Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis!

Cavegirl: Martine Beswick 2

2012-01-18T14:16:00.000Z

We found this picture of Martine Beswick from One Million Years BC which we hadn't see before. She is in the cave set which Hammer, with it's usual economy, re-used for the film Prehistoric Women (1967) also known as Slave Girls and Slave of the Amazons. Beswick, of course, having been a co-star in One Million Years BC had a bigger, starring role in Prehistoric Women which, despite its title was set in the present day. She must have got very familiar with the set! We will do a proper post about this film shortly.

Cavegirl: Julie Ege 4

2011-12-29T13:21:00.001Z

We found this image of the gorgeous Julie Ege, in a publicity shot for Creatures the World Forgot, in an old ccopy of Men Only magazine in an article on Hammer starlets. We don't recall seeing it before. It is from the shoot that was done before filming, as in the actual production she wore a dark wig. Splendid!

Cavegirl: Holly Valance

2011-12-23T15:45:00.001Z

What better way to sign off for Christmas than with these pictures of the newly engaged (to a billionaire businessman) actress and singer Holly Valance, promoting tonight's guaranteed twenty five £1 million pound lottery prizes. It is good to know that somewhere there are people in advertising agencies who when asked to think of how to promote the lottery instantly start thinking about Holly in animal skins. No doubt it is some deep association with the words "one million" and cavegirls that does it.

Recently we have been admiring the lovely Holly's lithe form in Strictly Come Dancing but we have to say she looks good dressed in animal skin as opposed to all those sequins.

She is perhaps a little overdressed but we think she makes an excellent cavegirl and quite happily award her an 8/10

Cavegirl Art 15: Cartoon from Mayfair 1969

2011-12-12T13:42:00.000Z

Run spouse! The Saxons are coming!

Here is a somewhat anachronistic cartoon from Mayfair magazine Volume 4 number 4 (April 1969). Anachronistic, of course, as at the time the Saxons were raiding Britain (circa 300AD) everyone would have been wearing natty striped trousers and plaid tunics not caveman type attire. Still, the spouse is a perfect cavegirl type so she deserves her place here!

Cavegirl: Valerie Leon in Carry On Up the Jungle

2011-11-14T11:07:00.001Z

Usually when we look at a cinematic cavegirl we first examine the cavegirl film she appeared in. However, in the case of Carry On Up the Jungle (1970), it isn't a cavegirl film at all and whilst possibly coming under the Lost World and definitely the Jungle Girl categories it really doesn't justify a seperate entry. We will, therefore, confine ourselves to examining the superlative gorgeousness of Valerie Leon as the leader of a tribe of Amazons.

Briefly, the film tells of an ornithological expedition to Africa financed by Lady Bagley (Joan Sims) to find her husband and son who have been missing in the jungle for years. Accompanied by White Hunter Bill Boosey (Sid James), ornitholigist Professor Inigo Tinkle (Frankie Howard - brilliant) and his assistant Claude Chumley (Kenneth Connor) they get captured by a tribe of cannibals known as the Noshas but are rescued by the women of the Lubby-Dubby tribe from the Lost World of Aphrodisia.

L to R: Howard, Sims, James and Leon

Despite being totally studio bound this is one of the better historical Carry Ons. This was Leon's fourth Carry On and she would go on to make two more.

Born almost exactly 67 years ago on 12th November 1942 she was the daughter of an actress. The twenty year old Valerie was working as a trainee fashion buyer at Harrods when she played truant to attend an audition for the stage production of The Belle of New York. By the following year she was on the West End stage with Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl.

She started to do some small roles on TV (The Saint, The Avengers) and had her first big screen appearance in 1967. The following year she appeared in Carry on up the Khyber (1968), possibly the best of the Carry On films.

For Agent Triple P she is best remembered as the girl in the series of Hai Karate aftershave TV commercials which ran from 1969 until 1975, where, driven wild by the aftershave, she would thrust her impressive cleavage towards the camera. The appearance of a new one would be much discussed at school! The nurse's outfit was a favourite!

Magnificent in Blood from the Mummy's Tomb

Although she would continue to have small roles in the seventies and early eighties, including the James Bond film The Spy who Loved Me (1977) and the "alternative" Sean Connery Bond Never Say Never Again (1982), her crowning cinematic achievement would be her dual roles starring in the Hammer horror Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971).

The Lubby-Dubby tribe costumes are obviously modelled on Raquel Welch's fur bikini from One Million Years BC (1966), complete with diagonal strap between top and bottom.

Part of the way through the film she changes to a more typical Lost World queen outfit, sadly, although it is, at least, briefer than her rather too concealing cavegirl outfit which is more a dress than a bikini.

Nevertheless we can't give her anything less than 8/10 as a cavegirl!

Cavegirl: Sharon Engert

2011-10-26T13:31:00.001Z

Here are a few pictures of "actress and model" Sharon Engert as a cavegirl. Actually, Sharon's acting experience appears to be confined to one film called Play-mate of the Apes (2002) where, interestingly, she co-stars with Misty Mundae, star of Bikini Girls on Dinosaur Planet (2005) which we will look at in due course.

From Play-mate of the Apes

The film does, incidentally, feature several cavegirl-type women but as it is a parody of Planet of the Apes rather than a cavegirl film we don't think we will bother to try and acquire it.

Much of Miss Engert's modelling seems to be for certain bondage-focussed websites where she demonstrates a number of agonised looking expressions (possibly a requirement for this sort of thing). Perhaps that is the acting talent?

There are more pictures available in this series but frankly we didn't think that she was worth joining a pay site for to access them as she is far too plastic-looking for Agent Triple P's taste.

Although some of these pictures are quite nice (particularly the one above) we are afraid that we have to give her a silicone-reduced score of 5/10.

Beach Babes 2: Cavegirl Island

2011-10-11T09:09:00.000Z

No cavegirl film is ever going to win an Oscar but, at least, sometimes we can hope to enjoy an hour and a half of pre-historic babes in animal skin fun with, hopefully, a few very un-historic dinosaurs thrown in. At best we get a be-skinned heroine who renders the surrounding film largely irrelevant as she lights up the screen whenever she is on it to the exclusion of pretty much else (Raquel). At a lower level we might get a nice girl in an attempt at an animal skin bikini but in a film hampered by a lack of budget so, perhaps, moving our cavegirl to the present (for example, Teenage Cavegirl).

When we reviewed Teenage Cavegirl we gave it three stars, imagining, perhaps, that it would be nigh on impossible to find a worse cavegirl film. How very wrong we were, because here comes Beach Babes 2: Cavegirl Island (1998) which makes the original Hammer cavegirl trilogy look like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings by comparison.

Two out of three of our alien babes wonder why the other has dumped all her clothes

Trying to describe the plot is pointless but it is something along these lines: Three alien girls from an earlier film Beach Babes from Beyond (1993) (except two out of three of them aren't the original actresses) crash their very small and cheap looking spaceship on a beach. One of the three has disappeared and finds a local caveman. The others find some cavegirls and start dancing (there is a lot of dreadful dancing in this film). The other two girls then find their own cavemen whilst a villain tries to capture them for his bordello theme park (I think).

The main big-budget set. Why highly technological aliens need a ghettoblaster to provide music isn't explained

There is no production design to speak of (the cavegirl village consists of one hut and a few bits of tiki sculpture), the cavegirl costumes are terrible, the acting worse (with the honourable exception of Sara Bellomo; which is surprising as she was a porn star under the name of Roxanne Blaze) and the plot is nonsensical.

No with a film like this it is the simulated sex scenes (of which there are a lot) which count. Fair enough if that is your market but in the case of the DVD it has been cut which means that most of the sex scenes have been replaced by, wait for it, extracts of the girls dancing from earlier in the film.

Fun with a banana: but not on the DVD

Yes, not cut completely but replaced by totally visually irrelevant material. Amazing! We gather that the sex scenes in the original version (including an infamous banana sequence) were not bad and, actually, the bits that remain are filmed quite nicely in flattering lighting.

The film was made in 1994 but not released until 1998, which says a lot. Directed by Roger Corman-trained schlock-meister David DeCoteau (under one of his female noms de plumes, Ellen Cabot), who has over eighty films to his credit. Like Teenage Cavegirl, most of the exterior scenes were shot in Bronson Canyon. Los Angeles.

Chamois rather than fur bikinis

So, all in all the uncut original version probably rates a 2/10 but the ridiculously edited DVD version (which is the same in the US and the UK) rates only 1/10 (and that is largely because of the stop-motion dinosaurs brought in from another film).

Cavegirl Art 14: A trio of Frazettas

2011-09-15T14:06:00.002Z

Primitive beauty 11"x18" (1969)

We have put very little Frank Frazetta art on this blog which is odd, as his cavegirls are very much the ne plus ultra of cavegirl art. Perhaps it's because his pictures are so well known that they seem a little obvious to include. There is no denying their quality, however, so we thought we'd post these three fine examples.

The colour painting, from the late sixties, was originally published in black and white as the centrefold in a very short-lived (2 issues!) Frazetta fanzine published by Vern Coriell. It was later released as a full colour poster in 1973. She is, of course, noticeably missing a fur bikini and her metallic bracelet and earrings suggest that she is more a lost-world type of cavegirl than a prehistoric one, although she is carrying a workmanlike stone tipped spear. Her full frontal appearance is reasonably unusual for Frazetta.

This drawing is from slighly earlier, 1965, and has the cavegirl rather better dressed than her coloured equivalent. Again she has what look like metal bangles to go with her stone-age spear.

Our final cavegirl displays some wonderfully rendered fur around her hips, even if she has decided to dispense with a top. Again, there are hints at non-prehistoric adornment but she is probably the most prehistoric of the lot, however. The low angle viewpoint gives her a very purposeful look.

All in all the trio have to get a cavegirl score of 9/10.

Cavegirl: Senta Berger

2011-08-30T15:17:00.000Z

Having examined her two Italian cavegirl films (Quando le donne avevano la coda (1970) and Quando donne le persero la coda (1972)) in the last two posts it is time to look at the luscious Senta Berger in all of her cavegirl glory.

Her costumes from the first film, When Women had Tails, are even more minimalist than those worn by the Hammer heroines as they seem to be composed mainly of knotted string and a few bits of animal skin.

The dangling "tails" add the requisite untailored and savage look as well as emphasising the movement of her splendid body.

The glory of her cavegirl look is, however, her magnificent mane of red hair. Redheads.of course, evolved (or, rather, mutated) comparatively recently and were confined to Northern Europe so we can't give the producers many points for historical accuracy here!

The obvously Mediterranean setting of the film doesn't look much like Scandinavia, where her outfit wouldn't have given her much protection from the Ice Age weather!

Beneath this mane of hair her loincloth was enticingly minimalist!

Even more minimalist was her second costume in the film which was constructed from a few strips of animal skin. One of the most original and effective cavegirl outfits in the history of the cinema!

So, all in all her cavegirl costumes in the first film are just excellent!

The second cavegirl film she made, When Women lost their Tails, had a very different visual look, not least because it was shot solely in a studio, on one set.

Her look in this film was much more "civilised" (although to be fair that was part of the theme of the film) and although she still had her long red hair it was now artfully curled and less straggly.

What a beauty!

She had two main costumes in this film as well. The first was a black and white number with enticing cut-outs.

The second costume was a more conventional cavegirl outfit of a low cut skin top with a long white fur fringe over an animal skin loincloth.

Both outfits are cute but they cover much more of her up than in the first film so our vote has to go for the costumes from When Women had Tails.

Senta Berger was born in Vienna in 1941 and first appeared on stage at the age of four, singing with her father, a musician. Her first acting role, as an extra, was at the age of nine. Later she took acting lessons and her first proper film role came in 1957 when she was sixteen. A year later she joined the Josefstadt Theatre in Vienna.

From a shoot done in Mexico at the time of the filming of Major Dundee

Many of her early films were musicals but in 1962 she went to Hollywood where she made a number of films as well as continuing to work in Germany, France and Italy.

Senta in The Ambushers

Publicity still from The Man from Uncle

Triple P remembers her from the Dean Martin starring Matt Helm film The Ambushers (1967). She also appeared in The Man from Uncle and the pilot episode of It takes a Thief on TV as well as, more bizarrely, singing on The Rolf Harris show (1971) on UK TV (it was a German co-production).

Senta looking particularly voluptuous in Sam Pekinpah's Major Dundee

Other major film roles at this time included Major Dundee (1965), The Quiller Memorandum (1966) and Cross of Iron (1977).

After the seventies most of her work was in Europe but she continued to work regularly in TV, theatre and film and has two movies in post-production currently.

Senta in Roma Bene (1970)

In the Seventies Senta was happy to get her clothes off for the film cameras, we are glad to say.

Since 2003 she has been the president of the German Film Academy which is responsible, amongst other things, for the German Film Awards.

Senta last year; still looking fantastic at the age of 69

All in all we can't fault Senta as a cavegirl (particularly in her first pre-historic epic) and have to give her a 10/10.

Growwwl!

Quando donne le persero la coda (1972)

2011-08-15T21:08:00.000Z

The second of Senta Berger's cavegirl films (after Quando le donne avevano la coda (1977) ), Quando le donne persero la coda (When women lost their tails (1972) - a direct sequel) has Filli (Berger) happily living in a cave inside a dinosaur skeleton (the usual faint grasp of prehistoric history is evident) with the "comedy" cave brothers from the first film.

It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

The brothers, incidentally, now look nothing like they did in the first film where they could easily have fitted in with the cast of one of the Hammer epics but are wearing pastiche "prehistoric" costume that almost looks like fancy dress.

Their dull existence is disturbed by the arrival of a sophisticated caveman (Lando Buzzanca) who cons them out of a pig, introduces them to currency and economics and then targets, understandably, Filli. Interestingly women and pigs have been proven to have been prime raiding targets for cavemen (see here).

Unlike the original film, which was filmed on location, this production was entirely studio bound.

The cave set looks like something from the original Star Trek and the whole thing is more like a live action Flintsones rather than One Million Years BC.

The film, which is "comedy" at its broadest was co-written, somewhat surprisingly, by future art house doyenne Lina Wertmuller.

Nevertheless, Senta Berga looks sensational again and in the next post we will look at her cavegirl costumes from both films.

Quando le donne avevano la coda (1970)

2011-07-12T15:06:00.001Z

Someone left a message to the effect that we need to feature Senta Berger on this blog. Absolutely! She featured in two Italian caveman comedies in the early seventies and was one of the finest looking cavegirls to ever don a fur bikini. We will examine her in more detail in a seperate post but first we will take a quick look at her cavegirl films.

The first film Quando le donne avevano la coda (When women had tails) (1970) sees a group of caveman brothers living on an island until a fire burns all the vegetation forcing them to find somewhere else to live. They leave the island on a raft and land on the mainland.

Having left the island they set a trap to catch some food but instead trap Filli (Berger) who at first sight appears to have a tail due to her animal skin costume.

The brothers want to eat her but one of the other, obviously better evolved, brothers can think of better things to do with her so gives his brothers a goat and hides Filli away for recreational purposes.

Filli reciprocates towards the older brother generating all sorts of fraternal stress. Eventually Filli and her cave boyfriend flee the others who set off in pursuit but all end up back at Filli's old tribe which consists of dozens of nubile cave-babes very happy to make the acquaintance of the cave brothers.

This film gets notoriously bad reviews and other than Ms Berger the best thing about it is the Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

Cavegirl: Julie Ege 3

2011-04-28T18:52:00.001Z

We have had a couple of posts about Julie Ege, star of Creatures the World Forgot (1971), here and here. However, we want to gather her cavegirl pictures together and include this magnificent picture (above) which we haven't shown before.

Hammer were very keen to repeat the success of One Million Years BC (1966) and realised that most of the appeal of the latter film was Raquel Welch. Keen to find a new starlet with the same impact as Welch Hammer Films managed to persuade Columbia pictures to finance a third prehistoric film.

Almost exactly forty-one years ago, on April 29th 1970, they launched a campaign to find the "Screen's New Sex Symbol of the Seventies" Columbia helped with the world-wide marketing of the competition and over 2,000 girls applied. 280 were chosen to be interviewed by Hammer boss James Carreras and, in June, 24 year old Julie Ege was announced as the winner.

In reality, it was the amount of press coverage Ege had gained from her largely naked role as a Swedish au pair girl in the Marty Feldman comedy Every Home Should Have One that swung the choice. This had generated an amazing 1657 column inches about her; something that the Hammer publicity machine was well aware of.

"The millions who have read about Julie Ege will now want to see her in her first major starring role in Creatures the World Forgot", they said.

Before Ege left for Africa for filming, Hammer arranged for her to spend a week on a desert island with just a photographer to "prepare" for her prehistoric role. The resulting photographs of Ege wearing very little indeed went round the world and were published in several newspapers and magazines.

Triple P remembers seeing them in one of the Sunday papers at the time so Miss Ege must have been one of the very first women we responded to!

Filming was entirely on location in South West Africa and began on 1st July. Ege had just given birth and was not feeling too well so retired to bed early during the shoot. As a result, the crew thought she was stuck up and contrived to keep her out of shot as much as possible, much to the annoyance of Hammer in London.

Worse for Ege was the fact that she was given a horrible dark wig and an inferior fur bikini to Welch's. As a result the lovely fur-dressed creature who appeared in the publicity shots was made to look like an almost unrecognisable, dowdy frump.

Unlike Victoria Vettri (a Playboy rather than a Penthouse alumnus) in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Ege didn't strip off for the film either.

Also, Hammer were keen to be (pre-) historically accurate on this film which meant no more dinosaurs: another blow to its box-office prospects. Arguably, they were more concerned at how the dinosaurs in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) had hugely delayed the delivery of that film.

The film did quite well at the UK box office but not well enough that Hammer produced another prehistoric film. The story was complicated, there were no dinosaurs and the much-touted Ege did not live up to her previous visual image. If they had put her in the Welch style outfit at the head of this post who knows what might have happened?

Interestingly, the producers of the posters for the film went for a much more Raquel Welch-like effect than the straggly effort that actually appears in the final film.

Although Ege remained well known in Britain and made a number of subsequent films, Creatures did not catapult her to the world-wide level of celebrity that One Million Years BC (despite having the same director) did for Raquel Welch.

Ege with co-star Tony Bonner

Part of her problem, we believe is the poor quality of her fur bikini. Not all fur bikinis are equal!

Julie struggles with a snake

Star Trek cavegirl: Mariette Hartley

2011-04-05T17:32:00.000Z

Mariette Hartley...in a cave!

Here is Mariette Hartley from the penutimate episode of Star Trek, Season 3's All our Yesterdays. One of those Star Trek time travelling jobs, in this one Kirk, Spock and McCoy land on a planet and find an electronic library with just the one inhabitant Atoz (A to Z; good grief!) who is the librarian. Anyway, to cut a very involved story short, Spock and McCoy end up going back 5,000 years to the planet's ice age where just as they are about to be frozen to death they are rescued by a fur enveloped figure and taken to the safety of a cave. The figure removes its furs to reveal, inevitably, a gorgeous woman in a cavegirl outfit who has also travelled back in time.

Because they haven't been correctly processed (or some such) Spock starts to revert to pre-logical, prehistoric Vulcan mode, which means he doesn't think McCoy's jokes are funny and falls in love with the cavegirl, Zarabeth. Quite logical, actually. Yes, amazingly it isn't Kirk who gets the girl in this episode!

Mariette (real name Mary Loretta) Hartley was born in 1940 in Weston Connecticut. Her first film was Sam Pekinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) and she made a number of films in the sixties in Seventies. Mainly her work was on TV, running up over 100 credits. She worked with Star Trek's Gene Roddenberry again on the pilot for the unproduced series Genesis II (1973). At the time of her Star Trek appearance the network wouldn't permit her costume to show her tummy button. So costume designer William Theiss had to come up with this little cavegirl number to appease the censors but still produce a sexy outfit. Something we think he succeeded in, triumphantly. Theiss became a master at baring unexpected parts of the body to great effect for the outfits he designed for Star Trek. He once said that "the degree to which a costume is considered sexy is directly proportional to how much it looks like it is about to fall off!" As an in joke Roddenberry gave her character in Genesis II two tummy buttons!

So she is a cavegirl, albeit an alien one, and as such we give her and her natty little outfit a solid 6/10.

Cavegirl: Brinke Stevens

2011-03-27T14:49:00.003Z

Here is B-movie actress, dancer and model Brinke Stevens nicely dressed as a seaside cavegirl. Not so much a fur bikini as a wooly one but none the worse for that!

Born in 1954, Brinke (real name Charlene Elizabeth Brinkman) obtained a BSc and then an MSc in Marine Biology. She also worked as an enviromental consultant for a Californian nuclear power plant from 1979-1981. Modelling in her spare time, she was signed up by a film producer on a modelling shoot.

Her first film appearance was in the film Necromancy (1972) which starred Orson Welles (!) where she played a Black Sabbath member (not the band, of course) although she only appeared in the 1983 re-release under the title of The Witching, in newly shot scenes of added cult nudity.

Brinke in This is Spinal Tap

The names of her film characters in her first movies in the early eighties tell you everything about her career: jogging girl, schoolgirl (she was 29 at this point!), nymphet, mistress, shower girl. dream girl (in Emanuelle IV), girlfriend (in This is Spinal Tap (1984)). Famous mostly as a scream queen in low budget horror and SF films she has made over 100 films and is still working regularly today.

In 1980 she married comic book artist Dave Stevens 1955-2008), creator of The Rocketeer. In the comic book The Rocketeer's girlfriend is called Bettie and the artist based her face and hair on Bettie Page but her body was modelled on Brinke's. In one notorious edition of the comic he had Bettie modelling for photographer Marco of Hollywood who was, in turn based on Penthouse and Playboy photographer Ken Marcus. The nudity in this issue upset conservative America mothers across the country!

An 18 year old Brinke wins the fancy dress competition at Comic Con dressed as Vampirella

Brinke and Stevens had known each other since the early seventies (they both lived in San Diego and were also on the famous Comic Con committee) but the marriage only lasted six months as he wanted her to stay at home and she wanted to keep working on her scientific career (she was an expert on dolphin communications and also spoke seven languages!) She kept his surname after their divorce, as her acting career took off, never having been that happy with hers.

It was at this point that Brinke took up modelling to help pay the bills and she appeared in a number of mens' magazines in the eighties. Very little of her modelling onvolved clothes, it has to be said.

Another wet day's filming for Brinke with fellow scream queen Linnea Quigley

Likewise for her film career, where her appearances notoriously often involved shower scenes. She became friends with fellow scream queen Linnea Quigley as they often used to run into each other at auditions and they would spot opportunities for each other. Brinke wasn't shy about being filmed or photographed with other women as this picture of her and Linnea proves!

Brinke and Linnea have fun for the camera

In January 1985 they both appeared in Playboy in a pictorial called the Girls of Rock n Roll where Brinke was the bass player in Linnea and the Skirts, Quigley's band. The band is still playing although without Brinke.

Brinke and Linnea in Playboy 1985

Agent Triple P remembers first seeing Brinke in a July 1982 Penthouse pictorial called Marlene and Brinke by David Schoen where she is getting convincingly affectionate with Marlene Ann Cauley.

Marlene and Brinke

So, altogether we think Brinke makes a splendid cavegirl and we'd happily gather a few sea shells with her any prehistoric day. 8/10

Jungle Girl 3: Sian Adey-Jones

2011-03-01T22:13:00.001Z

Sian Adey-Jones was one of the top glamour models of the late seventies and early eighties. Born in 1957 in Wales she became Miss Wales in 1976 and the same year went on to be the second runner up in the Miss Universe competition. They had an amazing judging panel for that event which included Britt Ekland, Aldo Gucci, Roman Polanski and Dame Margot Fonteyn!

She became a Sun Page 3 girl and was voted Page 3 girl of the year in 1981. She also appeared in many men's magazines including Lui, Oui, Mayfair, Cheri, Gallery and Genesis. She had best selling posters and calendars. She was also a mainstream model for catalogues etc.

At the height of her career she was being driven in a limousine when her driver had a heart attack and smashed head on into a lorry. She had to have major reconstructive surgery on her face but the doctors worked miracles and she was able to resume her modelling career.

She was a Bond girl, seen briefly in the party scene in A View to a Kill in 1985. She now lives on Ibiza with her Italian husband and family.

Here we have her as a jungle girl including a number of pictures from the same shoot taken at the beginning of the eighties, pictures from which appeared in a number of magazines around the world. Sian is obviously some jungle princess perhaps inhabiting a Zanzibari Arab's African palace.

There seemed to be something about her that got photographers to put her in beads and animal prints so she fully belongs in our collection of Jungle girls.

Maybe your seaplane has run into difficulties off the African coast. You nurse it down and just get it ashore (it's probably a Grumman Goose amphibian-we're talking Tales of the Gold Monkey pre-World War 2 period, here).

You are working on one of the engines when from the thick jungle at the edge of the white sands emerges this golden goddess...

Junglelicious!

Cavegirl: Eva Mendes

2011-02-23T11:39:00.000Z

Not much to say about this one, really. It's Eva Mendes...as a cavegirl. What's not to like? Her fur bikini top is, we have to say, unique in the world of cavegirl outfits We can't imagine that it would stay in place for very long if any strenuous exercise (such as herding a mammoth into a conveninetly dug pit) was undertaken but then as William Theiss, the costume designer for the original Star Trek, once said, the more a costume looks like it is about to fall off the sexier it is. Frankly, she looks more like the prize for the successful mammoth hunter.

We also approve of the cavegirl hair (meaning that it doesn't look like real cavegirl hair but does look like Raquel Welch's).

Alltogether, an easy 9/10.

Cavegirl Art 13: Coppertone cavegirl

2011-02-19T16:25:00.001Z

Here is a nice take on Joyce Ballantyne's famous advertisement for Coppertone by Korean born artist Frank Cho (or Dyuk Hyun Cho, to give him his real name). She isn't really a cavegirl, as can be seen by her knife, but is Cho's Jungle Girl character who often seems to interact with dinosaurs. Any why not?

Balantyne was paid $2,500 for this painting for the Coppertone advertisement in 1959 and used her daughter Cheri as the model.

Cavegirl on the Rocks

2011-02-10T18:45:00.000Z

We had a question about the identity of the cavegirl whose picture is above our cavegirl erotica posts section on the right. Well, we don't really know as the pictures were went to us by our particular friend S in Vancouver. She said that she wasn't really a cavegirl just a "naked chick on the rocks" but she was "emitting the right vibe".

We couldn't agree more. We have one other picture of her and she goes under the name of Sian. We belive the picture may be by Norwegien photographer Petter Hegre who was born in Stavanger but lives in Portugal (understandably).

We know she's not really a cavegirl but she is so nice we don't care!

Cavegirl: Nadia Cassini

2011-01-23T23:00:00.005Z

Nadia Cassini in Quando gli uomini armarono la clava... e con le donne fecero din-don (1971)

We first became aware of Nadia Cassini when we saw her in the offbeat thriller Pulp (1972), starring Michael Caine, where she floated around Malta (standing in for Italy) in an amazing variety of early seventies outfits, including a great collection of boots.

Cassini in Pulp (1972)

A few years later we were in Rome and the newsstands were covered in posters featuring Cassini's appearance in the November edition of Italian Playboy. We were unable to buy one immediately but we certainly imagined what the contents would be like quite a lot.

We managed to get a copy early one morning, on the last day of our holiday, before the family woke up. We were not disappointed in the excellent pictures by Angelo Frontoni of Nadia on a motorbike displaying an awesomely fluffy pussy.

Nadia in Playboy Italia, November 1977. Not her first nor, thankfully, her last appearance

Anyway, without doubt she deserves a post of her own on Venus Observations but for now lets look at her cavegirl pictures from the catchily named Quando gli uomini armarono la clava e con le donne fecero din-don.

Firstly, of course, we need to examine her fur bikini. It's a wild and ragged concoction and whilst it doesn't have anything like the stroke of design genius, in the diagonal cross strap from top to bottom, that Raquel's had it is still a superb effort. We particularly like the twin cord waist straps and dangly "tails". It remains one of the best fur bikinis in the cinema.

Here we can see it in all its colour magnificence. The random bits of extra fur add an intriguing tactile quality and, no doubt, added play value.

Here it is again displayed whilst on horseback. To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Oh happy horse to bear the weight of Nadia!"

The wild, long shaggy hair adds considerably to Cassini's cavegirl appeal whether in or out of her fur bikini top.

Cavegirls need a good thick head of hair, of course, so that cavemen have something solid to grab onto when dragging them around.

Earlier in the film, when she is still a member of the more sophisticated lake dwelling tribe, she has an outfit that appears to be made from grass. You can just see the top in the still below.

As for the rest of the outfit it can be seen below. Again, note the double waist strap. Obviously a de rigeur fashion effect in the late stone age.

Unlike Raquel Welch, Nadia spends some time in the film not wearing anything at all. In the context of cavegirl films this is known as evolution.

Nadia's fantastic posterior completely dominates this picture of the group of striking cavegirls from her village.

Fortunately, a stills photographer was on hand on the set to record it for posterity.

Although she doen't have the bust of Raquel there is certainly nothing to be ashamed of and we are quite happy to give her the full 10/10 as a cavegirl.

Cavegirl: Beth Rogan from Mysterious Island

2011-01-21T19:28:00.003Z

Mysterious Island (1961) was directed by Cy Endfield of Zulu fame. Loosely based on the novel by Jules Verne it tells the story of some American Civil War soldiers who escape from prison in a balloon. Blown off course, inevitably, they land on a mysterious island (er..). Where they encounter a number of Ray Harryhausen monsters, some shipwrecked English ladies, some pirates and Captain Nemo, splendidly played by one of my favourite character actors, Herbert Lom.

The opening scenes of the war are all stock footage and feature artillery from the First World War rather than the ACW (Agent Triple P worries about these things, sadly).

The exteriors of the scenes where they escape from the prisoner of war camp where shot in Shepperton Square which is about two miles from where Triple P's mother lives (and Triple P used to live). Shepperton Studios, where the film was shot, is nearby. If you look at this model of the square used in the film and these modern pictures of the buildings and church you can see it looks rather more English than Southern States American!

In the live action shots of the balloon taking off you can clearly see the TV aeriels on the buildings in the background. Shepperton Church tower, incidentally, was demolished by a Martian war machine in HG Wells' book the War of the Worlds!

The beach in the film with some rather ropey matte work in the background

Sa Conca beach today. The rocks on the left are the ones in the foreground of the top picture.

The scenes on the island were filmed on Sa Conca Beach, near Girona in Catalonia. Like most of that coast the Spaniards have let it get hideously over-developed in the last 45 years and it certainly couldn't pass for a deserted island any more, sadly, as the beach has been surrounded by villas.

More views of Sa Conca today

The Harryhausen creatures in the film consist of a giant crab, giant bees and a giant prehistoric bird. It turns out that all of these are the results of experiments by Captain Nemo to feed the starving of the world. Although a diet of crab, honey and giant chicken is an odd selection of staple foods to choose to save humanity with. In fact, they were intending to have dinosaurs on the island, hence the presence of the prehistoric bird, but they were dropped from the film. This is why you have the odd assortment of creatures that you do. Surely a giant sheep would have been more use as a food source but it wouldn't have been very threatening, we suppose; although we have always found sheep rather sinister with their nasty looking teeth.

" Maybe it's not such a good place to build a villa!"

The best of these monsters is the giant bird. the encounter with it is up with the roping of the dinosaur in Valley of Gwangi and the fight with the Allosaurus in One Million Years BC.

The crab model was built inside the shell of a real crab whilst two live crabs were used for close-ups, until Harryhausen had them for dinner.

"Anyone got some brown bread and mayonnaisse?" thinks the crab.

So, this is all well and good, you say. An enjoyable way to while away a wet sunday afternoon (not as enjoyable, perhaps as watching Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman wrestling in mud, but not bad). But where is the cavegirl?

Look! She's coming out of a cave!

The young female lead of Mysterious Island was an English actress called Beth Rogan who played an aristocratic young lady called Elena Fairchild who was washed ashore on the island after a shipwreck.

"So, we're trapped in this honeycomb. Would you like to feel my pole?"

She is a castaway on the island that the soldiers are stranded on and becomes a cavegirl as their stay on the island lengthens and they find a cave to live in.

Although she starts off in appropriate Victorian clothes she soon runs herself up a very natty little doeskin microshorts and minidress number which certainly qualifies in my book as cavegirl attire .

This is a very cute outfit indeed!

Born Elizabeth Puckle, the daughter of a major in the Royal Marines, Beth became a Rank starlet in the late fifties. She made a few films but Mysterious Island was her second to last.

She appeared in Playboy, sadly completely dressed, in their pictorial on The Girls of London in the October 1962 issue.

Beth in Playboy

She then married a couple of English aristocrats and retired from the screen becoming a jet setter and spending her time in the South of France.

Beth in the South of France in the sixties

She became known as Jeni Cassel having married the fourth Baronet of Cassel.

Beth today

She had two children but is now divorced and lives in Sussex. Recently, she modelled in a bikini again for the Daily Mail at the age of 75!

Mysterious Island publicity shot.

As a cavegirl she looks very fine indeed so earns a Cavegirl Rating 7/10

Cavewoman Diet!

2011-01-17T18:18:00.001Z

Well, that's what last week's Sunday Times called the latest trendy American diet devised by one Professor Arthur de Vany. The professor argues that our bodies should only eat food that humans from 40,000 years ago could have caught or picked.

Exactly

In fact it looks like another sort of low carbohydrate Atkins diet concentrating on meat, fish nuts (sadly, not Triple P's favourite peanuts as they are a sort of pea not a nut) and vegetables. The twist being that half the vegetables you eat should be raw. Goody!

The Sunday Times decided that the only way to illustrate this diet was with pictures of a naked girl. Quite right! Frankly, the only way that Triple P would adopt these tedious sounding diet was if it attracted cavegirls in fur bikinis.

Tyrannosarus Azteca/Aztec Rex

2011-01-17T11:29:00.000Z

We just caught a bit of this on TV early yesterday morning, however it was too late and not gripping enough to keep us awake into the small hours to get to the end.

We are just recording it here because it contained dinosaurs and a girl in a cavegirl animal hide bikini outfit.

The massive Spanish force

Briefly, the rather good premise was a Lost World/Valley of Gwangi type adventure about a group of Conquistadores in Mexico, led by Cortés, discovering a Tyrannosaurus terrorising an Aztec valley (cue a King Kong-like appease the creature with a human sacrifice scene). The Rennaissance twist is rather a good idea but the whole thing was, as ever in these sorts of productions (Sci-Fi Channel own production) let down by the paltry budget. So there were six conquistadores, a village of two huts and a very bad CGI dinosaur.

Masses of extras inhabit a lavish set

We didn't watch enough of it to take in the plot other than to register that it was rather gory. More importantly we didn't see the introduction of actress Dichen Lachman as our cavegirl.

Dichen Lachner, a Tibetan Australian with a Hawaiian playing Aztecs

Actually, she isn't a cavegirl, left over from a past era like the dinosaurs (there turn out to be two of them), she is supposed to be an Aztec princess. Now we know quite a lot about the Aztecs. When at school, Triple P did a project on the Conquistadores but won the school prize because he was the only one to do the conquest of Mexico from an Aztec point of view. We have been interested in them ever since and know that they didn't wear animal skin bikinis. We also know that they were Amerindians not oriental, as Miss Lachner appeared to be. In fact it turns out that she is half Australian and half Nepalese. She has a look which could be politely termed "distinctive".

An Aztec cavegirl in animal skin bikini adopts a moustache in empathy with her conquistador boyfriend gone native!

The other Aztecs didn't look right either. In fact, it turns out that the film was made in Hawaii (so the "Aztecs" were in fact Hawaiian) not Mexico at all. The scenery is about the only good thing in the movie so it is ironic that at the end, during the original US showing, they actually encouraged people to visit beautiful Mexico in what must be one of the most totally misleading adverts ever.

About the only time they tried to put objects in front of it to integrate it into the environment

The CGI dinosaur is tragic. It totally fails to interact with its surroundings (particularly the ground) and seems to change size depending on the background. The film was made in 2007 and the CGI is really not much better than that from the TV series Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World which was made in 1999. Recently we re-watched the BBC's version of The Lost World which was made in 2001 by the Walking with Dinosaurs team which has far superior CGI dinosaurs and that was nearly ten years ago.

It was available on DVD in 2008 but now seems extinct. No loss at all, from what we could tell.

Quando gli uomini armarono la clava... e con le donne fecero din-don

2010-12-22T13:34:00.001Z

Here is a rare Cavegirl film starring the gorgeous Nadia Cassini (more on her in the next post), the 1971 Italian comedy film Quando gli uomini armarono la clava... e con le donne fecero din-don (When Men were Armed with Clubs and Women Played Ding-dong).

This is an update of Aristophanes' Ancient Greek play the Lysistrata. To ram the point home Cassini's character is actually called Lisistrata (or Listra in the American dubbed version called when Women Played Ding-dong, released in 1974).

Two rival prehistoric tribes, the cave dwelling Cavernicoli, and the lake-dwelling Acquamanni are almost constantly at war.

During a rare period of peace a caveman, Ari, wins the young virgin, Lysistrata (Cassini), in a pig catching contest but their attempts to have nuptual "ding-dong" are constantly interrupted by battles between the tribes as Ari has to go off to fight.

Lysistrata, fed up with the fact that Ari seems to prefer war than her (he must be an idiot!) organises the women of both tribes to go on sa ex strike and they leave their respective villages for a mountain hideaway until the men opt for peace.

We actually caught some of this truly dreadful film on Italian TV some years ago and the only thing in its favour is the number of high quality Italian starlets prancing around in minimal cavegirl outfits (and often less).

Do you prefer your prehistoric women dressed in grass...

The cavegirls favour the prototypical fur bikini ensemble whilst their lake dwelling caverns go in for some enticing grass numbers.

...or fur?

The Director and co-writer was Bruno Corbucci (1931-1996) best known for writing the screenplay of the seminal spaghetti western, Django (1966). He directed over 50 films between 1965 and 1995 so he wasn't exactly Stanley Kubrick.

More notoriously he wrote and directed Messalina, Messalina (1977) which was also known as Caligula 2. The latter film was quickly churned out using the sets and costumes from Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione's Caligula (1979) as it looked like the original film might never get released and the producers were desperate to make any money back they could. Messalina, Messalina starred Penthouse Pet of the Year for 1975 Anneka Di Lorenzo (real name Marjorie Lee Thoreson) and was just as dreadful as this cavegirl film but at least it was redeemed somewhat by the sets and the presence of not just Anneka but Penthouse model Lori Wagner as well.

Likewise Quando gli uomini... is only bearable because of the presence of Ms Cassini (technically at the time Contessa Cassini) and she will be the subject of our next post.

It is available on DVD in the US under the American title of When Women Played Ding-dong but the DVD version has 13 minutes cut from the Italian original which is basically all the nudity. Americans are peculiar about nudity!

The German version treats the film as a sequel to the earlier When Women had Tails and When Women lost their Tails (more on which anon) which, apart from the prehistoric setting they are not. The German DVD uses the cut US version too, sadly.

Incidentally, the annoying theme tune of the film seems to be largely based on The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird, which recently reached number 3 in the UK music charts as a result of an (unsuccessful) internet campaign to deny the Simon Cowell machine the Christmas number 1 for his X Factor winner.

Jungle Girl 2: Claudette Colbert in Four Frightened People

2010-12-21T21:47:00.001Z

Grrrowl!

From 1934 comes this early babe in animal skins outfit from the Cecil B DeMille film Four Frightened People. The film tells the story of four people who escape their bubonic plague-ridden ship only to have to trek through the Malayan jungle whilst being attacked by snakes, wild animals and hostile native tribesmen.

Colbert plays a prim and mousy librarian who gradually, during the course of the film, becomes more assertive and more desirable. No more desirable than in this early animal skin outfit.

DeMille had got Colbert to strip off in The Sign of the Cross two years earlier and she obliged him again by showering naked in a waterful (a staple of jungle girl films!). The film was made just before the voluntary "Hay's Code" governing inappropriate sequences on screen became mandatory and required that films be given a certificate before they could be shown. The film was so racy that when it was re-released post-certification 17 minutes was cut from it.

Whilst showering, a chimpanzee (the film has a vague notion of the fauna of Asia) snatches her dress requiring her to fashion an outfit from banana leaves. She then graduates to the animal skin outfit featured here.

As the trailer at the time said "They reveal just how rapidly the polite mould of civilization disintegrates under the influence of the jungle. These people shed civilization when they shed their clothes. They become like animals of the jungle, fighting and loving, like the beasts who terrify them!"

Colbert was thirty-one when this film was made (she was born in 1903) but still looks gorgeous. Born in Paris, but moving to the US when she was three years old, she died in 1996 at the age of 92!

The film itself was a failure and lost money, however, as audiences had come to expect big spectacle from DeMille which, despite being filmed on location in the South Seas this didn't deliver.

Jungle Girl 1

2010-12-21T20:18:00.002Z

These pictures are from a fashion magazine from some years ago (late eighties?) we think she is not so much a cavegirl in a fur bikini as a representative of their cousins, jungle girls. Agent Triple P was in the African bush earlier this month but didn't see anything like this, sadly.

She looks like a nice Lost World explorer's daughter gone native, anyway.

Cavegirl catfight!

2010-12-15T17:22:00.000Z

We have now migrated this blog to our more adult incarnation which will enable us to post some of the racier cavegirl photographs we have collected and, hopefully, enable us to do more regular updates.

To get us started, here are a nice pair (quartet?) of battling cavegirls. Cavegirl catfights were a strong feature of films such as One Million Years BC no doubt, as ever, reflecting pre-historical reality.

Times were hard in the Stone Age and then, as now, cavegirls had to compete for men, food, drink, shiny beads and to-die-for moccasins.

These two don't seem to be exhibiting quite the vicious passion of Raquel Welch and Martine Beswick but then they are probably just scratting about who gets the pretty shell or the next pair of Ugg boots the cave shoemaker cobbles together.

No doubt they will soon kiss and make up, cast off their fur bikinis and ease their bruises together in a nice, hot spring.

Legs & Co as dancing cavegirls

2010-11-27T13:19:00.000Z

Young Mr Grace has kindly pointed me in the direction of his superb blog One for the Dads which revives the great dance routines of Pan's People and Legs & Co from Top of the Pops, the UK's top pop muscic TV show. His latest post is one of Legs & Co (1976-1981) transforming from white coated scientists into classic fur bikini cavegirls whilst dancing to Cerrone's Supernature; so that puts it in 1977.

Utter genius!

You've all done very well!

Kelly Brook: cavegirl

2010-08-25T19:13:00.003Z

Here is Kelly Brook who was recently photographed (rather badly) for low-brow film magazine Total Film in a number of iconic poses and outfits. It says a lot about the power of the original Raquel image that the classic cavegirl in fur bikini was one of the the four images chosen.

We have to say that although Miss Brook's body stacks (heh, heh) up well against Raquel's the picture is hopelessly framed and, of course, she doesn't have the legs that Raquel had, which is what makes the original so very effective. The weird blue lighting doesn't help either. It would have been much more clever to try to match the look and lighting of the original.

So even though it is the divine Kelly we can only give the picture 6/10.

Scary Cavegirls

2009-12-22T16:56:00.006Z

From an event organising firm comes this team of cavegirls who can be hired to enliven your corporate events. Obviously hailing from a cave somewhere in Essex this foursome is likely to scare any large prehistoric mammal (Essex man, for example) to death!

Cavegirl Rating: 4/10 (and that's only for the one on the right)

Contortionist Cavegirls

2009-12-22T10:00:00.003Z

I was very taken with this photograph of circus contortionists Daniela Zocchi and Delia del Sol. No doubt many tribes required votive acts for their Stone Age deities and having a couple of very flexible cavegirls in your settlement would enable you to get big kudos with the gods as they perfom their intricate dawn exercises.

Naked Cavegirl

2009-12-21T17:19:00.002Z

Well, this is really a picture of a girl in front of a cave rather than a cavegirl. Her fur bikini must be lying on a rock to dry somewhere as she is obviously drying herself out having fallen into a pool whilst being chased by a cave bear or some such. We like the lighting coming from the cave and, indeed the light on the anonymous cavegirl hersel.

Cavegirl rating: 6/10

Cavegirl: Heidi Klum

2009-12-21T16:05:00.004Z

Just come across this rather spiffy picture of German übermodel Heidi Klum in full One Million Years BC regalia. Actually, we think this is one of the better Raquel rip-offs. Heidi certainly has the legs and the bust although, like most models of today she doesn't have the hip/waist ratio. It is, however my second favourite photograph of her after this one:

Cavegirl rating: A solid 8/10

Cavegirl: Sarah Chalke

2009-10-13T00:01:00.006Z

Here is Canadian actress Sarah Chalke in a very good cavegirl outfit from the show Scrubs. As I have never seen the show I have no idea why she is dressed as a cavegirl but she looks pretty good in her outfit!

Cavegirl Art 12: Cartoon Cavegirl

2009-09-05T07:28:00.004Z

This cartoon was by regular Playboy cartoonist Dink (Leo) Siegel (1910-2003) and appeared in the November 1964 issue. Oddly, it's quite hard to find any information about him on the net other than that he was born in Birmingham, Alabama. He worked for many other magazines as well as Playboy (for whom he contributed for over 25 years) including Good Houskeeping, Life, Cosmopolitan and the Saturday Evening Post.

Much prehistoric fiction (such as Jean M Auel's books) feature inter-action between early Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals and no doubt this was the inspiration for this cartoon. Or not. Anyway, the cavegirl dinosaur co-existence pre-dates One Million Years BC by two years.

Plastic Cavegirl: Cro Magnon Woman

2009-08-26T06:05:00.010Z

Box art

Alternative legs and arms were included

In 1971, American plastic model kit manufacturer, Aurora launched arange of prehistoric kits. Some, like the Woolly Mammoth, were quite good and some were not so good. These were snap- -together models that, in theory, didn't need any glue.

They were largely popular, I suspect, because of the rather striking box art. I'm not sure who did the prehistoric range paintings. Top illustrator James Bama (now a hugely suceesful artist specialising in Western themes) did all their Horror personalities kits so may have done these. The original painting for Cro Magnon Woman sold on eBay about two years ago for $2,000.

Frankly, the kit itself, sculpted by Bill Lemon, is rather disappointing and even though it turns up on eBay reasonably often I am not tempted! It is in 1/13th scale and includes alternative legs and arms. It may have been based on Aurora's controversial The Victim kit from their Monster Scenes range. This so outraged Americans at the time that they picketed the company's New York factory asking for it to be withdrawn. They re-named it instead as Dr Deadly's Daughter.

Although the kit purports to be (pre) historical and the little plastic plaque included reads "Cro-Magnon Woman. 40,000 years ago in France. Late Pleistocene Time" the inclusion of a two headed snake rather militates against this!

Post Apocalyptic Cavegirls: She Wolves of the Westeland.

2009-08-24T10:35:00.008Z

She Wolves of the Wasteland (1988) (original title Phoenix the Warrior) was a dirt cheap all female version of Mad Max. In the future all men have died out leaving only ravening lesbian women to rule (it sounds like parts of Vancouver). One woman becomes artificially impregnated in order to bear a male child and another warrior is assigned to protect her.

The Turkish Video cover showing the film under its original title

The Only (semi) nude scene in the film, sadly

Generally, this seems to be not that well regarded even by people, like me, who like trashy movies. There doesn't seem to be enough nudity in it (a lost opportunity, surely, with a planet full of lesbian gangs) and the sets are very poor, I gather. Oh well, I might still pick it up on Amazon and see what it is like. It does co-star one Peggy Sands, who is better known as Canadian Playboy Playmate Peggy McIntaggart. Unusually, Peggy became Playmate (January 1990) after the release of the film. Usually a girl is a Playmate first and then makes trashy B movies. If she does wear a fur bikini in the film it could justify a pictorial feature on her.

The film does certainly have a fur bikini poster and at least illustrates the rare example of Post- Apocalyptic cavegirl.

Cavegirl Art 11: Cavegirl on log

2009-08-14T20:34:00.006Z

This wonderful painting by Frank Frazetta works for all sorts of reasons. In the background the tropical island looms in the mist in a most sinister way; threatening shapes could conceal all sorts of nameless terrors. Although we can't see her face, Frazetta's masterful rendering of her back and shoulder muscles show that she is looking at the island. As her log is being paddled past it rather than towards it this gives a nice sense of trepidation. The log she is astride is covered in nasty-looking, mouldy encrustations, contrasting with the girls smooth, pale skin. In the middle distance some flying creatures flock. Are they just seabirds or something more reptilian? The clunp of rushes on the left balance the solid shape of log and girl and counterbalance the shadowy island. Without them the painting would be over-heavy on the right. The cavegirl herself has a nicely unkempt fur loincloth and an engagingly primitive necklace of teeth.

Or does it work because it is just a painting of a girl with a fantastic arse with a huge gnarled object between her thighs?

Whatever, we give it 9/10

Cavegirl: Raquel Welch from Men Only

2009-08-09T08:59:00.011Z

Raquel in Men Only April 1966

It's far too long since I posted anything on here but this will change over the next few months as I have assembled a lot of material to share with the world!

To get us off to a good start I present a few more pictures of Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC. Now, most Raquel pictures on the web are the same but I don't think I have seen these before. They come from the April 1966 issue of Men Only.

Men Only is one of the oldest men's magazines; first published in 1935. In 1966 it carried a mixture of stories, articles, humour and some not very racy pin ups. After a long and venerable history by 1966 it was struggling against pushy, glossy Penthouse (first published in 1965) and within five years would be bought by Paul Raymond as the first rung in his adult magazine empire and re-launched as the main competitor to other UK rival, Mayfair.

A very fine, damp Raquel

There are two nice studies of Raquel and a few interesting behind the scenes shots. The film hadn't come out at the time of the article so very little was made of any dinosaurs as these were no doubt still being brought to life in post-production by Ray Harryhausen.

Raquel looks fantastic; even in a car park!

Some of the cast smoking themselves to extinction

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth DVD

2009-02-27T14:38:00.008Z

I recently picked up the 2008 release of the Hammer double bill Moon Zero Two (1969) and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970).

Amber Dean Smith

Moon Zero Two, Hammer's highest budget film, was an oddity; an early attempt to make a SF Western (see also Outland, The Adventures of Pluto Nash and Firefly). It is outside the scope of this blog but did feature one of the few film performances of Amber Dean Smith, the first ever Penthouse Pet of the Year (1966).

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, however, is the second greatest Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis film ever! The film starred former Playboy Playmate of the Year (1968), Victoria Vetri, meaning that the double bill features one each of the yearly choices for the two great men's magazines.

We see a lot more of Victoria because the DVD I bought was the one released last year in the US which erroneously inlcuded the orginal, uncut version of WDRTE, but with the wrong rating on the box. As a result the DVD was withdrawn and the prices of those still in circulation has shot up. This is the first time the uncut film has been available, albeit briefly, on DVD. I would imagine it would be a lot cheaper to re-package the DVD than cut it but then there are usually cost ssues with submitting films for certification (in order to be able to change the cover) so they may not bother.

There will be several forthcoming entries on WDRTE, therefore. I will look at the movie itself and of course the trio of splendid cavegirls: Victoria Vetri, Magda Konopka and imogen Hassall.

Cavegirl: Carly Zucker

2009-02-07T17:19:00.006Z

Footballer's WAG Carly Zucker is the new "face" of Lynx, a particularly cheap and nasty spray on perfume for men, actually invented by the French under the name of "Axe". We won't make any comment about French hygiene as the British newspapers take it up regularly anyway and it all ends up with complaints by the French Ambassador and French Farmers burning our goods as they arrive in France. Let us just say that we can't think of another country that has to sell cologne in litre bottles.

Carly. Fit

Anyway, Ms Zucker (a personal trainer-Hmm, I could do with getting a bit fitter) lives only a couple of miles away from me and is the fiancee of Joe Cole who plays for Chelsea (there are a lot of Chelsea players living around here because they have to live within 5 miles of their training ground which is just down the road).

The campaign is based around Raquel Welch's look in One Million Years BC, of course. This shows an advertising agency with good taste!

I think they have done a good job with Carly even if she can't compete with Raquel's bust. She certainly is one of the better imitators, partly becuase her face is closer to Raquel's/ So we are happy to give a:

Cavegirl Rating: 8/10

New Lynx Cavegirl Advert

2009-02-06T21:11:00.003Z

My daughter was very excited when this came on the other week. "You need to get it on your blog!" Quite right!

Cavegirl: Halle Berry

2008-12-28T21:34:00.017Z

Would you like to get hammered?

The incandescently gorgeous Halle Berry qualifies as a cavegirl because of her part in the otherwise execrable The Flintsones (1994) film, where she played a character called Sharon Stone (who turned down the part-if only she had turned down Basic Instinct 2 as well!)

Sadly, her outfits are not that brilliant (she is rather overdressed in my opinion) but they do show off her trim waist and give a hint of her impressive bust.

Halle, whose curious name has nothing to do with the comet but in fact was named after her local department store, became even more gorgeous as she got older reaching her ultimate for a boxing themed shoot for FHM. Now 42, the former beauty queen continues to light up the universe wherever she appears.

These photographs make any comment quite unnecessary

It's black and white so it's art

Halle gives her bust a rest

Lovely back!

Cavegirl rating: 8/10 (largely down to her indifferent costume)

Bettie Page: 1923-2008

2008-12-12T19:45:00.002Z

I just need to note the death yesterday of Bettie Page, top pin-up model, who did a memorable jungle girl series for photographer Bunny Yeager in 1954. I am in Canada at present so don't have access to my picture files but will compose a proper tribute when I return to England.

Dinosaurs, cavegirls and other prehistoric figures

2008-10-30T09:14:00.004Z

Reaper's 28mm (probably 30mm) Jungle Girl

I have just come across an excellent resource for those looking for prehistoric wargames figures.

http://www.stevepugh.net/VTT/dino/

Mr Pugh (whilst having execrable taste in music) has put together the definitive lists of manufacturers of prehistoric miniatures in all wargaming sizes (that is 28mm or less). I found it whilst looking for more Jungle Girl miniatures where I discovered another Reaper figure (this time a 28mm cavegirl and sabretooth).

http://www.reapermini.com/store/customer/product.php?productid=5070

Oddly, they call it a Jungle Girl not a cavegirl which just adds more confusion to the classification of women in animal skin bikinis. She has an authentic (if overscale) stone-tipped spear and nothing about her says "modern" so to me she is undoubtedly a cavegirl. As a figure, sadly, she isn't brilliant, suffering from big head and big hand syndrome but I have to say that she has beautifully rendered toes, if you are into that part of a cavegirl's anatomy!

Reaper Miniatures 54mm Queen of the jungle

2008-10-29T15:48:00.004Z

Biopunk has pointed me in the direction of this 54mm reaper minatures vignette by Gene van Horne (you can't be serious!)
http://www.reapermini.com/store/customer/product.php?productid=4429&cat=116&page=1

She is very much in the cavegirl species whilst being, of course, from the genus of jungle girl. I haven't covered (uncovered) jungle girls yet as there are still many, many more cavegirls to reveal but maybe now is as good a time as any to start a little diversion. In fact, I can see a whole biological classification for cavegirls forming, which will need extra research.

Anyway, this figure is rather nice with her balletic pose and prominent sartorius muscle (we do like a girl with a nice toned sartorius!). Her doeskin (by the look of it - but you could surely paint it in the requisite spotted cat look) bikini is nicely minimalist and she has the classic teeth necklace. I'm not sure what the cat is supposed to be; a leopard, I suppose. You certainly need to be able to handle spots for this one. She sort of reminds me of some of the Lost World of Atlantis figures by Phoenix Model Developments which appeared back in the eighties. Although I have often been tempted by figures like this I always feel that they would eat into my 28mm painting time so have resisted so far. Nevertheless, I am sure it would grace any cavegirl collection.

Cavegirl Art 10: Cavegirls and sabretooths

2008-10-12T15:25:00.001Z

Understandably, there are quite a few pictures of cavegirls and sabretooths because, at least, they did co-exist in history (unlike the more popular dinosaurs). So here are a selection of pictures:

In this first pencil sketch the cavegirl herself is rather fine; her fur bikini is nicely ragged and she has a reasonable spear. She is shapely without being ludicrously busty. The sabretooth is not so good. Firstly, it is far too big; much more than lion size, which is what smilodon was. Secondly the artist has used a tiger as his model, which is not uncommon, given that when I was small they were always referred to as sabre tooth tigers; however this nomenclature seems to have gone the way of Brontosaurus.

This picture, by the peerless Frank Frazetta, has a somilar cavegirl/sabretooth scale issue and again it's basically a tiger. However looking at the picture more closely we can see that she is far too technologically advanced to be a cavegirl. She has metal jewellery and a metal knife. She is either a time traveller down on her luck, on an alien planet or in a lost world.

Here we have a real Frazetta, Dawn Goddess, from the cover of Vampirella magazine in 1970. Again, she is not a cavegirl due to her metal acoutrements but the sabertooth is wonderfully rendered; looking much more like a Smilodon than a tiger or lion with big fangs.

This picture is by an artist called Sandy Plunkett. Again the girls isn't really a cavegirl as she has metal bracelets but otherwise she is superb: a really nice, athletic figure and a great fur bikini. The sabretooth is dreadful, however, with a really badly drawn head (although the size is about right).

Next up we have another Frazetta with some really anachronistic flying reptiles. A good, animated sabretooth and a typically curvaceous girl.

Here we have another School of Frazetta picture with a metal sword armed warrior and an alien sabretooth. The girl is pretty strapping and has that dark and obvious look I like!

Another real Frazetta with a couple of very feral looking sabretooths and an even more feral girl. Her fur bikini is bursting under the strain and I wonder how she gets her hair to stay up like that. Maybe she rubs sabretooth semen into it as prehistoric hair gel.

Finally, yet another Frazetta. This girl also has a metal spear but she wins the prize for having the most minimalist bikini; just a few wisps of fur. Hope its warm where she lives!

Cavegirl: Julie Ege 2

2008-09-28T20:33:00.022Z

Julie Ege in Creatures the World Forgot

Further to my earlier piece on Norway's finest cavegirl, Julie Ege, I have been searching high and low for the pictures she posed for in Penthouse which helped launch her film career in the UK.

Julie Ege on the cover of Penthouse

These don't seem to be available on the web but thankfully eBay came to the rescue and so we now present the girl they called Julie Edge who was presented as The Nudest Miss Norway even though it had been nearly five years since she took that crown.

" Will stripping for a magazine get me more film work?"

The magazine said that the then 22 year old Julie was already being sought out by film producers and that year she made her first (uncredited) appearance in the British film Robbery (1967) loosely based on the Great Train Robbery.

The film had a great cast of British character actors: Stanley Baker (Zulu), James Booth (Zulu - he was also in Twin Peaks!), Bary Foster (Van de Valk and I particularly remember him playing the Kaiser in Fall of Eagles), Frank Finlay (The Three Musketeers and also played Van der Valk in a French film), George Sewell (UFO and just about every British TV series from the 60s to the 90s), Glyn Edwards (The Ipcress File, Minder and just about every British TV series from the 60s to the 80s) and Joanna Pettet (the original Casino Royale and then dozens of 70s and 80s American TV shows).

Sultry in the Sixties

The really important thing about the film was not, however, Julie's appearance but the fact that the director Peter Yates did such a good car chase that Steve McQueen personally requested that he direct Bullitt (1968).

Julie's Centrefold: Volume 2 Number 7 May 1967

The photographer of her pictorial was Penthouse's Art Director, Philip O Stearns who went on to become a famous fashion photographer (like several other Penthouse photographers).

However, amazingly, he also has a strong wargames link. He was born in Detroit Michigan and served with the OSS during the Second World War and was always interested in military history and militaria.

So apart from photographing naked babes for Penthouse he also took the pictures for the book that really got me into wargaming: The War Game, edited by Brigadier Peter Young which I got for Christmas in 1972 and still treasure. His evocative photographs of Peter Gilder's massed recreations of Waterloo and Gettysburg still inspire me today. He also wrote a book called How to Make Model Soldiers (as well as contributing to one called Six Nymphets!). Stearns was also a Captain in the Sealed Knot, which was presumably where he met Young.

So in one entry we have manged to link a cavegirl in a fur bikini to Zulu to the English Civil War and Penthouse photography to Wargames. A definitive entry for me, really!

Cavegirl: Linda Harrison

2008-09-17T20:15:00.017Z

Not really a cavegirl, but so gorgeous who cares?

Thanks to Nathaniel from San Francisco (I really must try and get over there at some point; maybe when I go to California in December) for pointing me in the direction of the gorgeous Linda Harrison who featured in both Planet of the Apes (1968) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970).

Although I have seen both films it must be twenty years since I have watched either so had completely forgotten about the character of Nova, played by Ms Harrison. Although she is not a cavegirl (properly she is a post-apocalyptic barbarian) she does have a very fetching cavegirl-type outfit.

Linda displays an awesome hip/waist ratio

Very sixties bikini!

Linda was born in Berlin, Maryland ( I very much enjoyed a brief thing with a young lady from Maryland when I was at college) and did some beauty contests (she was Miss Berlin in 1963, Miss Del-Mar-Va in 1964, Miss Ocean City and Miss Maryland in 1965) before doing some modelling in New York.

Trim, very trim!

Good outfit!

Although she had the credit "And introducing Linda Harrison as Nova" in Planet of the Apes she had actually appeared in small parts in several films before this as she had won a seven year contract with 20th Century Fox following a screen test in 1965. She had been talent spotted by a young agent called Mike Medavoy, now a top producer, of course, but then just starting his career with General Artist Corporation.

Cleverly, she married studio head Richard Zanuck and he offered her the part in Planet of the Apes. She returned for the sequel and then worked intermittently appearing in films such as Airport 1975 (1974) and Cocoon (1985). She also had a cameo in the Tim Burton remake of Planet of the Apes (2001).

Rubbery!

As to her cavegirl outfit, it was actually rubber with bark attached, so not a fur bikini at all. Nevertheless, we think Ms Harrison looks quite splendid in it and have to give her a cavegirl rating of: 8/10

Just lovely!

An objectionable blog?

2008-09-16T21:44:00.004Z

We are family. I've got all my sisters with me.

Well, when I logged on this evening I got a little message from Google saying some people had reported this blog as objectionable and warning people about this. I am amazed! I can only think that these people A: don't get out much or B: are the worse sort of feminists. (This will probably result in more complaints). For the record, I was bought up in an all female household in a family full of strong, gender barrier breaking women, think women are far superior to men but do think they are different (in that they look far better in fur bikinis!).

Cavegirl Art 9: Early cavegirl in fur bikini

2008-09-13T19:37:00.013Z

This rather splendid cavegirl dates from 1941 and, as such, is probaby one of the earliest paintings of a cavegirl in a fur "bikini" (although the term itself was not coined until 1946 by Louis Réard).

This cavegirl picture (whilst rather curiously setting a cavegirl in the Bronze Age) shows off the artist Earl Moran's characteristic light and shade work. She is very timeless (appropriately) and doesn't look "forties" in any way.

The picture is by top pin-up artist Earl Moran (1893-1984). Moran was a master of pastels and did pin-up work from 1932 until the late 1950s when he decided to concentrate on fine art work until his eyesight failed in the early eighties.

He was most famous for hiring, in 1946, a young model called Norma Jean Dougherty at $10 an hour and she worked for him for three years before becoming more famous as Marilyn Monroe.

A classic picture of Norma Jean by Moran.

Norma Jean in Moran's studio

Moran paints Norma Jean

Norma Jean by Moran

Beauty Parade was an early girlie magazine run by Robert Harrison but Moran was a partner in the magazine and often contributed the covers. In fact, this one from October 1941 was the first issue of the magazine.

I really like this picture and so am quite happy to give it: 10/10

Spanish cavegirls ate tortoises

2008-09-02T09:59:00.007Z

A smashing snack for a cavegirl

Palaeontologists from the University of Tarragona have found the remains of 526 tortoises at the Bolomor caves in Spain. The unlucky reptiles appear to have been roasted and eaten by the hungry cave people 2.5 million years ago. Although there are remains of cows, pigs, deer, goats, rabbits, birds, four dwarf elephants, a monkey, horses, hippos and two salmon as well. A hungry lot, Spanish cavemen!

A pet to us, a sort of prehistoric Pot Noodle snack to cavegirls.

The tortoises, which are the Hermanns variety popular today as pets (for some reason), showed signs of having their shells cracked and had human toothmarks on them.

Compared with all that tedious hunting and trapping involved in catching deer and dwarf elephants (although they must have had little legs and probably didn't run that fast) getting a tortoise must have been pretty easy. Given how macho Spanish men are, no doubt they went off hunting the exciting stuff and left our proto-Penelope Cruz cavegirls to crack open the odd tortoise for the stone age paella.

Cavegirl Art 8: Girl with spear

2008-07-25T06:12:00.005Z

Here is a nice cavegirl with a spear and vine rope. She is a typical Hollywood busty shape but at least she isn't a blonde. Actually, many of the cavegirls in my cavegirl art folder seem to have black hair, which is more historically accurate as blonde hair only appeared quite recently as a result of a mutation.

The thing I like about this picture is that she has a proper, practical length spear, not like some of the silly little three foot ones we have seen in some previous illustrations.

Here is another picture by the same artist. I think she is pretty cute, well drawn, with a good fur bikini (I like the teeth on her bikini string!) and realistic looking weapons.

So I'd giver her 8/10

Julie Ege 1943-2008

2008-06-17T19:09:00.028Z

This is a publicity shot. In Creatures the World Forgot she kept her top on and had dark hair.

A joyous picture

I was saddened to learn of the death, at the end of April, of Norwegian actress Julie Ege. Julie was the star of the Hammer prehistoric film, Creatures the World Forgot (1971).

The coast at Sandnes in Norway. Also very, very attractive.

Born Julie Dzuli in the Norwegian coastal town of Sandnes in southern Norway she became a model before moving to Oslo and winning the Miss Norway contest in 1962 (surely one of the harder beauty contests to win?).

Miss Universe finalists 1962. Julie is on the middle row second from the left.

She went onto the Miss Universe competition but didn't even make the last fifteen, incomprehensibly.

She worked as an au pair in London before appearing in a film in Norway and then returning to London.

Then her husband persauded her to appear in Bob Guccione's Penthouse magazine. Guccione started Penthouse in London four years before the American edition and indeed, even when the magazine appeared in the US most of the early Pets were from Europe.

Unlike her French equivalent London-based sex symbol, Pascal Francoise, Julie never appeared as a Pet in the US edition but she did go on to make a string of. largely, sex comedies in the UK in the early seventies. Her Penthouse appearance did get her a brief role as the Scandinavian babe in the Bond film OHMSS and she also appeared in one of my favourite films of the seventies, the hugely underrated The Final Programme (1974). She was also incandescently beautiful in Roman hairdo and dress in Frankie Howard's Up Pompeii (1971).

How she looked in Creatures the World Forgot.

But it is for her appearance in Creatures that the World Forgot that we remember her here. By this stage Hammer no longer required their heroines to wear fur bikini tops and Julie was always ready to strip off if the part required it artistically but it was her female co-stars who appeared topless not Julie.

When faced with Julie many directors seemed to have these artistic leanings (although she claimed she only appeared nude in 3 brief scenes in all of her films).

A timelessly beautiful girl.

As a teenager in the seventies when, frankly, there were very few really attractive women in the media (100 Sexiest Women of the year? You'd be lucky to come up with a handful for the whole of the decade!) Julie was the personification of gorgeous Nordic naughtiness for me and most of Britain in the early and mid-seventies.

She became a famous personality over and above her film career and achieved a national profile in a way that, for example, Caroline Munro, for all her cult following, never did. She made her last UK film, The Amorous Milkman (!) in 1975 and apart from a few TV and stage appearances in Norway left showbusiness to train as a carer.

She was first diagnosed with cancer in 1986 and although that was successfully treated she was stricken with lung cancer in 2002 but continued to work as a nurse.

Julie in 1999

This picture of her in 1999 shows that she was still gorgeous at 56.

As a cavegirl we really can't give her anything but:

Cavegirl Rating: 9/10 (and she only loses a point for the dark wig)

Where is Ayla?

2008-06-09T20:34:00.003Z

Someone has left me a comment asking why there is nothing about Ayla, from Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear book and film, on this site.

Well, a very good question, Kayla (which sounds like a cavegirl name in itself - but also could mean you are an oil rig worker from one of the more remote areas that look at this blog-look at the map at the bottom!).

Kayla says "I mean...Ayla is tall, blonde, large breasted cavewoman. What more could you want?" This is true, although my personal taste in women runs to slim, athletic types with dark hair.

Jean M Auel's Earth's Children series is a sequence of novels set around (I think) 20,000 years ago. I put off reading the first one for many years as I had got it into my head that Jean Auel was actually a Frenchman (rather than a lady from Chicago) and I don't usually enjoy translated books as there always seems to be something stilted about them. I was, of course, confusing The Clan of the Cave Bear with Quest for Fire by J.-H. Rosny Aîné.

Well, facing one of my London to Los Angeles flights a couple of years ago I picked up The Clan of the Cave Bear at the airport and enjoyed it a lot. So much so that I bought all the other books in the series. Ms Auel famously knows her stuff when it comes to prehistoric techniques in such areas as weaving, tool-making and pharmacology (I am not able to judge on her descriptions of prehistoric sex, which are quite frank for a middle-aged lady). I have read The Valley of Horses and have nearly finished The Mammoth Hunters but these are big, dense books and you need time to do them justice; something I am usually short off except on long plane trips.

So where is our feisty heroine on these pages? The fact of the matter is that there are so many cavegirls and only so much time. I fully intend to feature Ayla in the future but I want to watch the film of The Clan of the Cave Bear first (featuring the appropriately statuesque Darryl Hannah).

Neolithic men raided other tribes for women and pigs

2008-06-03T16:23:00.007Z

Christmas (or whatever cavemen had) for a Neolithic tribesman

A recent re-examination of a 7,000 year old mass grave in Talheim, German, has demonstrated that Neolithic men would raid other settlements for women. Tests proved that this post-raid gravesite showed that whilst all the men and children originated from the one tribe the (few) women came from different ones. Most of the victims had been executed or shot in the back with arrows (presumably whilst fleeing). The fact that there were no women of the tribe in the grave indicates that the women of the tribe had been kidnapped, it is assumed. The women who were in the group could conceivably have been raiders killed in the fighting, researchers postulate. Equally, I would have thought, if women-raiding was prevalent then they could have been women who did belong to that tribe but had originated elsewhere as a result of their own raiding. Or maybe they were just the really ugly ones who weren't worth stealing.

The Talheim gravesite

Dr Alex Bentley of Durham University, who led the team, said: "there is a theory that the most violent feuds in developing communities are motivated by women and pigs and this would slot into that theory." Quite. It was tough being a stone-age cavegirl (or a pig) but at least women's worth was high.

Cavegirl Art 7: Cavegirl with snake bikini

2008-05-05T21:23:00.005Z

Not all cavegirl art is good art. Well, actually hardly any cavegirl art is any good by the standards of, say, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Some might say he didn't do good art either but I bet he could have done a great cavegirl painting. Look at In the Tepidarium (below) to see the potential he had. He handles the girl's body really well and the fur is sensational. All this in a picture about 12 inches wide. I saw it in a gallery a few years ago and it really is a tiny picture.

I have no idea who did the picture at the top but it is wrong in so many ways. The comic book look is fine, I suppose, and I actually quite like the muted palate and the composition with the tree on the right is quite well balanced by the bushes at bottom left. The girl's figure is weird and looks like a typical silicon porn star. I have a theory that many of the artists who do these pictures just copy girls off porn sites. Either that or they haven't seen any real busts. Or maybe girls do look like that in America. She's also not that pretty which you would at least expect. I think I would have given her a bigger mouth. The spear is too short (again) and the perspective on it looks off. As for the bikini; what is this with having a snake holding it up? It doesn't look like a dead one either. It must be very well trained. I do quite like the bone holding the bikini top together, though.

Cavegirl rating: 4/10

Cavegirl Fancy Dress

2008-03-28T10:36:00.007Z

I haven't had a chance to update the blog for ages as I have been in Libya, Egypt and Jordan where there were no cavegirls whatsoever (although there were some very attractive women indeed). I am still trying to sort my backlog of work so the blog has had to take a back seat.

So I am just putting up this interim posting of a few more fancy dress cavegirls. My favourite is the one immediately above. Of the others, I don't think fishnet tights, leather corselets or pink underskirts are particularly authentic!

I have also been taken to task about my "adult content" paragraph being anti-American. It wasn't meant to be at all. I like America and Americans a great deal, go there on business three or four times a year and always have a great time. It was just a fact that the people expressing concern about the naked bodies were all Americans. Being very much a European I suspect I have a different attitude to nudity than many Americans and I hadn't even considered the neccesity of putting a warning in until someone suggested it.

I really don't want to upset anyone uneccesarily, however, so I have modified the paragraph.

Rest assured, however, that there will be many more naked and malf naked cavegirls to come.

Mysterious Island

2008-03-07T21:23:00.013Z

Our next cavegirl film is sort of a cheat for whilst it has Ray Harryhausen creatures it was not a cavegirl film but it sort of has a cavegirl who meets our, admittedly, rather elastic criteria.

Mysterious Island (1961) was directed by Cy Endfield of Zulu fame. Based on the novel by Jules Verne it tells the story of some American Civil War soldiers who escape from prison in a balloon. Blown off course, inevitably, they land on a mysterious island (er..). Where they encounter a number of Harryhausen monsters, some shipwrecked English ladies, some pirates and Captain Nemo, splendidly played by one of my favourite character actors, Herbert Lom.

There are a number of interesting elements to what is a rather good film.

Firstly, the exteriors of the scenes where they escape from the prisoner of war camp where shot in Shepperton Square which is about two miles from where my mother lives (and I used to live). Shepperton studios, where the film was shot, is nearby. If you look at this model of the square used in the film and these modern pictures of the buildings and church you can see it looks rather more English than Southern States American!

Shepperton Church tower was demolished by a Martian war machine in HG Wells' book the War of the Worlds!

The beach in the film with some rather ropey matte work in the background

Sa Conca beach today. The rocks on the left are the ones in the foreground of the top picture.

The scenes on the island were filmed on Sa Conca Beach, near Girona in Catalonia. Like most of that coast the Spaniards have let it get hideously over-developed in the last 45 years.

Another view of Sa Conca today.

" Maybe it's not such a good place to build a villa!"

"Anyone got some brown bread and mayonnaisse?"

Cavegirl: Kelly Brook

2008-02-23T16:07:00.004Z

Here is Kelly Brook looking all cavegirl in this little animal print outfit. She looks more like a fifties cavegirl than a post Raquel one. She could also conceivably be a cavegirl washed up on the beach in this one:

There are many, many fine Kelly pictures on the internet but this is one of my favourites.

A lovely girl but her outfit is only marginally cavegirl like so:

Cavegirl Rating: 6/10

Cavegirl: Athena Massey

2008-02-23T08:52:00.010Z

Doeskin bikini!

Athena Massey is one of those B-movie actresses who seems to build up a cult following disproportionate to her actual achievements.

Athena displays her achievements

She has never appeared in a cavegirl film but has posed very effectively as a cavegirl, as can be seen.

Californian teeth!

Born in Orange County in 1971 she has appeared in quite a number of erotic thrillers and such but also some mainstream TV even including an episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

Girls who are happy to do bath scenes without heaps of bubbles deserve to be popular.

Nice Earrings!

Athena as space/Atlantis warrior princess. Stone age spear, though!

So we quite like Athena and her cavegirl outfit at the top is a good one.

Cavegirl Rating: 7/10

Cavegirl Art 6: Red headed cavegirl

2008-02-21T22:01:00.007Z

This looks like a pastel drawing and features a feisty red-headed cavegirl. She has a good Stone-Age looking spear and a nice fur bikini. She looks like she could handle herself in a fight with a red-headed wooly rhino!

Red hair is, of course, a Northern European mutation and last year there was a lot of nonsense indicating that red heads could be extinct by 2060. Even if this was true, which I doubt, it would be a shame. My first four girlfriends were all red heads, my interest partly encouraged by my love for Pre-Raphaelite art. There was something quite thrilling in stripping them off and discovering that they were red all the way down. Or rather, bright orange, in some cases. A report last year, from a bunch of scientists in Germany with nothing better to do, said that red-headed women get more sex than blondes and brunettes. Not surprising, I say!

I am curious, orange.

Cavegirl Valentine!

2008-02-14T11:02:00.004Z

This was my Valentine's day "card" from my wife. I'm speechless, really!

Cavegirl Fancy Dress: 4

2008-02-12T14:52:00.000Z

Three more fancy dress cavegirls, all going for the animal print theme. This leads to a very important philosophical question, of course, namely: When does a cavegirl fancy dress costume become a jungle girl fancy dress costume? Classic jungle girls such as Jane and Sheena dress in a very similar way and there is considirable overlap. In the future, I believe that there is enough overlap to cover jungle girls (uncover them?) in more detail in these pages. There are characters like Veronica from the TV show Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World who are, on the surface, jungle girls but are also co-existing with dinosaurs. If you throw into the mix post-apocalyptic girls like Axa from the Romero comic strip, you start to look at quite a complicated Venn diagram.

From the above selection I think it is fair to say that the bottom one could be a jungle girl. The rather too civilised black bobbles militate against this being a cavegirl costume (although she is my favourite girl from this selection). The other two, without accessories, could be both but the presence of prop teeth, bones and clubs puts them firmly into the cavegirl camp, I think.

Cavegirl: Dana Gillespie

2008-02-12T07:26:00.004Z

Quite the most striking thing about The People that Time Forgot is the outrageously busty (44 inch bust!) Dana Gillespie who plays cavegirl Ajor. She doesn't wear a fur bikini, as she needs to demonstrate that she is technologically advanced, but instead wears one of the most interesting doe-skin dresses ever created.

It's not just her ample bust we are treated to either, as the dress is slit to her hipbone enabling lost of shots of her toned thighs (and higher) as she scrambles up hills.

An eighteen year old Dana

Dana Gillespie herself is a very interesting person. As a youngster she was British waterskiing champion (imagine trying to zip her into a wetsuit... oh dear, perhaps we shouldn't have) four years running until a knee injury ended her career.

She was really always a singer and composer and recorded her first record at the age of 15.

Dana and then boyfriend David Bowie (or David Jones as he was at this point)

As a schoolgirl (she went to the same school as Joan Collins) she had a young David Bowie teaching her the guitar and they later recorded together.

Good job she didn't take up the accordian.

Other than TLTTF she appeared in a handful of other films in the sixies and seventies.

Before TLTTF she was in Hammer's profoundly weird The Lost Continent where she played the most buxom pirate girl in cinema history (and that is saying something).

He's behind you!

With Robert Powell in Mahler

She was also in Ken Russel's Mahler (for which she composed a song) and Nicolas Roeg's Bad Timing.

Here is a pubolicity still done for the Lost Continenet where they don't evn bother to put her in her film costume but just squeeze her into some lingerie. Dana did some other glamour modelling as well and photographers were obviously well aware of her charms (well, you'd have to be blind...).

She also did some TV work (including, inevitably, The Bill) and appeared on stage in musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy (where she played the Acid Queen).

Her father is Baron de Winterstein Gillespie and she was born on 30 March 1949 in London. Her real name is Richenda Antoinette de Winterstein Gillespie!

Dana, Chaka Khan and Bonnie Tyler!!

Dana today.

Truly a renaissance cavegirl!

As a cavegirl, while she may lose points for not actually wearing a fur bikini, she gets many points back for looking so completely splendid. She also had to deal with pidgin English-type cavegirl dialogue, which was more than Raquel had to do. So, all in all her we think she scores:

Cavegirl Rating: 9/10

Dana did a fair bit of modelling and is a striking 5' 8" tall. At her peak (peaks?) she measured a jaw-dropping 44-26-37. She is, therefore, the only Cavegirl who can go chest to chest with Raquel Welch and not look inferior (in fact, Raquel's bust does not match up to Dana's at all).

A fine portrait of a 24 year old Dana from Penthouse UK in 1974

She now runs the charity Mustique Blues Festival at the end of January and has a website with details of her concerts, cds and much more.

It is really as a blues singer that she is most well known now and she has recorded over 50 albums, many of which are still available. In fact she was performing live not far from where I live on Sunday. If I had known at the time I would have gone down there! She performs all over the world but especially in Austria as she is half Austrian.

The People That Time Forgot: Part 2

2008-02-11T20:32:00.001Z

Two of the reasons the film was so popular.

The two fleeing cavemen are soon shot down by arrows fired from their fur-wearing, beardy enemies, the less evolved Ba-Lu. Our heroes totally fail to save them, mainly because the way they deal with the hostile tribe is to shoot not very scary orange smoke at them. Ajor recognises them as being from her people who were taken by the evil Naga.

They carry on towards the Mountain of Skulls, HQ of the Naga, walking through some particularly scenic parts of Santa Cruz de la Palma (birthplace of girlies favourite shoe peddlar Manolo Blahnik. No, really.) on La Palma in the Canary Islands. Ajor disappears to find the cave route through to the land of the Naga (and to pose artistically in the middle distance) leaving Son of John, Norfolk and Lady Charlotte to get captured and tied up by the beardy tribesmen from earlier who sneakily jump out of a tree. The three wake up, tied to the ground, and start to panic becuse of the presence nearby of a noisy puppet dinosuar of rather vague provenance. Fortunately, Ajor rescues them and they flee into the cave where they are followed, unbeknown to them , by another not-really-a-proper-dinosaur creature.

Eventually they get out the other side to the barren land of the Nagas, who appear before them looking exactly like 17th century Samurai. I suppose Samurai weren't so well known in the seventies hence the producers thought they could get away with not bothering to come up with an original design.

They're behind you!

The Naga leader claims that they were sent by Tyler, hence his ability to speak English. They proceed artistically highlighted against the horizon before arriving at one of the worst matte paintings in motion picture history, the Mountain of Skulls (more like a heap, really)!

Oh dear, oh dear oh dear!

Inside they meet the dreaded leader, an inexplicably pale-green, bald man who looks like he has escaped from a completely different film. Our heroes are grabbed by the duplicitous Naga who take Son of John and Thorley Walters off to a cell while the green slaphead shows the girls the volcano god; a bubbling special effects pit.

Inside their skull festooned cell who should our heroes spy creepily looking through a skull in the wall but Trampas/Tyler!

Overdressed for a B movie sacrifice scene, I think!

Meanwhile, back in the evil Greeny's palace the two girls are now dressed in disappointingly voluminous orange robes and are told they will be sacrificed at sunrise.

Back in the cell Trampas has smashed through the wall but looks very beardy and washed out (he was allegedly drinking heavily during the making of the film). Nevertheless, when the guards bring their morning Quaker Oats he joins the other two in overpowering three fully armoured, katana armed samurai with just a few thigh bones for weapons. Heroic!

Meanwhile, poor Ajor has been put on a chopping block as Greeny only seems to sacrifice girls' bodies to the Volcano God. He keeps the skulls to use like breeze blocks to build extensions to his palace. The executioner is none other than Darth Vader himself (or at least, his body). However, Ajor is saved in the nick of time by our three heroes who have disguised themselves as Samurai guards and burst into the throne room.

Greeny grabs Ajor whilst the other three make short work of Darth and the others. Ajor struggles with Greeny and in he goes to the volcano which promptly starts to erupt. Why it never did this when anyone else (such as poor Susan Penhaligon, from the first film, we find out) was thrown in is not explained.

"I remember it being much bigger!"

Our reunited heroes and heroines leg it into another cave, running the gauntlet of some scary glove puppet monsters before getting out into the landscape as burning rocks start falling everywhere. The Samurai chase after them and Son of John and Trampas hold them off with Lady Charlotte's pistol whilst the two girls and Norfolk escape into another cave. Trampas is hit by arrows and dies tragically leaving SoJ to join the others. They are briefly attacked by a giant ankylosaurus/rock-monster/armadillo/slug thing which must be one of the least threatening monsters of any film. Ajor breaks off a six inch thick stalactite (she must be stronger than she looks) and bops it inefectually over the head. Fortunately, tremors cause more stalactites to fall, one of which conveniently skewers the monster and puts paid to its dreadfull fake waddling.

Meanwhile, the slimy officer (played by Richard LeParmentier) who Darth Vader chokes in the original Star Wars, tells the captain that they had better get moving quick as rocks are falling all around them.

Our brave heroes briefly get chased by the cave people from earlier but they are conveniently blown up by the, obligatory for this sort of film, exploding volcano.

Now that's a big explosion!

Even though it took days to trek to the Mountain of Skulls again, as always in such films, they manage to run back to Scott Tracy and the plane in about ten minutes as the special effects team impressively explose most of the Island of La Palma behind them. They take off (amazingly, considering there appears to be no runway or even flat surface, just rocks and bushes) and despite having to throw out all their gear (including Lady Charlotte's camera) to get over the mountains they manage to get back to the ship just as it is leaving.

Later, they all stand on the ship's bridge drinking Port and we are left to wonder how Scott managed to get quite so friendly with the voluptuous Ajor quite so quickly as the ship literally sails off into the sunset.

I think I would have artistically ripped more than her sleeve!

Although The People that Time Forgot is not as good a film as The Land that Time Forgot it does have a few things going for it: Sarah Douglas, some nice location photography, the amphibian plane and, of course, Dana Gillespie in her dinky outfit. The dinosaurs are a big disappointment and the script is not as good as the first film. For me, however, as I watched it a month ago, I realised that I was watching it for the first time which was something of a surprise. The Region 2 DVD has a nice crisp picture but no extras apart from the original theatrical trailer.

Overall it is probably a 5/10

The People that Time Forgot: Part 1

2008-01-28T22:46:00.001Z

The film opens with a view of a very nineteenth century looking ship, considering it’s supposed to be 1918. The ship is supposed to be a Royal Naval one which makes all the sails even odder. Perhaps it’s a special Antarctic survey vessel.

Anyway, on the bridge is a collection of largely British character actors being photographed by Sarah Douglas with a Princess Leia hairdo. Patrick (son of John) Wayne plays Ben McBride a friend of Tyler (Doug McLure) who was lost on the island of Caprona in earlier The Land That Time Forgot. That film was a surprise hit, hence this less well thought of, sequel. McBride has organised this expedition, having found Tyler’s message in a thermos, and it is being funded by Lady Charlotte Cunningham’s (Douglas) father, a newspaper magnate. Son of John (Johnson?) doesn’t want a woman on the trip, of course, and this leads to much not very witty repartee between the two leads (with one exception, see below).

Nice ship, shame about the mountains

Eventually the ship gets ice bound as it reaches Caprona which is quite a bad matte painting which is a shame as the ship model is not bad. Four of our adventurers, Son of John, Lady Charlotte, a bumbling British scientist, Norfolk (played by classic character actor Thorley Walters who in a fifty-five year career was usually cast as a major in the army) and Hogan an American from McBride’s fighter unit in the Great War, set off in an amphibian plane. Hogan is played by Shane Rimmer. Yes, it is Scott Tracy from Thunderbirds. Rimmer made a very good career by playing Americans in lots of British films (although he is actually a Canadian from Toronto). This must be one of his bigger roles.

Nice plane!

After a flight over snowy mountains (a mixture of real ones and models) they barely crest a rise and suddenly there is Caprona.

Equally suddenly there is a pterodactyl. It’s not actually a pteranodon, either, which is surprising for this sort of film.

It's behind you!

The rather rubber pterodactyl attacks the plane whilst Scott Tracey ineffectually blasts at it with his nose mounted machine gun. He was a much better shot in Thunderbirds!

In fact, it is the stupid flying reptile sticking it’s beak in the pusher propeller that does for it rather than the marksmanship of the adventurers.

Ark! Ark!

It squawks pathetically and drops like..well, like a rubber pterodactyl, actually.

Not surprisingly, the plane crash lands and skids across a model landscape before coming to a halt in a barren valley somewhere in Spain. Actually, the locations in the film are far better than the earlier The Land that Time Forgot and convincingly give the idea of a lost continent. Scott, sorry Hogan, is forced to get to work on the plane whilst Lady Charlotte climbs a hill (in a very nice, tight pair of jodhpurs) so she can take a photograph of the plane. She spots some moving spikes and persuades Son of John to pose with them in the background.

All our budget went on flying you over from America

Poor SoJ is surprised to discover that the spikes belong to a rather lumpy Stegosaurus. The dinosaurs aren’t up to much in the film, sadly, and there is no attempt at a realistic skin texture which you would have got if they could have afforded Harryhausen. They use the Stegosaurus to drag the plane out of wherever it was stuck but stupidly hadn’t worked out how to stop the dinosaur running off with the plane. Yes, they hadn’t realised that if you couldn’t get the dino to stop you would need to untie it or be ready with an axe. Sof J has to make a heroic dash with a knife.

Eventually, they leave Scott to fix the plane whilst they trek off to find Tyler. After some typical walking shots we hear a dinosaur followed by a scream.

Dana Gillespie goes for cavegirl immortality

An impossibly busty cavegirl appears pursued by two lumpy dinosaurs which our hero eventually scares off.

Somehow I think they may not be on location in this shot.

The cavegirl speaks English and has a Bowie knife so they soon work out that she was a friend of Tyler. A very close friend of Tyler. And why not?

Ajor, the cavegirl (played by Dana Gillespie, more of whom another day) isn’t wearing a fur bikini but rather a short mini dress. With no front, and slits up the side. But who cares? She looks tremendous in it. Sarah Douglas delivers her line to Son of John “a genuine cavegirl; suit you perfectly!” beautifully and she is one of the best things in the film.

Tyler and Lisa (Susan Penhaligon in the first film) lived with the Ga-lu, Ajor’s stone age tribe and taught them useful things like agriculture, science and how to make low cut dresses. But then a more advanced tribe (there was all that nonsense about evolution at different rates in the first film), the Naga, captured them four months previously and will sacrifice them to their volcano god. They realise that they must set off to rescue Tyler.

Meanwhile. Scott Tracy is happily blasting pterodactyls out of the sky whilst he repairs the plane.

As the others trek over the spectacular scenery Lady Charlotte has to show that she is really a girl underneath, and not a tough old feminist, when she screams like a girl just because a tarantula lands on her. Fair enough, I say.

Suddenly there are two cavemen from Ajor’s tribe running towards them, pursued by a nasty looking bunch of bad guys. What next? Part two soon.

Cavegirl Art 5: Girl with spear

2008-01-28T21:49:00.000Z

This is by an artist called LR Roca who was certainly active in the sixties, illustrating for Vampirella magazine, which also featured soem very good cavegirl cover illustrations by Frank Frazetta. I haven't been able to find anything about him (I assume it's a him!) and he doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. This is a shame as I would have liked to find some other examples of his art as this is a pretty good cavegirl piece.

She has a very good bottom and is definitely wearing a fur bikini. He's done the texture of the fur really well and the only problem I have with it is is that the fur on her bikini bottom looks like it's been stuck onto a normal bikini rather than being more natural. That is a good, hefty-looking stone age spear but again, it probably needs a longer shaft. The creature doesn't look like a dinosaur, more like a Burroughs-type alien lizard so she may be a hollow-earth girl rather than a cave girl. I like this one, though so..

Cavegirl rating 7/10

Cavegirl fancy dress 3

2008-01-24T22:20:00.001Z

Here are a few more cavegirl fancy dress costumes. I am amazed by how many of these there are and how many more I find every month! There are now so many they are getting their own separate section! The one above is one we've seen before but this is the front view. The classic teeth necklace helps as does the fact that I like the girl!

This one looks quite cheap and nasty and the boots are really horrible. Ugg (so to speak)!

Not sure I like this one much either. The black material doesn't even try to look authentic.

So it's the girl clutching the bone out of this lot, then. A cavegirl with a firm grip is definitely an asset.

Womens' shoe fetish started with Cavegirls

2008-01-24T13:52:00.000Z

Nice shoes!

People first started wearing proper shoes 40,000 years ago according to a recent discovery in China. Two years ago an American scientist, Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St Louis, showed that the effect of wearing footwear could be demonstrated by looking at the bone density of toes. People who habitually go barefoot have thicker bones in their lesser toes (those other than the big toe) than people who wear shoes. It's not an evolutionary thing, it's a response by the body to external stresses; people who don't wear shoes need a stronger grip from their toes.

Now Northern cavegirls would have been bunging something around their feet since 500,000 years ago but their sun-kissed cousins wouldn't have bothered. Any actual shoes from the period have long since disaapeared; the oldest being a pair of Californian shoes which are 9,000 years old; probably some cave surfing babe's.

Paul Mellars, professor of prehistory and human evolution at Cambridge, says that shoes weren't the only advances at this time. "From 35,000 years ago onward, you see the first art, the first stone tools, and the first personal decorations and jewellery. There is a strong hint that people were doing more complicated things with ...skins, with special stone tools for cleaning and awls for piercing." In other words the ideal time to start making FUR BIKINIS!

Cavegirl Art 4: Fur Boots

2008-01-19T22:02:00.000Z

She may not be 100% cavegirl, as her earings look a bit technologically advanced, but this drawing by Larry Elmore is a little less California Girl than many of his fantasy women. She has nicely tousled hair, a not too ridiculous bust and, of course, very good cavegirl boots.

Cavegirl rating: 6/10

Cavegirl: Helena Christensen

2008-01-19T21:50:00.000Z

My wife thinks that this picture should go on the site as although Helena isn't wearing a fur bikini she seems to be wearing something made of some sort of tropical vegatation. I think that this gives enough of a prehistoric effect and there should be some beach cavegirls, anyway. By the sea is a good place for caves so it would have been a good place for cavegirls!

Anyway, I've always liked Helena so I don't need much of an excuse to put her in. Helena herself would probably get an 8/10 but she isn't wearing a fur bikini hence:

Cavegirl rating: 7/10

Birthday Cavegirls!

2008-01-11T21:28:00.000Z

Rather bemused by the interest in Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis my wife and daughter gave me this amazing 3D birthday card yesterday. It must have taken days to put together. They do seem to have captured the essence of the genre despite never having seen One Million Years BC or, indeed, any other Cavegirl film!

All the girls are named after some of my favourite babes:

First we have Rachel. She is the cavegirl hunter and has a scary collection of spears and a crocodile she captured becuase it made off with the girls' boiled egg (according to my daughter). She is actually a Rachel Stevens doll. I think we agree that Rachel Stevens would make a very fine cavegirl!

Next we have Alesha. I think she is the cave medicine woman and the snake is her familiar. Alesha sounds like a good cavegirl name. This one doesn't really resemble Alesha Dixon at all but, again, Alesha would make an excellent cavegirl. She'd be very good at tribal dancing!

I think that the snake makes her look more like this picture of Rachel Weisz.

Finally we have Flavia. In a wig. She is the cave cook and has baked me a stone age cake, which looks exactly like..a stone! Top Latin American dance Queen, Flavia Cacace, would also look good in a fur bikini due to her awesome tummy!

So thank you, for all the effort put into this very special card! It's a classic!

Cavegirl Art 3: Triceratops

2008-01-11T07:44:00.000Z

Triceratops has always been my favourite dinosaur from when I was a little boy. There used to be a set of dinosaur kits by a firm called Pyro and I had them all, but the Triceratops was always my favourite. So the thought of putting a cavegirl together with one has natural appeal.

This picture is by Spanish comic-strip artist Enrique Badia Romero, who illustrated Modesty Blaise for years and also Axa which ran in The Sun from 1978 until 1986. Romero is a top artist but the scale isn't quite right here. Triceratops had one of the largest skulls of any land animal: it could grow up to seven feet long. Triceratops was about thirty feet long but this one looks about ten feet. A baby would have had shorter horns.

Her spear, whilst having a nice stone age looking tip seems a bit short. It looks like it should extend underneath her leg. She isn't wearing fur but I like the teeth around her waist and ankle.

Triceratops (Three-horned face) is one of the Ceratopsidae and lived in what is now North America. Fossils have been found in Colarado, Montana South Dakota, Wyoming, Alberta and Saskatchewan. The first fossil was discovered in 1887 and was originally thought to be from a Pliocene bison as only the top two horns were unearthed. It wasn't until a more complete skull was discovered the following year that it was realised that it was a horned dinosaur and named as Triceratops by Othniel Charles Marsh.

Marsh. "Now what can I call a dinosaur with three horns on it's face?"

Nice pelvis

A complete Skeleton has never been found but here is, rather lovely, American Paleontologist Jenni Nolan excavating a Triceratops pelvic bone in Montana.

Here is Ray Harryhausen's Triceratops in One Million Years BC. A recent BBC documentary purported to prove that a Triceratops could not charge and skewer a Tyrannosaurus (although this is a Ceratosaurus, of course) as it's shorter nose horn wouldn't penetrate a dinosaur's skin and, indeed, the front of the skull, in their simulation, broke.

However, in a world where dinosaurs and cavegirls co-exist Triceratops happily skewers meat-eating predators all the time.

Cavegirl Rating: 6/10