Hunting guide David Marchand (Michael Latimer) and Colonel Hammond (Robert Raglan) are on a hunting trip in the jungle. When Hammond shoots a leopard and wounds it David is furious. He sends Hammond back to camp and sets out after the leopard to put the wounded animal out of its misery. With him are his assistant and gun bearer (Louis Mahoney) as well as a couple other bearers.
While trekking through the jungle they come upon a tree with a picture of a rhinoceros carved into it. The bearers tell David that the carving is a warning by a hostile tribe that anyone entering their sacred land will be killed. David’s assistant tells him that the land is guarded by devil spirits of the past. They protect a holy shrine from those that are unworthy. The bearers refuse to cross into the sacred land, so David goes alone.
David finds and kills the leopard but is captured by the tribe that worships the white rhino. The leader of the tribe tells him that he will be killed for venturing onto their sacred land. They take him to a cave where a statue of a white rhino is displayed. When David touches the horn of the rhino he is transported back in time.
In the past, David is captured by a tribe of brunette women who are ruled by the evil Kari (Martine Beswick). The tribe uses a tribe of blonde women and men as slaves. Kari wants to make David her sex slave, but he falls in love with one of the blonde slaves, Saria (Edina Ronay). Saria believes that David is there to fulfill a prophecy that will free them from Kari’s tyranny.
“Prehistoric Women” AKA “Slave Girls” was released in 1967 and was written and directed by Michael Carreras. It is a British jungle movie and time travel film as well as being a Hammer Studios offering. To offset the cost of their previous production, “One Million Years BC” 1966, the filmmakers reused the sets and costumes to make “Prehistoric Women”. Hammer wasn’t happy with how the film turned out and delayed its release. They eventually released a cut down version of it in the UK under the title “Slave Girls”.
It’s not exactly Hammer’s best production but it still has all the colorful sets that Hammer is known for. The plot is thin and predicable. Another thing missing that were in Hammer’s other prehistoric films, “One Million Years BC” 1966 and “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” 1970, are dinosaurs. Other than a leopard and a fake white rhinoceros, there are no animals, prehistoric or otherwise, in the entire film.
Characterization is also an issue. You don’t know who to root for. The blondes are slaves but at one time the brunettes were slaves, and they became ruthless because of what they went through. The men are also slaves, but they too were the aggressors at one time.
Other than bikini clad vixens the highlight of the film is Martine Beswick, who by the way, is also bikini clad. She is wonderfully evil and ruthless. She trashed the film as being bad, but she did admit that her character was a lot of fun to play.