Hammer Films made three prehistoric spectaculars. The first had Raquel Welch in a fur bikini, plus Ray Harryhausen's dinosaurs. The second had Victoria Vetri in a fur bikini - also with dinosaurs. The third had Julie Ege in... nothing much... and no dinosaurs.

CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT (1971) is the odd one out in Hammer's Stone Age cycle - shot on location in Namibia and South Africa, almost entirely without dialogue, and conspicuously missing the rubber monsters that made its predecessors memorable.

What you get instead is a prehistoric soap opera told through grunts, lust, tribal rivalry, and long shots of African landscape standing in for the Pleistocene. Also a generous amount of skin - especially considering its PG rating.

The title promises something enormous. The film delivers something much more modest - a very Hammer thing to do. The studio had a genius for packaging sensation, and a habit of letting the poster write a cheque the movie couldn't quite cash.

It has the feeling of a studio arriving late to its own party. The ground was already shifting. The audience that had thrilled to Raquel Welch was moving on. Hammer itself was only a few years away from its own extinction event.