Raquel Welch ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. November 4th at Schlafly Bottleworks

“There are not many men yet. Just a few tribes scattered across the wilderness. Never venturing far, unaware that other tribes exist even. Too busy with their own lives to be curious. Too frightened of the unknown to wander. Their laws are simple: the strong take everything. This is Akhoba, leader of the Rock Tribe…”

So what’s brewing at Webster University’s Strange Brew award-winning cult film series this month? It’s Raquel Welch in the movie that made her a star! Raquel teamed up with a fur bikini, special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, fellow 60’s starlet Martine Beswick, and Hammer Studios in 1966 for ONE MILLION YEARS B.C., one of the very best films of the 1960’s! The sexy prehistoric fun happens at Schlafly Bottleworks Restaurant and Bar in Maplewood (7260 Southwest Ave.- at Manchester – Maplewood, MO 63143) next Wednesday, November 4th. The movie starts at 8pm.

Long before Spielberg made dinosaurs popular with the Jurassic series, a prehistoric creature craze hit this country in the 1960’s.  Fueled both by 1950’s monster movies and new archeological discoveries, dino’s began popping up everywhere—in toys, television, and the movies.  For their 100^th film project, Hammer Studios in 1967 acquired the rights to remake the old 1940 Hal Roach programmer ONE MILLION B.C.   This tale of the Shell people and the Rock tribe attempting to survive deadly volcanoes, dinosaurs, and each other was entertaining and visually exciting, if not historically accurate (dino’s and humans missed each other by at least several million years).  Ray Harryhausen created a large variety of creatures for this remake, which is often chided for including sequences of live animals, such as a giant iguana, at the expense of animation; however, this was actually Harryhausen’s idea in an attempt to add variety (and a lower budget) to the effects sequences.  Things start slowly with the iguana and a few glimpses of a brontosaurus, then there’s a rampaging turtle!  But Harryhausen makes up for these with three awesome scenes:  an attack by an allosaurus, a battle between a triceratops and a ceratosaurus, and the climactic attack/fight involving a pteranodon and a pterodactyl.  The movie was a huge success and spawned two sequels along with countless copycats.  Harryhausen often remarked that he wasn’t sure what was the bigger attraction, the dinosaurs or Raquel Welch in her fur bikini.   A relatively unknown starlet with only one (as yet unreleased) major studio credit at the time, Welch actually dominates much of the film with her beguiling looks and intelligent manner.  ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. not only launched her career on a sex symbol trajectory that would last for decades, but also created one of the most iconic images in film history—the strong, beautiful, prehistoric goddess defiantly ready to face any challenge.

The movie starts at 8pm and admission is $5. A yummy variety of food from Schlafly’s kitchen is available as are plenty of pints of their famous home-brewed beer.

A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE

https://www.facebook.com/events/526162154210517/