C.) and the third is a strange orphan more reminiscent of The Devil Ship Pirates or Captain Clegg than anything else the studio produced. All of them are rather charming in their own right, and certainly their availability on DVD is to be greatly welcomed. The Viking Queen is especially endearing. It could almost be Carry On Boudicca, except that jokes are rather thin on the ground. There’s plenty to enjoy, including a cast of great British character actors - many of them Hammer regulars -  like Patrick Troughton, Andrew Keir, Adrienne Corri and Niall MacGinnis. Anchor Bay’s disc is presented in 1.85:1 (non-anamorphic) matted ratio, from a very nice looking and sounding print.

The Vengeance of She is, without doubt, one of the least interesting films Hammer made, completely lacking the sense of adventure and epic grandeur of its 1965 predecessor. The film is more like a remake than a sequel, and sorely lacks actors with the screen presence of Peter Cushing or Ursula Andress, (making do with John Richardson and Kiss of the Vampire’s Noel Willman, not to mention the charisma-free Olga Schoberová, aka Olinka Berova).  The disc, presented in a mild 1.66:1 non-anamorphic widescreen ratio, also includes two deeply unconvincing TV adverts.

Prehistoric Women is very rarely seen, at least here in the UK, and it’s almost certainly never been shown in its original Cinemascope widescreen ratio since it originally graced British cinema screens back in 1968, as Slave Girls. This disc presents the longer American version of the film, which adds about fifteen minutes of material not in the seventy-five minute UK cut. The film’s not in the league as One Million Years B.C., or even Creatures The World Forgot. It’s more like an old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movie. The disc also includes two black and white TV adverts for 20^th Century Fox’s Prehistoric Women / The Devil’s Own double bill.

Each of the discs includes the film’s theatrical trailer and a 25 minute episode of the World of Hammer TV series (Lands Before Time, which includes clips from The Lost Continent and Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb). Inside each box there’s a very nice 5”x7” reproduction of the film’s poster, on the back of the list of chapters.