#704 – The People that Time Forgot (1977)

The People that Time Forgot (1977)

Film review #704

Director: Kevin Connor

SYNOPSIS: Major Ben McBride learns that his friend Bowen Tyler may be alive in a remote region of Antarctica, and organises a rescue mission. Arriving there with his crew, he finds a forgotten land full of danger, dinosaurs, and not-so-friendly inhabitants, who will make things difficult as Mcbride tries to find his friend…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: The People that Time Forgot is a 1977 film based on the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a sequel to The Land that Time Forgot. The story sees Major Ben McBride (the only returning character from the previous film) organising a rescue mission to Antarctica, where he believes his friend Bowen Tyler has been stranded. Travelling there, he and his team encounter a forgotten land full of mythical creatures, people and danger. The film follows the vein of similarly successful ventures such as its predecessor and Journey to the Centre of the Earth, for example: it’s a fairly standard adventure filled with dinosaurs, natural disasters and action that ticks all the boxes, but isn’t anything particularly special. There’s nothing unique about the dinosaurs brought to life by outdated special effects, or the cast of characters which fill very typical roles. There’s some highlights when we get the establishing shots of locations such as the lair of the inhabitants, and if you really like explosions, there’s a lot of them too, but everything around that just feels very formulaic, and doesn’t generate a spirit of adventure by encountering things new or interesting.

The cast of characters consist of exactly what is necessary: one heroic lead, one woman, one professor, and a native inhabitant. There’s no interesting or original dimension to their personalities to appeal to viewers or make them memorable. As mentioned, the special effects are very outdated, and even by the time not that spectacular: the clearly model dinosaurs do have some interaction with the crew to make them seem like they are actually there, but they’re not very animated. The big thing which I think made the film feel like a waste is that (spoiler) the crew manage to find Bowen, but he dies before they can leave, which makes the whole “rescue mission” seem pointless. A typical climax revolving around throwing people into a volcano and escaping as the land erupts again doesn’t illicit much of a reaction. The sheer volume of explosions at the end as the crew are trying to escape is quite a spectacle, but they are just explosions. There’s very little to grasp onto in The People that Time Forgot: everything in here is done better in similar films, and it fails to stand out. it ticks all the boxes with big creatures, action scenes and an adventure with some sense of scale, but there’s nothing to recommend it over it’s predecessor or others in the genre.