The Celtic Queen

The Viking Queen (1967)

The ninth movie from the Hammer Collection is again a rewrite in history. The movie has absolutely nothing to do with the Vikings, no matter what the title says, it's about the Celts and the Romans. And losely based on history would be an overstatement in this one, it's just exploitation set in some historic scenery. It's badly made, badly acted and the script is ridiculous, but it's still somewhat fun. Funny enough this movie is most known for a scene where a Roman soldier is wearing a wristwatch, that says a lot about the quality of the movie. Though I've seen the movie twice now, I still haven't spotted the watch myself. But I guess it has to be there as everyone says that it is. Or then it's just a prank by Hammer, they make the audience focus on looking for the watch and thus make them not see how crappy the start of the movie is and when the action starts towards the end they are bored of looking for the watch and just enjoy the best moments the movie has to offer. That's how I watched it. The acting is bad, the "Viking Queen" is played by Carita Järvinen, a Finnish actress in a role that ended up being her last. Sure she looks great, but can't act more than your average tree. The movie has some camp values worth the watch but really not much of them either. Funniest thing there was that the movie presents about twenty scenes where bare breasts could have been shown, but it shows none. Kind of a nice little tease for what ever that's worth. Anyway the first half of the movie is utter crap but the second half is somewhat enjoyable campy action flick. As a whole though it's more on the crappy side of it. The picture quality on the DVD was not great and there were no subtitles and only a trailer as an extra.
39%

Prehistory by Hammer, or how the blondes met the brunettes

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

This is another movie from the Hammer Collection and I have to say I quite like it. The idea of it is completely ridiculous, set in this somewhat prehistoric time where men and dinosaurs live together. There is not much of a script as the movie has only a few lines of dialog in the beginning as the announcer tells us what's going on. Rest of the movie is just grunting and some other voices that appear remotely to be somekind of language. Though there are the occasional English word here and there, most likely unintentionally. Also all the people look quite modern, despite their outfit and the beard for the men. Especially it's funny that the women seemed to have makeup back then. But hey it was a good excuse of getting hot women in tiny rags on film. Anyways, the weak plot and the campy bits aside, the movie is quite stunning. It's one big adventure through this fantasy land where the turtles, lizards and spiders are as big as houses and all sorts of dinosaurs are out to get you. The stop motion effects from Ray Harryhausen are alone worth the watch, add to that the beautiful scenery and of course the beautiful Raquel Welch and you have tons of eye candy. Sure some of the effects are quite bad in modern standards, but still some of them work surprisingly well even today. Wether it's the camp values or the eye candy, this movie is surely entertaining. The picture quality on the DVD was not the best, but still not horrible either. Again there were no subtitles, but there were two interviews as extras, one with Raquel Welch and one with Ray Harryhausen.
81%