Despite this, the ultimately dark and downbeat film proved to be a commercial success. Co-producers Amicus (UK) and American International Pictures (USA) immediately followed it with another Burroughs story, the lighter-hearted At the Earth's Core (1976), likewise starring Doug McClure, before tackling The People That Time Forgot the following year. They never got around to the technologically challenging Out of Time's Abyss (and Amicus had gone belly-up by this time), but many of those involved with the first three films reunited for the Burroughs-esque Warlords of Atlantis (1978).

Kino-Lorber's Blu-ray utilizes an excellent HD transfer courtesy of MGM and includes several new and entertaining extra features.

American Ben McBride (Patrick Wayne) has organized a post-WWI expedition to Antarctic waters in search of Caprona, the incongruously lushly tropical lost prehistoric continent, in search of his old friend Bowen Tyler (McClure), who with wife Lisa were the sole survivors of the harrowing adventures told in The Land That Time Forgot.

Using a seaplane stored aboard a British naval survey ship, McBride with paleontologist Norfolk (Thorley Walters), lady photographer "Charlie" Cunningham (Sarah Douglas), and pilot Hogan (Shane Rimmer), manage to fly over Caprona's otherwise impregnable coastal mountain range. (Tyler and his friends and enemies got there via an underground passageway.) The plane is damaged slightly midflight by a pesky pterodactyl, but McBride, Charlie, and Norfolk press on, leaving Hogan to fix the aircraft.

Soon they encounter an English-speaking primitive woman, Ajor (Dana Gillespie), who alerts them that a more technologically advanced warrior tribe known as the Nargas had captured Tyler and Lisa (their soldiers wear intimidating, samurai-like armor). Naturally, they decide to infiltrate the Nargas's skull-motif kingdom in hopes of rescuing McBride's old friend.

It's easy to dismiss movies like these because their special effects are, to most modern eyes, hopelessly primitive to the point of inviting derisive laughter. But, when I first saw them as a young teenager they held me spellbound. I was savvy enough to realize at once how the special effects were accomplished, but that did little to hinder my willingness to suspend disbelief. The People That Time Forgot was, as a result, particularly harrowing and exciting, as well as quite epically tragic in its conclusion. That its dinosaurs were fashioned of chicken wire and rubber mattered little. Today, of course, they'd use CGI to bring them to digitized life, and while they'd undoubtedly look and act more realistically in once sense, they'd also sorely lack the organic interaction that in some respects gives these pictures a slight edge. It's audiences, rather than the artfulness of the special effects, that have changed alongside the technological advances - advances that have their own set of disadvantages.

The People That Time Forgot is more upbeat, if with less aggressive and clumsy attempts at satire that damaged At the Earth's Core, though it ends somewhat wistfully. Fleshy Doug McClure became something of a minor star via these films following several decades as an almost-leading man in Hollywood, where he always seemed to be playing the handsome but hotheaded kid brother. He was a welcome presence that Patrick Wayne, also starring in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger at this time, lacks, though Wayne's not bad. Sarah Douglas, prolific Canadian expatriate Shane Rimmer, and ever-reliable Thorley Walters are all fun to watch.

The picture is less faithful than its predecessor, and it tends to rush through its plot during the second-half, leaving out a lot of Burroughs and abbreviating the leftovers. It's still a worthy sequel and the two films are definitely a matched pair. It's hopeful where the other is despairing, and in most respects its special effects, while less plentiful, are a bit more polished, and John Scott's score is good. (The sound effects, however, are peculiarly amateurish and, at times, distracting in their ineffectiveness.)

Video & Audio

Licensed from MGM and its AIP holdings, The People That Time Forgot looks fabulous on Blu-ray, nearly flawless in its original 1.85:1 widescreen and 1080p. Dissolves and title elements are on the grainy side but mostly the film looks great, and the DTS-HD Master Audio mono (English only, with no optional subtitles) is fine. The disc is Region A encoded.

Extra Features

Supplements include an audio commentary track with filmmaker Brian Trenchard-Smith and People's director, Kevin Connor; new, enjoyable on-camera interviews with Sarah Douglas and Dana Gillespie; and a trailer in HD.

Parting Thoughts

Quite entertaining, The People That Time Forgot is Highly Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His documentary and commentary, for the British Film Institute's Blu-ray of Rashomon, as is his commentary track for Arrow Video's Battles without Honor and Humanity boxed set.