Vintage Pulp

July 11 2022

EXCEPTION TO THE RULE

Vetri obeys neither man nor beast.

Above is a pretty nice find, an Italian promo poster for Quando i dinosauri si mordevano la coda, better known as When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. We’ve featured the movie several times, and probably will again because it starred Victoria Vetri, aka Angela Dorian, aka Victoria Rathgeb, who fascinates us not merely because she’s beautiful in the film, but also because she shot her husband. She appears on this poster with co-stars Magda Knopka and Imogen Hassall. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth opened in England in 1970, and worldwide the next year. There’s no official release date for Italy, but it would have played there during the summer of 1971.

Italy, Quando i dinosauri si mordevano la coda, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Victoria Vetri, Imogen Hassall, Magda Konopka, Angela Dorian, Victoria Rathgeb, poster art, cinema

Vintage Pulp

February 10 2021

NATURAL SELECTION

It took nature millions of years to evolve the bikini body. And a costume designer one movie to exploit it.

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth was part of a short trend of ’60s/’70s films that defied science and showed dinosaurs and humans living together. In this case, one of the humans was beautiful star Victoria Vetri, aka Angela Dorian. The movie would be perfect entertainment for creationists, except it’s also procreationist—i.e. there’s nudity and sex in it. The very religious may not like cinematic skin, but in our book the movie is a natural selection for an evening’s entertainment. This promo poster is similar to the Japanese promo we showed you several years ago, but even rarer. In addition all three female co-stars—Vetri, Imogen Hassall, and Magda Konopka—get life-sized promo posters, seen below. These items are real gems.

Here’s a bit of trivia. Efx duo Jim Danforth and Roger Dicken earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects, and we don’t mean for the fur bikinis. We know—it’s hard to believe the movie won anything except the eternal disdain of evolutionary scientists, but it was a box office hit partly thanks to Danforth and Dicken’s miniature stop action work. We guess Vetri and company had a little something to do with it too. Check the movie out sometime. It’s fun, whether your preference in partly clothed actors runs to male, female, or both. After opening in England in 1970, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth premiered in the U.S. today in 1971. You can read more about it here and here.

Academy Award, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Victoria Vetri, Angela Dorian, Imogen Hassall, Magda Konopka, Jim Danforth, Roger Dicken, poster art, cinema

Vintage Pulp

March 27 2016

REPTILE DYSFUNCTION

The dinosaurs aren't the only ones with small brains.

1960s and 1970s lost world movies like When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth are fun, but just lately they’re also a reminder that—despite all geological, biological, paleontological and, for that matter, just plain logical proof to the contrary—a lot of people actually believe humans co-existed with dinosaurs. Well, this movie is for them, and as a bonus everyone in it is white, which of course we know was the case in the prehistoric past. But does homogeneity bring harmony to the planet? No, because Victoria Vetri is a ravishing blonde whose differences from the brunette tribe she encounters initially make her a perfect sacrifice candidate, and later a potential mate for one of the men. This annoys the hell out of the brunette women, and thence sparks fly and deeper troubles develop.

In its own way When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is better than the more famous One Million Years B.C., and in her own way Victoria Vetri is better than the more famous Raquel Welch. That may sound a bit crazy, but in terms of quality note that the two films have very similar scores on IMDB—5.8 versus 5.2—and in terms of lead actresses Vetri gets naked whereas Welch does not. Is it okay to say that? Well, we’re a bit caveman-like ourselves, so blame it on our primitive brains. Anyway, both movies are fun, if scientifically preposterous, but When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth is cheaper, which makes it funnier, and in turn means it’s a perfect popcorn and beer flick. Watch it and laugh. It premiered in England in October 1970 and rampaged across Japan today in 1971.

I am called Sanna. I come from across the great sea and represent a new evolutionary stage in personal grooming.

You fake blonde bitch. You better get your eyes off my man before I yank them out of your head and eat them on a cracker.

Shit. I really wanted to make friends with everyone. Sometimes being astoundingly beautiful is really hard.

So Tara, where’s your girlfriend? Oh well, doesn’t matter. Tara sounds a little like a girl’s name. And Ayak sounds like a boy’s name. Maybe you two should swap names. Is your cave near here?

Just to warn you, Sanna, kissing and foreplay don’t exist yet, so you’re just gonna have to figure out some way to get your lady parts ready for this.

Oh, and I don’t have a bed. Do you have those where you’re from? They’re really expensive here. I’m thinking of maybe buying a futon instead.

Hah hah, something about that golden muff of yours just makes me smile. I don’t even know why…

Maybe this isn’t the time or place to mention it, but I’ve been seeing the blonde. We’re maybe gonna buy a condo. I want my engagement bone back.

Blonde bitch stole my man! Her hair is that color because of evil magic! She thinks brunettes are violent and stupid! Brothers and sisters, we must sacrifice her!

And fuck you, Tara! What kind of name is that for a caveman anyway? Sounds like a girl’s name! And I’m keeping my engagement bone. I earned this!

I think this crazy chick really intends to see us dead, Sanna. I should have broken up with her that time she tried to stab me in the groin with a sharpened wolf’s femur. We better run.

Japan, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Victoria Vetri, Magda Konopka, Imogen Hassall, Robin Hawdon, poster art, cinema, movie review

Femmes Fatales

December 3 2015

A MAJOR HASSALL

But just Imogen the possibilities.

With the above, we’ve now given about as much exposure to a terrible film as can be excused. The photo shows British actress Imogen Hassall from When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and the shot was made during that epic’s filming in the Canary Islands in 1969. Some may remember the movie premiering in late 1970 in England and 1971 elsewhere, but it languished in the studio vaults for a while. Actually, the entire shoot was a circus.

Here’s co-star Victoria Vetri, speaking to journalist Joe Vannicola about filming the movie on Fuerteventura: “Two weeks after we were there the director left his wife. He was sleeping with the script supervisor. It was like you could have made a movie within a movie. Everybody was screwing around. People were skinny dipping, drinking sangria instead of tea at four in the afternoon, getting drunk [constantly], and it was like party time.

Three or four in the morning they’d say, ‘You have to be up at six for a sunrise shoot? Let’s stay up all night!’ [snip] Of course, having [me] around didn’t help because I was the first one to drop a loincloth. And all the girls between shots were getting a tan. After a while it didn’t faze anybody. When you’re all sitting around half naked it doesn’t matter.” So the above photo may actually be the overdressed Hassall. We approve in any case.

Britain, Canary Islands, Fuerteventura, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Imogen Hassall, Victoria Vetri, Joe Vannicola, cinema

Intl. Notebook

August 25 2010

CAVING IN

It’s called dancing, silly. It’s fun! I just invented it, and in the future women will judge men entirely by whether they’re willing to take lessons in it.

We found some film stills from the 1970 caveman epic When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and thought they’d be a good share for today. The movie starred Magda Konopka, Victoria Vetri, Imogen Hassall, and a cast of loinclothed others, and even though it has worse science than what you’d find in a Kentucky creationism museum, we’ll buy the idea of prehistoric women in fur bikinis any day when they look like this group. More stills below. They all beg for captions, but we’re short of time, so you’ll have to write your own.

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Victoria Vetri, Magda Konopka, Imogen Hassall, cinema

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 30

1927—First Prints Are Left at Grauman's

Hollywood power couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, become the first celebrities to leave their impressions in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, located along the stretch where the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame would later be established.

April 29

1945—Hitler Marries Braun

During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia’s Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden.

April 29

1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title

After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon.

April 28

1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki

Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing.

April 28

1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident

After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe.

April 27

1945—Mussolini Is Arrested

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini’s fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.