Eegah!
It’s B-Movie time once
again, and this time around there are no toxic monsters, very human looking
aliens or flying saucers. Instead we have something quite rare in the B-Movie
world, a caveman movie. Is there a reason that cavemen are so seldom featured in
B-Movies (or any movies for that matter), or are they just the celluloid
equivalent of sitting through a lecture on the history of accounting?
Roxy Miller (Marilyn
Manning) is driving through the California desert when she almost runs over a
giant caveman, Eegah (Richard Kiel). After telling her father Robert (Arch Hall
sr.) and boyfriend Tom Nelson (Arch Hall jr.), Robert decides to go into the
desert and try to find the caveman. When he doesn’t return Roxy and Tom go to
look for him. Roxy is soon captured by Eegah, and is taken to his cave where
Robert also is being held captive. They then spend their time distracting Eegah
so he doesn’t try to become too amorous with Roxy and are eventually rescued.
Eegah follows them back to civilisation to try to recapture Roxy, but soon
clashes with modern day man. If only this film was set just outside Basildon,
he could have slipped a polo shirt on and blended in with ease and it could
have been a much happier ending…
The major problem with
this movie is that the writers (Bob Wehling and Arch Hall sr.) really didn’t
have enough of a story to make a decent movie. The story itself would have been
better off being told in an episode of The Twilight Zone (which had started
three years before this came out) or The Outer Limits (which started the year
after this was released), but even then it would have been a struggle to make
it interesting.
This film just has way
too may dragged out scenes that add nothing to the movie. In the same way that
George Lucas thought that what today’s sci-fi fan, or child, REALLY wants to
see more of, are protracted conversations about trade routes and people eating
dinner, Hall sr. (who also directed) seems to think that the average film goer
in the sixties really wanted to watch entire helicopter journeys or lengthy
shaving scenes.
To add to the padding,
and to further help his son’s career, Hall sr. added in several rock and roll
songs for Arch Jr to sing. Whilst these may not be the best songs you’ll ever
hear, it’s impressive to watch a man play a guitar that also seemingly provides
the bass and drums when played. He also seems to be able to provide the backing
vocals from somewhere too. With talent like that I’m amazed that he never went
further.
Arch jr did actually
have a minor career as a musician, but apart from one film (The Sadist, a
genuinely good film that was way ahead of it’s time in terms of bleakness.
Surprisingly Hall actually puts in a decent performance too, although he still
has a ridiculous haircut that makes it look like Mr Whippy is trying to
impersonate James Dean) he didn’t get any acting roles outside of films that
his father was involved in. This isn’t really a shock as he lacks the charisma
to really be appealing as an actor, and comes across way too much like Jimmy
Olsen to be seen as a true teen idol.
As for Richard Kiel, I
was quite shocked to see looking on IMDB that he has been in 78 movies and tv
shows. I only remembered ever seen him playing Jaws in a couple of James Bond
movies (The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker), and the guy who bends Shooter
McGavins golf club in Happy Gilmore. Shocked mainly as he really is a terrible
actor. His entire range can be summed up as “tall”. Standing at 7’2 he is a
very imposing man, which is clearly the reason why he was cast in not only in
Eegah, but probably in the majority of his roles.
Truthfully his role in
this movie probably didn’t need much more than the requisite to be huge though.
In fact bad acting probably helps when playing a caveman. Muttering in pretty much
the same voice that Captain Caveman would eventually have (if his voice wasn’t
inspired by this movie then I’d be totally flabbergasted), having the same lack
of facial expressions ad The Bride of Wildenstein and moving like an awkward
teenager trying to talk to a girl at a party, Kiel actually somehow pulls this
off. His portrayal of the lost and lonely caveman is actually the best thing
about this movie.
It seems that there is
a good reason why there aren’t many films about cavemen out there, and that’s
because watching someone grunt for an hour and a half either means you’re
watching tennis, or just a really boring movie. Eegah fails to entertain on so
many levels, that I just can’t recommend you see it. I think in the future if I
ever feel the need to watch something caveman related, then I’m going to stick
with The Flintstones or maybe a Danny Dyer film.
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