J.G. Ballard famously said of this Hammer boobs-and-brontosauruses extravaganza that he was "very proud of the fact my first screen credit was for what is without doubt the worst film ever made". Few have ever argued with this assessment.
The predictable follow-up to the 1965 Hammer box-office smash ONE MILLION YEARS BC, WDRTE is a silly train-wreck of a movie -- altho' some commentators, Mark A. Miller chief among them, have found good things to say about the film. "In the final analysis, WDRTE stands as an expertly made, low-budget campy exploitation film that offers good performances, outstanding special visual effects and an entertaining script that provides an important, if unexplored, subtext," Miller waxes enthusiastically in his essay on the film that appears in GUILTY PLEASURES OF THE HORROR FILM."
I wouldn't go as far as Miller when it comes to extolling this film's virtues -- virtues that are as skimpy as the cave-babe fur bikinis the female members of the cast are always threatening to fall out of. But WDRTE does have a few redeeming features, Jim Danforth's Oscar-nominated stop-motion animation chief among them.
And I must say that despite the fact Victoria Vetria (AKA Angela Dorian) isn't required to do much other than look lovely when the camera is rolling, she does convey a certain intelligence and appealing innocence as the cave girl Sanna.
Does anyone have any idea what ever happened to VV? She had been a working actress for almost a decade before WDRTE was made -- the guest-starlet-of-the-week on shows ranging from BONANZA to RUN FOR YOUR LIFE to DANIEL BOONE -- and was of course the Playmate of the Year in 1968. But her movie career seemed to fizzle in the wake of WDRTE: the film certainly didn't rocket her to stardom as was the case with Raquel Welch in ONE MILLION YEARS BC. In fact the last credits I can find for VV were circa 1974.
She was incandescently beautiful, charismatic and not untalented. Seems surprising she did not go on to bigger and better things. But as far as I'm aware VV has dropped off the pop culture radar screen completely, refusing all requests for interviews in genre-related publications and keeping an extremely low public profile. As I asked earlier, does anyone know what happened to permanently derail her career?
The predictable follow-up to the 1965 Hammer box-office smash ONE MILLION YEARS BC, WDRTE is a silly train-wreck of a movie -- altho' some commentators, Mark A. Miller chief among them, have found good things to say about the film. "In the final analysis, WDRTE stands as an expertly made, low-budget campy exploitation film that offers good performances, outstanding special visual effects and an entertaining script that provides an important, if unexplored, subtext," Miller waxes enthusiastically in his essay on the film that appears in GUILTY PLEASURES OF THE HORROR FILM."
I wouldn't go as far as Miller when it comes to extolling this film's virtues -- virtues that are as skimpy as the cave-babe fur bikinis the female members of the cast are always threatening to fall out of. But WDRTE does have a few redeeming features, Jim Danforth's Oscar-nominated stop-motion animation chief among them.
And I must say that despite the fact Victoria Vetria (AKA Angela Dorian) isn't required to do much other than look lovely when the camera is rolling, she does convey a certain intelligence and appealing innocence as the cave girl Sanna.
Does anyone have any idea what ever happened to VV? She had been a working actress for almost a decade before WDRTE was made -- the guest-starlet-of-the-week on shows ranging from BONANZA to RUN FOR YOUR LIFE to DANIEL BOONE -- and was of course the Playmate of the Year in 1968. But her movie career seemed to fizzle in the wake of WDRTE: the film certainly didn't rocket her to stardom as was the case with Raquel Welch in ONE MILLION YEARS BC. In fact the last credits I can find for VV were circa 1974.
She was incandescently beautiful, charismatic and not untalented. Seems surprising she did not go on to bigger and better things. But as far as I'm aware VV has dropped off the pop culture radar screen completely, refusing all requests for interviews in genre-related publications and keeping an extremely low public profile. As I asked earlier, does anyone know what happened to permanently derail her career?
