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FAQs about 'Women of the Prehistoric Planet'
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Where were the women?


It's just a title. Get over it.


What was the deal with Lt. Bradley?


Bradley was supposedly the ship's Chief Engineer, a job he was presumably offered after his position as ship's Bad Borsch-Belt Comedian was abolished in the last round of budget cuts. If his wacky antics and superannuated gags (twenty years out of date even in 1966) don't have you rolling in the aisles... then good for you.


Seriously; where were the women? It was called 'Women of the Prehistoric Planet' but the men outnumbered the women by about five to one!


Well duh! Nobody's going to pay good money to see a movie called 'Men of the Prehistoric Planet', are they?


Why is the Admiral so incoherent?


As anyone who has seen Marlon Brando in 'Superman' or Dustin Hoffman in 'Death of a Salesman' will know, incoherent mumbling is a sign of great acting. Thus judging by his slurred monologues, Wendell Corey was obviously a great actor. How else would he have landed the roles in the big movies such as 'The Astro-Zombies', 'Cyborg 2087' and 'Man-Eater of Kumaon'?

It's also been suggested that he didn't walk onto set without marinating for three hours in bourbon first, but that's just scurrilous gossip.


When the explorers came to the pond of boiling acid, why did they cross it on the wobbly log, rather than just walking around the edge, which was about two metres to their left?


My theory is that in the mid-1960s everybody was short-sighted, and thus the film crew assumed that no one in the audience would be able to see far enough into the background to notice the convenient path around the pond.

The only other explanation is that the scriptwriter really, really wanted to have a man-falling-into-pond-of-boiling-acid scene, and wasn't about to let logic get in his way.


Hey! John Agar's in it!


That's not a question, but yes. I suspect that all movie studios in the 1950s and 60s were contractually obliged to hire John Agar if they were making a sci-fi movie with a budget less than the value of the loose change under Roger Corman's couch cushions.


Why did they leave Tang and Linda behind when they left the planet?


There's no logical reason. It was just in the script. Also after eighteen years of running around the prehistoric planet in a skimpy leather tunic, Tang balked at the ship's regulations about wearing pants.


So the prehistoric planet was actually Earth?


Apparently. In the final seconds of the movie, Admiral Mumbles gains coherence long enough to wish Tang and Linda well and announce that the planet will henceforth be named 'Earth', presumably because it's a giant dirtball. So it turns out that these are actually aliens in our past, not humans in our future!

It also means that the human race was descended from a guy named after a revolting powdered drink mix. Yay us.


I still don't see why it was called 'Women of the Prehistoric Planet' when there was only one woman left behind on it.


But the human race evolved from that one woman. Thus the women of the prehistoric planet could be said to include Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, Germaine Greer and Australian Greens senator Kerry Nettle.


Gee, thanks.


You're welcome.