The Wrong Sort of Films?

Sometimes I worry that the kind of films I enjoy more than slightly undermine that veneer of sophisticated intellectualism that I like to project, revealing me instead as a rather shallow thrill-seeker.  Instant gratification, some might say, is the underlying theme in my cinematic tastes, whether that be in the form of a shot of furious action or a wallow in some sleazy exploitation.  It's not that I don't watch and enjoy other types of films:  I watch a lot of those continental films with subtitles - and not just the Italian ones with the gore and nudity or the French ones with Belmondo as a rogue cop beating up suspects and driving fast cars, or Delon as a charismatic criminal for whom women tear their clothes off at first sight.  No, indeed, I've watched my share of art movies and serious dramas.  All of this came to mind when, the other day, I sat down to watch Quest for Fire, the supposed intellectual and historically and anthropologically correct riposte to all those sixties and seventies caveman movies featuring the likes of Raquel Welch wearing fur bikinis.  You know the one - it was much vaunted sat the time as the cavemen all spokes 'languages' devised by Desmond Morris.  But that fact alone underlined one of the film's problems - if the language is unintelligible to modern ears and there are no subtitles, then what, really, is the difference between that and all the grunting that passes for dialogue in films like When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)?

One of the selling points of Quest for Fire was that the prehistoric environment it depicted was far more accurate than that depicted in earlier films: no dinosaurs anachronistically interacting with cavemen, it aimed only to depict the real fauna of the era.  Except that it didn't.  In fact, apart from the primitive humans, the fauna was a bit thin on the ground.  Sure, we got some circus elephants in fur coats pretending to be mammoths (much in the manner of 1940's One Million BC) and some supposed sabre-toothed cats.  Except that the latter were just lions with false teeth, whereas, real sabre-tooths were actually a completely separate branch of the cat family from modern day big cats, with extremely powerful shoulder and jaw muscles to best use those long teeth and short tails.  Moreover, sabre-toothed cats were found in the Americas, while the film seems to be set in Europe (although the habitats the cavemen travel through in their titular quest seem to range from Scotland to Africa - a heck of a journey for cavemen on foot, luckily, their tribe hasn't moved from the spot they last saw them at, despite a quest that must have lasted months, at least).  But Hell, Quest for Fire is very worthy in its intent, with every frame screaming 'Look, this is a serious film'.  Nonetheless, Philistine that I am, I kept hoping for a dinosaur or two to turn up and liven up the action.  I mean, it's very well made and does boast of featuring Rae Dawn Chong clad only in body paint for her entire performance, but if any film was ever in need of a girl in a fur bikini being carried off by a pterodactyl, it's Quest for Fire.  I'm sorry, I know that it marks me out as some kind of pleb, but really, I like my movie viewing to include something at least resembling action and excitement.