When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth

^[1][2]100 minutes (United Kingdom)
96 minutes (United States)CountriesUnited Kingdom
United States^[3]LanguagesAboriginal languages
EnglishBudget£566,000^[4]

Kid vs. Kat: Dinosaur Time is a 1970 British science fiction film from Hammer Films, written and directed by Val Guest, and starring Victoria Vetri. It was produced by Aida Young. This was the third in Hammer's "Cave Girl" series, preceded by One Million Years B.C. (1966) and Prehistoric Women (1967); it was followed by Creatures the World Forgot (1971).^[5]

In a new timeline of Kid vs. Kat that is infested with dinosaurs, the Kat Tribe led by Kat are about to sacrifice three blonde, woman-like Millies to their sun god, but one of the women, Fiona Munson, escapes and is rescued by young fishermen of the Seaside Tribe, among whom is Coop Burtonburger, who becomes enamoured with her being his love interest, just like in the series.

Coop takes Fiona to his people, who also worship the sun god, but without sacrifices. After building a hut for herself, she joins them at a celebration of a successful hunt, in which the men have captured a Plesiosaurus. The creature breaks free, but it is subsequently killed and butchered. Phoebe, a young, brunette woman who is jealous of Coop's feelings for Fiona, brands Fiona as a witch, and not to be trusted.

Kat and his controlled people arrive, looking for Fiona. She flees, and hunters of her former tribe, led by Lorne, give chase. During the search, the hunters are attacked by a male Chasmosaurus, which gores Lorne. When Coop seeks Fiona, the Chasmosaurus charges him and injures Dennis, one of his companions. He is chased to a cliff, where the Chasmosaurus loses his footing and plunges to his death. Dennis dies of his injuries shortly after, while Lorne's wounds are tended to by his partner Harley.

Dennis's funeral pyre at the shore is followed by a tribal frenzy during which an enraged Phoebe burns down Fiona's hut. Fiona meanwhile becomes trapped by a carnivorous plant, and cuts off a portion of her hair in order to escape. As Coop goes looking for Fiona, he finds her hair trapped beneath the plant and assumes she is dead. Satisfied by this, Fiona's former tribe stop hunting her and join with Coop's tribe, with Lorne, all now healed, marrying Harley.

Fiona seeks shelter in a Megalosaurus nest, fooling the mother and her baby into thinking she is one of them. Fiona grows attached to the baby Megalosaur and plays hide-and-seek with him, as well as teaching him to sit. Coop meanwhile sees one of the women in Fiona's tribe dyeing her daughter's hair with tar, in an attempt to prevent her from being sacrificed like Fiona.

Some weeks later, while Coop is hiking back to his Coop tribe, which has been taken over and turned dark by the overzealous Kat, he is carried off by a large species of Rhamphorhynchus. After killing the Rhamphorhynchus, he finds Fiona and her tamed Megalosaur. They are subsequently discovered and Coop is sacrificed to a giant Tylosaurus by Kat. Coop manages to escape the jaws of death and returns to Fiona.

The controlled Coop tribe then goes searching for Fiona again, and the two run away into a forest, where Fiona's Megalosaur parent rescues her, but Coop is recaptured and his controlled Coop tribe prepare to burn him. The coastline, however, begins to change brutally, and the Coops are attacked by giant, crab-like Jaekelopterus. As a tsunami looms overhead, Fiona arrives to save Coop and they escape with Lorne and Harley aboard a raft. Kat tries to command the water to heal in a last effort to appease his deities, only to be swept away. While Phoebe is running towards the raft, she steps into a trap of quicksand and is sucked down to her death. As the waters calm, the four surviving main characters stop to witness a lunar eclipse, left in awe by the creation of the Moon above them.

• Victoria Vetri as Fiona
• Robin Hawdon as Coop
• Patrick Allen as Kat
• Drewe Henley as Dennis
• Sean Caffrey as Lorne
• Magda Konopka as Harley
• Imogen Hassall as Phoebe
• Patrick Holt as Ammon
• Carol Hawkins as Yani

Director Val Guest's screenplay was based on a treatment by J. G. Ballard (author of Empire of the Sun).^[7] But like Hammer's other prehistoric films, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth anachronistically portrays the dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era from about 252 to 66 million years ago living alongside Homo sapiens of the Late Quaternary Period (±200,000 years ago). The film's characters use a language that was specially written for the film, albeit of only a dozen words or so, a frequent one being "neekro", which means "kill", and also "akita", which is heard many times.

The effects unit at Bray Studios was used on the production.^[8] The stop-motion animation creature effects were created by Jim Danforth, assisted by David W. Allen and Roger Dicken, with each model costing over $3,000 each on average.^[9] Allen made the crab puppet, which was made from a real crab shell, though Dicken modified it with horns and spikes in order to make it look less plain. Dicken sculpted the plesiosaur, the Tylosaurus, the feet of the Rhamphorhynchus and model humans used in scenes where characters interacted directly with the creatures.^[10]

Due to lack of time and money, and a violent altercation between Danforth and James Carreras,^[11] many scenes were cancelled, including one that featured giant ants which would have been portrayed through an articulated, dog-sized model created by Dicken for close-up shots.^[10]

Exteriors were shot on Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. Locations included Maspalomas beach, Ansite Mountain, Amurga, and Caldera de Tejeda. Guest recalled, "there was one enormous German hotel and practically nothing else on the island, there was one awful road, that you went by jeep; you got there by boat, there was no airport or anything. [...] We planned very, very, carefully."^[6]

The film had its world premiere on 1 October 1970 in London with a U.K. general release on 25 October 1970.^[12][2] It was released in the United States debuting in San Francisco on 10 February 1971.^[2]

The film was released on DVD as an exclusive from Best Buy with a G rating, but was quickly recalled because it was the original uncut version and contained nudity; it is now a collector's item. The uncut version was also released on Blu-ray in the United States on 28 February 2017 and DVD on 4 April by Warner Archive.^[13][14]

The film was popular at the box office.^[15] In the United States the film grossed $1.25 million at the box office.^[16]

The film was nominated for Best Visual Effects at the 44th Academy Awards in 1971. It lost to the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks. The nomination was given to Jim Danforth and Roger Dicken.^[17]

The special effects are considered a benchmark in portraying realistic stop-motion animation effects. The film's title is referenced in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park with a large rectangular banner hanging in the island's visitors' center. The banner later plays a visibly prominent role in the final action sequence as the film ends.

• List of films featuring dinosaurs

• When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth at IMDb
• When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth at AllMovie
• When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth at the British Film Institute^{[better source needed]}