“The land will stop you Ben. It’s alive. That volcano’s its heart. It controls everything.”
Major Ben McBride (Patrick Wayne) is part of an expedition to the Antarctic. It is being sponsored by a newspaper owned by Lady Charlotte ‘Charly’ Cunningham’s (Sarah Douglas) family. She is along as the photographer for the trip. McBride is there to search for his friend Bowen Tyler (Doug McClure) who has been missing in the region for several years. Also along is paleontologist Norfolk (Thorley Walters), and gunner and mechanic Hogan (Shane Rimmer). A British naval survey ship takes them to Caprona. Then they fly over the mountain wall of Caprona in an amphibious plane. The plane is attacked by a pterodactyl and forced down.
Hogan is left to try to fix the plane. The other three begin looking or Tyler. They rescue a native named Ajor (Dana Gillespie) from a dinosaur. She is from the Ga-lu tribe. She knows who Tyler is. He taught her English. She leads them through territory occupied by primitive warriors and dinosaurs to the land of a race of samurai-like warriors called the Nargas, who are keeping Tyler prisoner. They call their fortress the Mountain of Skulls. The Nargas take them to their chief.
The men are put in a dungeon where they finally find Tyler. The women, however, are to become brides of the Nargas’ god, the volcano. After their heads are removed of course. When the volcano that the Nargas worship erupts, they must find a way to escape the Mountain of Skulls and make their way back to the plane.
“The People That Time Forgot” is a sequel to “The Land That Time Forgot”. It was released in 1977 and is based on a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The book is the second of Burroughs’ Caspak trilogy. The first was “The Land that Time Forgot” and the third, “Out of Time’s Abyss”. Only two of which have been made into movies. The movie is considered an adventure/fantasy/science fiction story.
The dinosaurs are still lame as the ones in “The Land That Time Forgot” but I still don’t care. I’ve seen worse. At least there was a variety of them. The murals on the walls of the Mountain of Skulls were done by Frank Frazetta.
As for whether it’s better or not from the first movie I have no specific opinion. To me they both have their pluses and minuses. Not enough to make either one bad or spectacular. They are both fun and something easy to watch. Lots of action and with Burroughs there is always quite a story to tell. I enjoyed both of them.