Korg 70,000 B.C.: "The Hill People"

In “The Hill People,” Korg (Jim Malinda) and his brother, Bok (Bill Ewing) watch the funeral rites of another tribe.  A man has died while hunting, leaving behind his widowed wife, Sala (Eileen Dietz). 

Bok very much wants to marry Sala, but Korg suggests the time isn’t right for such a move. Bok presses his case, and they learn that Sala is promised to the brother of her dead husband.

Unfortunately, Sala’s would be husband is mean (“he thinks only of himself”) and Sala runs off into the forest.  Bok tracks her and finds her, and explains his feelings for her. Bok brings her back to the Korg tribe, planning to marry her. “You will not be alone again," he promises.

Korg, however, is concerned. The Hill People are allies, and if they learn about Bok and Sala, the alliance could be threatened and all-out war could commence…

“The Hill People” is actually the finest episode of Korg 70,000 B.C. that I’ve watched so far. This happens to be so because the segment doesn’t concern an outside threat, necessarily, but a personal dilemma and social dilemma. Bok and Sala are in love, but because of the mores of the time, cannot be together.  Worse, every moment they are together, they endanger both of their tribes.

In the end, Sala chooses to return to her tribe, but it is not a happy ending. Sala returns to a man she hates, and who is bad to her. And Bok is left without the woman he loves.  The episode ends with a dramatic pull-back of Bok standing alone on the landscape, shattered by the loss of Sala.

The story succeeds not just as a love story, but as a demonstration of how a situation can spiral, suddenly, out of control. Here, both Korg and the leader of the Hill People are powerless, essentially, to stop the situation from snow-balling. By episode’s end, they have spears pointed at one another, despite alliances, despite protestations of friendship.  

In a way, the story aksi reminded me a little of the Helen of Troy myth, with Sala as Helen, the woman caught between two states (Troy/Korg’s tribe) and (Greece/The Hill People).  Bok substitutes for Paris, and Sala's would-be husband (who demands ten spears, ten spears, ten bearskins and ten cutting tools for her…), is Menelaus.

Also, the story makes a point of describing how for women -- who are viewed as property of men in the Neanderthal culture -- there is almost no freedom of choice. Sala cannot choose to spurn her brother's husband, and she cannot choose to marry whom she loves.

Buttressed by an unhappy ending, and the fact that the story doesn’t tie-up neatly or cleanly for everyone, “The Hill People” demonstrates how Korg 70,000 BC attempted daring and adult story-telling, even in a time-slot programmed for kids.

Pop Art: Korg 70,000 BC (Charlton Edition)

Korg 70,000 BC GAF Viewmaster

Korg 70,000 BC Halloween Costume (Ben Cooper)

Lunchbox of the Week: Korg 70,000 BC

Board Game of the Week: Korg 70,000 BC (Milton Bradley)

Theme Song of the Week: Korg 70,000 BC

Advert Artwork: Korg 70,000 BC Edition

From the Archive: Korg 70,000 B.C.: "Trapped"

“Neanderthal Man left no written records of his history, just some bones, tools and burial mounds. This story is based upon assumptions and theories drawn from those artifacts. It might have happened in 70,000 B.C… ”

-Burgess Meredith’s weekly closing narration, on Korg 70,000 BC.

Korg 70,000 BC (1974), is a Saturday morning live-action adventure/fantasy series from Hanna-Barbera.

The program was created by the late Fred Freiberger (1915 – 2003), a controversial producer who toiled on such TV series as Star Trek (1966 – 1969), Space: 1999 (1975 – 1977), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974 – 1978), and The Wild, Wild West (1966).

Korg 70,000 BC ran for just one season on ABC forty years ago. The series follows the adventures of a Neanderthal family headed by the “great hunter” Korg (Jim Malinda). The others in his tribe included his wife, Mara (Naomi Pollack), the hunter Bok, who is also Korg’s brother (Bill Ewing), daughter Ree (Janelle Pransky) and sons Tane (Christopher Man) and Tor (Charles Morteo). 

Korg ran from September 7, 1974 to late August 1975 and each episode of this half-hour series usually features a relatively simple story, and one that concerns family values. Specifically, the stories are about people helping each other in a dangerous, sometimes incomprehensible world.

In terms of the series primary characters, we understand today that Neanderthals are a subspecies of homo sapiens who died out roughly 40,000 years ago. There seem to be two competing schools of thought about their extinction. Either the Neanderthal died because of climate change -- a cold snap in ancient Europe that they couldn’t survive -- or they inter-married with humans and were absorbed into the populace.

Today we also know that the pop culture image of Neanderthals as knuckle-dragging, hairy brutes is most likely inaccurate.

Neanderthals actually possessed a large cranial capacity (their brains were bigger than ours are…) and they were likely no more hairy than human beings. Neanderthals may have also possessed better eyesight and a more robust physical build than early humans did.  Certainly, we know they built advanced tools (including boats), and weren’t strictly carnivorous, as originally believed.

On Korg, the Neanderthal family speaks perfect English, which is a little disconcerting at first, and though they have those stereotypical sloping foreheads, are nonetheless depicted as intelligent and caring, if not knowledgeable in a modern sense of that word. 

In the first episode of the series, “Trapped,” we meet the Korg family near its home cave, and our narrator Meredith describes the hunt for food as a “constant” in its life. 

Meanwhile, the Korg children play with a stick and discover the concept of the lever in short order. Almost immediately thereafter, an earthquake occurs, trapping the adults inside the cave with no escape route. 

Korg, Mara, Tane and Bok must contend with an unstable ledge in a rear chamber and a swarm of bats if they hope to survive, and the children attempt to use the newly-discovered lever to remove the fallen rocks from the cave’s opening…

Directed by Irving Moore, “Trapped” is a not-terribly scintillating introduction to the series.  Later episodes are better.  But much of the screen-time here involves Korg, Mara, Bok and Tane navigating an unstable ledge on the cave’s interior. Yet because of production limitations, the ledge doesn’t seem particularly dangerous.  Indeed, the group has to cross it a second time, and does so without incident (or even mention).

Also, the writing in “Trapped” smacks of contrivances. Ree and Tor discover how to use a lever (or see-saw) just minutes before that very tool will prove necessary to save their parents and sibling. Of course, this is how TV (and particularly kid’s TV of the 1970s…) works, but still, the writing here is predictable and feels “prehistoric” by today’s standards.  Later episodes, again, are more dynamic.

Although there are occasionally some nice shots of wildlife in the show, Korg 70,000 BC's biggest deficit is that it looks to be filmed in contemporary and familiar Southern California, not a dangerous prehistoric landscape.  Some episodes (such as “The Running Fight”) are filmed at Vasquez Rocks, which at least looks vaguely prehistoric, though it is all-too familiar these days.

One strength of Korg: the caveman make-up holds up very well (at least as well as Worf's make-up on TNG.). You don’t ever get the sense you are looking at make-up or prosthetics here, just at real characters.

As a kid I watched Korg religiously, though I was always disappointed that the cavemen didn't fight dinosaurs…which of course would be inaccurate.  Still, that’s probably why I liked Land of the Lost better, even if Korg 70,000 BC took pains to present its material as accurately as possible for kid's television and for the state of learning about Neanderthals in the 1970s.

Outré Intro: Korg,70,000 B.C.(1974)

Korg 70,000 B.C. (1974) is a story about a Neanderthal family reckoning with a world it doesn't truly understood. Sometimes that world is terrifying, and sometimes it is wondrous. 

The opening montage of this Hanna Barbera Saturday morning series does a strong job of expressing that premise.

The montage begins with a beautiful shot of the series' setting: pre-history.  

Even the sun-light somehow looks prehistoric here. The imagery (of an unspoiled valley and the mountains beyond...) is bathed in bronze, and we get the impression, perhaps of sepia-tone, of a world long gone. 

On the soundtrack, a primitive horn bellows, and again, the viewer is drawn back to another time, another place.  This is not our world; but the world that gave rise to our beginnings.

The series' title card emerges, growing larger on the screen, next, informing the audience when in history the series occurs.

In the next grouping of images, we meet Korg and his family. Significantly, we encounter this group for the first time as it ascends a lofty summit.

The family reaches the top of a mountain, and the individuals look around...in awe of what they see.

Once more, this idea explores the primary conceit of the series: that Neanderthal Man attempted to reach the highest frontiers of his world sought to discover what lay beyond it.  Sometimes these individuals saw amazing things; other times they met horrors that made them want to hide in their cave.

A frontier, in this case, might mean knowledge. These individuals were climbing, simply, towards increased knowledge, to a better and deeper understanding of the world.

If Korg can be said to concern something other than reckoning with knowledge, with attaining the metaphorical summit, the topic would be family.

As we see in the series, the family sticks together -- through thick and thin -- no matter the circumstances. As we meet the actors in the next few shots, we also meet the characters they play.  We become acquainted with the family.

We go, pretty much, from biggest to smallest, from adult to child.

The final run of images in Korg's introductory montage reveal, once more, the dangers of the Neanderthal world.  The hunters of Korg's time had to contend with predators and wild animals, for example.

The next few shots reveal other hazards of the prehistoric Earth.

We see a rock-fall, or Earthquake, and a member of the family is drawn away on a rough river current.

But the montage ends, appropriately, on family; on the hearth. At the end of the day -- after all the threats to survival -- the family ends up together around the fire, strengthening bonds.

Here's the introductory montage to Korg 70,000 B.C. in live-action:

Saturday Morning Cult-TV Blogging: Korg, 70,000 B.C.: "Ree and the Wolf."

In “Ree and the Wolf,” Ree (Janelle Pransky) discovers an injured wolf, separated from its pack, trapped under a rock, and nurses it back to health. She feeds it and tends to it in secret, fearful that Korg (Jim Malinda) will order it killed…to be eaten.

Ree keeps the wolf a secret, all while nurturing a friendship with it. When Neanderthal invaders enter the territory and hunt without permission, Korg and Bok (Bill Ewing) order them to leave. They do so, but return looking for a fight.

The wolf comes to the family’s rescue, driving off the invaders, and Korg tells Ree she can keep the pet for a day, before sending it off to rejoin its pack.

The final episode of Korg, 70,000 B.C. is the only one that really centers on the character of Ree, Korg’s young daughter. It’s a good episode that examines the bond between human (or Neanderthal) and animal, and is all about friendship. The wolf protects Ree, and Ree protects the wolf.  Her friendship with the wolf  -- which is forbidden by the rules of her tribe -- is the very thing that saves the tribe when villainous hunters invade the territory.

Probably the most heart-warming episode of the series, “Ree and the Wolf” is a good one to go out on. The episode relates a complete narrative, and leaves the family intact to brave the prehistoric world.

I review many Saturday morning series here on the blog. I’ve gone through the entire runs of Star Trek (1973), Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975), Monster Squad (1976), Ark II (1976) and many others here.  I must confess that Korg, 70,000 B.C. has been among the least painful to watch on a regular basis, and a series that gives me a lot of material to discuss and consider.

There are big ideas at work here. A key theme, as I have highlighted, is superstition and religion. Another involves the struggle to survive, and what it means for a family to move from familiar territory to someplace new.

After blogging all sixteen episodes of Korg 70,000 B.C., I’m sorry to see this stretch come to an end.  

Although nothing beats Land of the Lost (1974 – 1977) for good science fiction storytelling in the Saturday morning format, Korg,70,000 B.C. is one of the rare Saturday morning series’ that is still entertaining decades later, and still feels relevant.

Next week, I begin checking out the (available) episodes of Bigfoot and Wildboy!