Quest for Fire

"Drawn by quest for fire, they searched all through the land Drawn by quest for fire, discovery of man" —Iron Maiden, "Quest For Fire"

Quest for Fire (French: La Guerre du feu) is a 1981 film directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. It is based off the book of the same name by Belgian author J.H. Rosny aîné. It is set in Paleolithic Europe, around 80,000 years ago, and is set around a small group of cavemen as they search for the fire their tribe needs to survive.

Most of it is just people in hairy suits and makeup walking around, fighting animals, and talking in some weird gibberish language. It's Better Than It Sounds.

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This film provides examples of:

• All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: Subverted, they're Cro Magnons.
  • The cannibals, however, are Neanderthal.
• Bilingual Bonus, Genius Bonus: The dialogue is left untranslated. However, both tropes are zig zagged in that no one knows this language except the one who created it.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The group returns with fire...only for it to be extinguished by a careless man. Naoh tries to make fire with sticks, to no avail. Then Ika tries...and succeeds!
• Everything's Worse with Bears
• Genre Killer: Of the "One Million BC" referenced below. The movie set the bar so high that nobody's dared try to compete with it.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Brutally subverted.
• Groin Attack: ... Ow.
• Hey, It's That Guy!: Big Ed Hurley and Hellboy are cavemen now! And Ika is played by Squeak.
  • The primitive language the people use was devised by Anthony Burgess.
• Kill It with Fire
• National Geographic Nudity
• One Million BC: One of the more accurate depictions of this period.
• Scenery Porn, Real Place Background, Shoot the Money: The film was shot on location in Canada, Scotland, Iceland, and Kenya. The backgrounds are simply gorgeous.
• Silence Is Golden
• Uncanny Valley Makeup: The makeup effects on the people work very well...too well.