Originally posted on 7/19/21
Currently watching: Roger Corman's TEENAGE CAVE MAN (1958), starring a young Robert Vaughn as a rebellious teenager in an animal hide mini-skirt who chafes at the tribal law forbidding him to cross the river to the lush and fertile land beyond.
Naturally, this is all in the vein of the then-current craze for teen rebel flicks such as American-International's other genre films I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, and BLOOD OF DRACULA, and of course the grandaddy of them all, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE with James Dean.
For Corman, of course, it's a matter of spending as little money as possible (approx. $70,000 according to IMDb) to mold the semblance of a movie out of such meager elements as a barren mountainside location (with cave) and a bunch of people garbed in mangy animal skins.
This is augmented by generous stock footage, mainly the familiar iguana-saurus stuff from the much-earlier ONE MILLION B.C. and various other clips to help set the prehistoric mood.
Vaughn himself sports a stylish caveman ensemble and is both clean-shaven and coiffed in the same modern hairstyle he'd later retain as TV's "Man From U.N.C.L.E." Older members of his hillside clan are a bit more hirsute, with beards befitting their status as the keepers of "The Word"--which the young caveman is dead set on violating by venturing into the forbidden zone and perhaps even encountering the dreaded creature whose very touch is said to cause death.
Joseph Hamilton (CAT BALLOU, ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES) and Michael Shayne (THE NEANDERTHAL MAN, "The Adventures of Superman") are two of the older actors struggling to hide their embarrassment as tribal elders. Frank De Kova gets to gnaw on the rocky scenery as a hothead who keeps calling for Vaughn to die for his blasphemous actions against tribal law.
Some of the younger castmembers include Ed Nelson (A BUCKET OF BLOOD), Jonathan Haze (LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS), Barboura Morris (THE TRIP), and Corman regular Beach Dickerson (CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA), who plays multiple roles including a boy who gets sucked into some quicksand. The very statuesque Darah Marshall ("Lock Up", "Bachelor Father") plays Vaughn's girlfriend, "The Blonde Maiden", in her only film role.
The dialogue is a bit stage-pretentious here and there, complete with the occasional "Aye." Acting is okay, considering these players couldn't have had much to go on in developing their characters.
Vaughn, for the most part, is likably competent but resembles a frat kid hanging around in the wilderness as a pledge challenge. He does, at one point, get to invent the bow and arrow, although it looks like the dime store variety.
Production values are meager to say the least, except for a very good bear costume that's convincingly worn by Dickerson. Other animal props are not so well done. A big plus is a characteristically bombastic score by the great Albert Glasser, who was famous for wielding the studio orchestra like a blunt instrument.
How much you enjoy TEENAGE CAVE MAN will depend mostly on whether or not you're in the mood to put aside all expectations and lightly indulge in something pleasantly goofy for about 65 minutes. The fact that there's a nifty twist ending left me feeling surprisingly good about the whole thing.
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