Le monde oublié

B-movie producers Crown International Pictures seemed to churn out a lot of comedies in the 80's. The majority of them, I have discovered to my cost, are decidedly under par. Like most, Cave Girl has a title and cover that suggests it might be decent fun at the very least but in practice this is yet another laugh-free zone from good old Crown. It tells the story of a nerdy anthropology student called Rex who touches a coloured rock while out on a field trip and is somehow or other subsequently sent back in time to the prehistoric era. Almost immediately he meets cute cave girl and then more stuff happens.

You would think that an 80's time-travelling teen-comedy would at the very least have a few ideas up its sleeve. Well, you'd be wrong in this case as despite the potential in the set-up, all this one more or less boils down to is our protagonist trying to teach the cave girl English in order to facilitate having sex with her. It should be said at this point that Rex is a notably irritating central character who, despite being offered to us as the sympathetic underdog, came across little more than a sex pest. Not only that but in spite of his character being a high school student, the actor that played him looked like he was pushing forty. Needless to say, the antics of this individual are somewhat alienating and don't generate anything approaching empathy.

The film itself is a half-hearted sex comedy at best, with an early scene in a girl's locker room that did at least provide boobs which is never exactly ever going to be a bad production value. But really, the nudity is in short supply here overall and you really have to get into its humour and set-up to have any chance of appreciating it. Unfortunately, the comedy is really bad, resorting to a fart joke and an interminable sequence involving shaving cream. The prehistoric set-up is the only thing that really provides any interest but even that is pretty underwhelming on the whole, with boring cave people and little in the way of much else, aside from an encounter with a tribe of cannibals, which did enliven things a bit I have to say, although even that wasn't exactly very interesting. For a prehistoric comedy, you'd really be better off watching the cult movie Eegah (1962) or even the more recent California Man (1992); neither of those are exactly stellar stuff but both are marginally better than Cave Girl.

Cave Girl is a humorous tongue in cheek romantic comedy that follows the romantic relationship of bumbling modern day Rex and beautiful and sexy pre-historic cave girl Eba. The movie follows the bumbling Rex through a series of slapstick pranks and mishaps that culminate in his transport 25,000 years back in time to meet and fall in love with the beautiful Eba. And, along the way, Rex becomes a man that saves Eba and the rest of the local clan from cannibals. Eventually, though, Rex and Eba must face reality. Will Rex return to his own time, where Eba cannot possible fit in, or will he stay and build a life with Eba and the rest of the tribe. This movie is a humorous, and at times poignant, look at the trials, tribulations, opportunities and decisions that young people often face as they come of age. Well worth a look.

In his first leading role, actor Daniel Roebuck ("River's Edge", "The Fugitive") plays Rex, a geeky high school student who's constantly being mocked and made a victim of pranks. He and his science class go on a field trip to visit caves and check out the primitive paintings. Due to some sort of miracle involving jet plane tests and a weird crystal inside the cave, Rex is magically transported back to caveman times. Here he meets the girl of his dreams, the sweet, bubbly and naive blonde Eba (Cynthia Thompson). He then makes it his mission to try to seduce this prehistoric babe.

"Cavegirl" isn't anything great. At its best, it's just sort of mildly funny and engaging. Sometimes it's also silly and tiresome. But there are decent lowbrow laughs to be had as the cave people have their misadventures. The actors give enthusiastic performances, and there is a certain degree of trash on hand to please fans of the 1980s Crown International catalogue. Specifically, there's a respectable amount of bare breasts, particularly during an early girls' locker room scene. Jon St. James's deliberately dopey music score is another source of amusement. Roebuck is good (and a good sport when it comes to being the butt of jokes), but it's the charming and absolutely lovely Ms. Thompson (who sadly died much too young) who is the main reason to watch. You won't be able to take your eyes off of her, and she's enormously appealing, to boot.

There is some well executed aerial photography to begin the movie, and unlike most Crown International productions, almost all of the credits are saved for the final few minutes. Writer / producer / director / cinematographer David Oliver looked like he was working with a pretty low budget, but his movie hits the ground running and clocks in at a fairly painless 82 minutes.

Six out of 10.

Yep you guessed it, it's bad movie night again.. and here is your host.. me!! Today's specimen under review is one of the many 'hilarious' teen sex comedies made during the 80's. Unfortunately, we have to keep it under lock and key because of fears that its utter crappiness could be contagious, but hopefully this review will be enough to convince you to avoid it with the same sort of fervour you'd usually reserve for the bubonic plague.

In a nutshell: A school nerd, publicly derided by everybody around him, gets accidentally sent back in time due to nuclear testing around an archaeological site. He finds himself in an era populated by long-haired Neanderthals wearing suspiciously modern looking clothing, and seems to be in a lot of trouble until he meets the only blonde blue-eyed virgin among them. Together they get involved in spectacularly boring encounters with wild bears and big cats (what, no dinosaurs?) while the nerd tries to teach his new primitive girlfriend English and have his way with her, but just failing every time. Eventually, things come to a head between our babe's clan and a rival tribe of cannibals. Can our weedy hero use his 20th century know-how to save the day and return to his own time, or is he doomed to a life of eating plants and sleeping on rocks?

The opening five minutes sets the tone of this soft-core sleaze-fest, with a bunch of topless busty beauties chasing the doofus out of their changing-room in super slow mo. The whole script seems geared towards him and this stone age chick getting it on, but when the scene eventually arrives, it is extremely underwhelming, and lasts for all of five seconds before cutting to yet another sappy pop song (of which there are plenty). The complete lack of attention to detail in history and the non-performances exhibited by the cast, are forgivable, after all this isn't exactly Shakespeare. What isn't so pardonable though, is the script, which is as boring as hell and make the film a real chore to sit through. Frankly, seeing a bunch of amateur actors in fake animal-skins grunting at each other for an hour and a half with occasional diversions to very mild nudity and unfunny slapstick comedy is not my cup of tea. Neither would be yours if you have any sense. A 1/10 from me, and next time you go back to 2 million B.C, take this video with you and bury it there, will you?

CAVEGIRL is an awful concoction mixing the usual '80s high school comedy hijinks with a Stone Age adventure. The main character is an overweight creepy guy who enjoys spying on women, and he ends up being transported back to prehistoric times by a secret military experiment. There he meets and falls in love with a beautiful blonde cave girl and the two have various adventures as they evade grizzly bears and cannibal tribes.

This really is hopeless, barrel scraping stuff, and yet there's a little of the so-bad-it's-good vibe going on. The script is hilariously awful, and the whole thing has generally been made to show off breasts, although there's not as much nudity as you'd expect given the set-up. Daniel Roebuck (THE RIVER'S EDGE) is awful as the uncharismatic lead, although buxom starlet Cindy Ann Thompson (NOT OF THIS EARTH) is a little better as the vacuous cave girl and at least gets into the spirit of the thing.

Everywhere the paucity of the budget is apparent, with rubbish fur bikinis and a general cheap-looking shooting style out in a quarry somewhere. Absolutely nothing that happens in it is any good or indeed memorable, and yet maybe that's part of the charm. ONE MILLION YEARS BC this ain't!