Teenage Caveman

Don't listen to the individual who was upset by the profanity and sacrilege in this movie. If those bother you you may also not like the many drunken teenage orgy scenes, the graphic decapitation, the naked chick who explodes, etc.

But I mean, how many people are there out there who don't enjoy that type of picture? Not many, obviously. Let's be real here. So anyway. What makes this picture special is that it's from the sleazy arthouse director Larry Clark (KIDS, ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE, BULLY) and contains all the usual subject matter and style of his pictures, ye with a postapocalyptic warrior tribe, and Stan Winston effects where after the orgy they turn into lumpy monsters and fight each other.

This is a stupid movie with some really bad acting by the villain and the usual corny dialogue but if you enjoy Larry Clark pictures, as all of us do, obviously, then you will get a kick out of it. It's such an unnatural combination of style and subject matter that it is what you might call "a hoot." Unless you don't like to have a good time, you will probaly like this picture.

Loaded with sex, violence, profanity, and drug use, and no redeaming value what so ever. This movie is great for all of you who love B movies. The way religion and god are used to control the "cave kids" is a good metaphor for real life. This movie has it all gratuitous sex, violence and the guy from 7th heaven. However, the ending did leave a little to be desired as far as I am concerned.

In a post-apocalyptic world, the few survivors live in huddled tribes, barely surviving. In one tribe, the ruler refuses to let the people slip into the sin that brought the old world to an end – and sex is banned. He does, however, permit himself the pick of young girls for himself. When he selects his son's girlfriend, David is forced to kill him to protect her and is then left to die in the wilderness as punishment. His friends decide to rescue him and head off into the wilderness, where they find one of the fallen cities of the old world. Walking into it, they get caught in a storm and wake up in a modern (well, old-fashioned) apartment with beautiful young couple Neil and Judith. Quickly the group discover that the restrictions of the caves are gone and the old ways of sex, drink and drugs are the very things of daily life. However it also becomes quickly evident that things are not what they seem.

With all the negative reviews on this site I had to see it for myself because I found it hard to believe that the man that gave me Kids could fail to at least make an interesting film. Watching it, I can see plenty in the plot that could have been interesting, could have been insightful and could have made for a challenging piece of thought within a sci-fi frame; after all, it could have been a cautionary tale about sex, about a sexually transmitted virus that is part of the world ending, of teenagers self-harming with no consequences. The potential was there and I did think I was open to seeing these themes and I did put in work to try and go with it and let the subtexts come through. After the "infamous" twenty minute orgy of drugs and nudity I still had this approach although there was very little in it to encourage me to keep the faith.

First off, those tuning in for sexual titillation will be disappointed as the orgy is pretty cold and lacks anything in terms of excitement. It is a bit annoying because I couldn't shake the feeling that the camera was revelling in the naked teens, drug use and other excesses. With Kids there was enough substance to cover the accusations of exploitative material but here I just didn't think there was. With the focus on excesses, the narrative was not that well developed and the whole "virus" thing didn't engage me at all. The subtexts drift in and out but the writing is not intelligent enough to bring them out; such a shame because at times you could see the parallels between the plight of the characters and the struggles of real teens (specifically in the fear of sex in Sarah and the sexual aggression of Vincent). By the end of the film I was left with a gory, nonsensical film that doesn't do anything well at all.

Of course a cast of rather hapless teenagers and twenty-somethings doesn't help because they might not have been able to work with good plotting and dialogue if it had been given to them. Keegan is a bit of a clot; Hillman overacts like he is trying to save his life; Subkoff shows that she could have done more but her material is too weak to let her prove it. Jasso is obvious but has a nice natural swagger to him that may be useful in the future for small "teen criminal" roles in other things. Limos and Grant are both pretty good looking but they cannot deliver a convincing line or even a convincing slap for all the tea in China. Clark's direction is interesting at least; at points the cinematography is nicely washed out, blending colours into frames to depict changes in emotion and several other nice touches – if only he had been able to draw out value from the material – the odd nice visual touch is not enough.

Overall this is a poor film but I will not be adding my voice to those that simply dismiss it as rubbish with a lazy twenty word review. It had potential and it had subtexts that could have worked but it just does nothing with them. The plot makes little or no sense as the film ends up focusing on the excesses rather than the substance of the film; although I tried to work through it I have to admit defeat and the final 20 minutes was a noisy load of heartless gore that made no sense even within its own logic. Overall a pointless film that will have a cult following for the sex, gore and "different" plot; some will see it as a stupid load of missed opportunities but the vast majority will not care what it could have done and will just give up on the exploitative and nasty mess.

Oh yeah...what WERE they thinking. This film offers absolutely NO plot, it is obvious that director and producers just thought "Well, if we just show plenty of female nudity, nobody will realize that there IS no story!"..

I KNOW this is a b-movie, and I have a huge love for those, but THIS could not even quality as a Z-movie, I'm actually reluctant to call this nothing more but a badly produced softcore porno-flick..

Man.. If you like movies that makes just a LITTLE sense, stay clear of this. Bad effects, horrible acting - you would actually think they simply picked the "actors" who were willing to drop all thier clothes, and then forgot that their TALENT was totally absent....that's a way to make a career aswell, I suppose...good for them, bad for all the rest of us watching..

In these times were scripts are very hard to get produced, you wonder how a piece of garbage like this could slip through....someone must have had a period of incredibly poor judgment..

-10/10

This movie was one of the worst B-movies I've ever seen, and that's saying something. The plot, when stuck to, wasn't THAT bad. It could have been made into something halfway decent and successful with the right writers, actors, and director. But as another person said, most of the film's content is some kind of prolonged orgy, drug & alcohol abuse, and mindless cursing. It has one actor you've heard of...barely. Otherwise, this film doesn't even deserve to be viewed, let alone rented or owned. There are pornos out there with better actors and writing!

Wait...this film might just be a porno...