The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This refers to remnants from Prehistory such as Dinosaurs or Cavemen being revived in the present day. There have been a number of works that depict the day-to-day lives of cavepeople, which are listed under Prehistory. What we concern ourselves with here are denizens of prehistory that are brought into the modern day.
The Prehistoric Revival genre began with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), which had a dinosaur unfrozen in the Arctic by an atomic blast (in so doing becoming the first Atomic Monster film). Although atomic energy was not always the explanation, other dinosaurs were resurrected or unfrozen to rampage amok again throughout this era. Most of these are Monster Movies.
Amidst these, there were also works with cavepeople being unthawed or else transported through time. Unlike revived dinosaur films, these were often about the caveperson’s confusion with the modern world or in more recent years the attempts to anthropologically study them. There are also a number of revived caveman works that play everything for comic silliness.
The revived dinosaur genre did not much exist beyond the 1960s, although it gained a new lease of life with Jurassic Park (1993), which revived dinosaurs with the genetic engineering of their leftover DNA.
A classic 1950s monster movie where an expedition up the Amazon discovers a Gill Man. Here an average story is propelled into the memorable by Jack Arnold’s moody direction. Two sequels followed.
Extraordinary Sundance breakout hit that sits between a portrayal of a unique backwoods culture and a Magical Realist child’s eye viewpoint. A quite amazing film that announces one of the freshest directorial voices to emerge in ages
The very first Godzilla film. Essentially a copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, it has incredibly stark effect despite the primitiveness of the effects. In it you can see Japanese nation struggling to expiate the pain of the Atomic Bomb.
Superior revived dinosaur amok movie. While the effects are the cut-price man in the monster suit ones, these are expertly achieved and the film comes with a surprisingly poignant twist that makes it stand out
Excellent and underrated film about a caveman unthawed in the Arctic where attempts are made to help him adjust. This conducts the a creaky old story with modern scientific and anthropological realism
The fourth of The Asylum’s Mega Shark films and the best of the series where they get the balance of tongue-in-cheek absurdity just right and the low-budget effects prove surprisingly good
For an original that was only a modest box-office hit, it is surprising how long the Tremors series has kept going – five sequels, plus a tv series. This is the sixth film in the series and despite a limited and repetitive premise, characters running about hunting underground-burrowing monsters, it pulls off another enjoyable entry and fails to set a foot wrong
The very first film from John Landis, a rather amusing spoof of revived caveman films, As with many of Landis’s films, has a substantial level of playful in-joking and genre in-referencing. Mostly, it plays out with an appealingly nonsensical absurdity
An interesting never-quite-ran from the heyday of Anglo-horror cycle with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as Victorian anthropologists dealing with a prehistoric skeleton that is an embodiment of evil
Another in the fad for 70s/80s remakes where Alexandre Aja for once captures the spirit of Joe Dante’s 1978 original by planting tongue in cheek and wading in with mind-bogglingly gory enthusiasm
Big budget about a giant prehistoric killer shark film. This is like a Sharknado film with its sense of its own risibility perfectly under cap, played seriously and mounted as a series of spectacular shark attack sequences
Wonderfully madcap film with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing travelling aboard the Trans-Siberian Express in the 1900s realising they are facing a body-hopping alien
Okay borrowing from the set-up of The Thing about an outbreak of flesh-eating prehistoric insects at an Arctic research station
Reasonable low-budget revived dinosaur film with not bad CGI effects and an often witty, genre savvy script
Another killer shark film from The Asylum, the people behind the Sharknado films. This plays itself seriously and turns out a reasonable story about the crew of a polar base under attacks by prehistoric sharks
A classic of the genre for a number of reason – it was the film that kicked off the 1950s fad for atomic monsters, featuring an archetypal story about a dinosaur brought back to life by atomic tests. It also featured among the very first screen credits for both Ray Bradbury and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen
One of the other films from Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda. This has been incorrectly identified as a Japanese giant monster film but is mostly a colourful space opera about a rogue planet
Despite the disappointment that it is not a Western but set modern-day. This enlivens a formula plot quite well and provides dinosaur effects that range between the surprisingly good and the occasionally ropy
A low-budget effort but amiable effort about dinosaurs and a caveman that are revived on an island. The cheap effects, culminating in a battle between a dinosaur and a crane, have some imagination
One of Jack Arnold’s lesser films, a Jekyll and Hyde story where a scientist finds himself reveting to a caveman after scraping his hand on a prehistoric coelacanth
Another entrant in the fad for gonzo killer shark film. This gets some award for combining the killer shark film, the women’s prison film and the cabin in the woods horror standard
Routine entry in the giant bug cycle of the 1950s, this essentially rehashes The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms with a revived prehistoric giant mantis on the attack
As formula monster movies go, this stands out from the rest – it takes itself seriously, has a better budget than usual, which allows some luxurious location shooting in Belize, and a better standard of effects
An Asylum mockbuster released at the same time as Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 B.C., this involves time travel mission into the prehistoric past that accidentally brings a dinosaur back to the present
The 24th Godzilla film where Godzilla faces a giant prehistoric dragonfly. While the modern Godzilla films have readily adopted CGI and animatronics, the effects here are much more variable
Sequel to the Ben Stiller hit offers more of the same with a bigger museum and more exhibits come to life but little else
Gimmicky B-budget film about a hi-tech future prison built at the South Pole. Thus has been thrown together with a giant snake amok plot. A passably routine effort
Average entry in the atomically enlarged animal cycle of the 1950s concerning a giant mutated mollusc on the attack
Popular family hit with Ben Stiller as a night watchman at New York’s Museum of Natural History who discovers that the exhibits come to life at night. More a cute idea than a full film, there is some fun to the characters and effects
Minor and largely undistinguished 1950s monster movie. The monster is a blatant copy of The Creature of the Black Lagoon and similarly has biologically improbable designs on the heroine. Routine on all accounts
Every B killer shark movie of recent years has tried to become as absurd as possible in (a la Sharknado), but this is one that plays itself seriously and generates okay tension in places
The director of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms essentially rehashes the same film here with another atomically revived dinosaur this time attacking London instead of New York
The third of The Asylum’s trilogy of films about giant prehistoric sharks
Film spinoff from tv’s hit ultra-paranoid alien conspiracy drama. The film is caught in the unenviable position of trying to give fans what they want and reiterate the basics of the series for new audiences, while giving away no plot details in advance, and as a result ended up pleasing nobody
The Asylum make a sequel to their earlier giant prehistoric shark film Megalodon
One of the earliest entries in the gonzo killer shark fad, predating Sharknado even. This comes produced by Roger Corman and concerns a prehistoric shark that is revived
The first sequel to The Asylum’s Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and marginally a better film. This is less sparing with the cheap effects, while in every other regard it plants tongue-in-cheek and tries to make a virtue out of the sheer ridiculousness of the action
John Barrowman fights a giant prehistoric shark in a film that gained a certain reputation as a Bad Movie
Another of the ‘don’t __’- titled entries of the 1970s. This is a bizarre bad movie about teenage runaways in L.A.’s Griffith Park who fall prey to flesh-eating immortals
The Asylum’s first venture into the gonzo shark movie that would spin off a series of sequels and culminate in the Sharknado phenomenon. Despite one of the great attention grabbing titles of all time, this is an unmemorable affair
A killer shark film concerning a prehistoric megalodon prowling the waters of a lake. This once had the distinction of being the lowest rated film on the IMDB
A revived caveman effort that is fairly terrible on all accounts. This has gained bad movie status because it features Joan Crawford as a scientist in her last theatrical role
Early Clive Barker adaptation made just prior to his gaining fame with Hellraiser about a the revival of a monstrous pagan pagan that suffers from shabby treatment and a rubbery monster
The third entry in a franchise that seems to be stretching to find anything to do with its premise beyond the first film. Everyone involved seems to have only turned up to collect a paycheque and be going through the motions in a show that entirely coasts by solely on your familiarity with the characters
An attempt to make an American equivalent of a Loch Ness Monster film. This drowns amid a dreary cheapness. The passable stop-motion animation effects have been a frequent source of ridicule
Bizarrely incomprehensible film from Avi Nesher set in a Cyberpunk future in which Olivier Gruner is turned into a Neanderthal superhuman by aliens living in cyberspace
Z movie classic with Richard Kiel as a revived caveman facing hot rodding teenagers. Much bad movie hilarity and hilarious dialogue ensues, plus a rock’n’roll soundtrack
An excruciatingly unfunny teen comedy with Brendan Fraser as a caveman who is unfrozen in the present-day. The film served to introduce Pauly Shore, one of the most annoying figures to ever appear on screen
Amidst the spate of modern gonzo killer shark films, this is one of the worst – terrible acting, pitiful effects – but the saddest thing is that it isn’t there are worse entries than this
Incredibly shabbily made Danish copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms about a dinosaur revived in Copenhagen
Birdemic was a cult bad movie – incredibly, despite the better budget that must have come his way, James Nguyen has gone and made the same thing filled with laughably flat dialogue and the worst effects ever seen on screen
This is the one of worst films to come out in the gonzo killer shark fad – it is surely the killer shark genre’s equivalent of The Room. The effects hit a level of terribleness not seen since Birdemic, the rest is full of ridiculous continuity gaffes, bad acting and bad dialogue