Eegah

Thanks to this movie, I had Arch Hall Jr's terrible singing voice singing about Vicky for a week. It almost drove me mad. If your one who easily gets songs stuck in ones head, this is a movie you would do well to avoid.

Other than that, it had some real camp value.. Not enough Go-Go Dancing though.

Ah, a serene night, your girl camped out on a bed roll on your tricked out dune buggy, a horny prehistoric giant (talked about in Genesis none-the-less) on the prowl for your girl, and not a care in the world. You pull out your guitar and sing an ode to Veronica, and that guitar plays bass, percussion, and even whistles. Strange I never actually heard guitar in any of his songs.

This is just a sample of the so-bad-it's good campiness available in Eegah. But unfortunately there is just as much so-bad-it-reeks that I can't give it more than 3 stars. I actually thought it was over when the unfortunate trio escaped from the cave. Man was I mistaken, there was another excruciating stretch of film with Eegah in the modern world. And don't get me started on Arch Jr., he can thank whatever god that smiles down on him that Sr. is in charge. How else would this hack get to be the "Elvis" of this movie. "I swear on my stack of Elvis Presley LP's" there are few worse performances in cinematic history.

So in review - this movie is not as bad as the bottom 100 ranking leads you to believe, but nowhere near masterpiece theater. Is entertaining though with a bunch of smart-mouthed friends and lots of beer.

This movie is an anthropological curiosity about an anthropological curiosity. Dug up from a time when it would seem like a good idea to produce a caveman/horror/comedy/musical, "Eegah" today leaves viewers astounded by the shear freakish nature of the film itself. Richard Kiel stars as Eegah the caveman whom for millinea had survived in a cave with his mummified relatives in the hills near a desert town. For some reason he didn't choose to emerge from the desolate perimeters of his home until 1962. The hapless female played by Marilyn Manning almost runs him down one night while driving home. After she screeches to a halt she faints at the sight of the collosal Eegah donning furs and swinging a plastic club. When she awakes she tells her boyfriend played by the esteemed Arch Hall Jr., all about the "giant" she saw. Eventually Eegah kidnapps Marilyn's Dad (played by Arch Hall Sr). Arch and Marilyn go into the hills in a dune buggy to find him. After the ensuing incidents they all escape an angry Eegah who then follows them on foot back to town where the real fun begins. Arch Hall Jr. is the ham of all hams in this one, singing badly these love songs devoted to different girls his character had supposedly been involved with. His voice is that of a fifteen year old kid who hasn't completely developed the manly timbre and squeaks out emotive ballads like the low-point of any high school talent show. The goof-meter on this film is to overload as scene after scene actors act badly, Richard Kiel tweeks his face in reaction to whatever is taking place while an out of sync voice over grunts "RRRRRRR....SHTEMLO...EEGAH...." The lighting in the interior scenes look like a home movie from days of yore and the props are straight out of an arts and crafts store. Overall, I can't say "Eegah" is one of the worst films ever made as it's never really painful and too much fun to watch. The films that vie for that title cause the viewer excrutiating agony and are made by those who have no apparent intent on entertaining anyone(i.e. "Robot Monster", "Flesh Feast", "House of 1000 Corpses"). I recommend "Eegah" as a cult classic and a fun party movie.

Eegah taught me a lot of things about life. It taught me how to love, it taught me how to hate, and it taught me how to paaaarrrrtttaaaaayyyy! If you love to get down and dance the night away, then have we got a movie for you! Never once, have I seen so many fantastic elements combined to create such a pristine film. The only word that can describe it is "Eegah!" After watching this movie several times, I finally realized the hidden message behind the word eegah. Eegah is an acronym, and goes as follows.

E-Ecstatic-my mood after watching this movie

E-Envisioned-this film captures everything a film should

G-Gay-this movie made me the happiest I've ever been in my life

A-Archie Hall Jr. and Sr.-that dynamic duo that just wouldn't quit making me smile

H-Hell-I'd go to Hell before giving up my copy of 'Eegah'

The great thing about "Eegah!" is that it's memorably awful. Even for a bad film, there's something so unique in the dopiness of this strange tale about a caveman loose in the arid wastes of Palm Springs that it really lifts "Eegah!" up to the level of Ed Wood, Gamera, and the film version of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band." Once you've seen it, you'll never forget it. There are many good films you can't say that about.

Richard Kiel, who went on to play a terrific villain in the best James Bond film of the 1970s, "The Spy Who Loved Me," stars as the misunderstood Neanderthal who falls in love with the daughter of famed adventure writer "Robert I. Miller." Like many great men, Dr. Miller is a maze of contradictions, wearing a pith helmet and khaki bush jacket along with black socks and carrying a tiny man-purse. He also installed two mini-ovens in his den, handy for TV snacking.

While trying to take a scintillating photo of a dead campfire, Dr. Miller is surprised by the lumbering giant, who takes him to a cave made of obvious canvas and filled with badly-carved mannequins supposed to be his long-dead kin. It's left up to Dr. Miller's daughter Roxy and her boyfriend, musician and dune-buggy enthusiast Tommy Nelson, to save him. But the horny caveman has other plans for racy Roxy.

Tommy is played by Arch Hall Jr., the other actor in "Eegah!" people remember. Unlike Kiel, it's Hall's performance in this movie that made him famous. He's not exactly repulsive by real-world standards, but his face really sticks out on a movie screen, like Michael J. Pollard crossed with Alfred E. Newman. To make matters worse, he wears his hair in a ridiculously exaggerated greasy blond pompadour and is presented in the film as something of a teen idol, fawned over by the ladies and prone to engaging banter like: "Wowsy wow wow!" It's hard to believe that director Nicholas Merriwether thought this bug-eyed scrub could carry a tuning fork let alone a tune, until you discover Merriwether was the alias of one Arch Hall Sr. (who also played Dr. Miller.)

Giving away more is a disservice. You really have to see the film for yourself. There are many bad films out there, but only one "Eegah!" Even the folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 couldn't improve on this one, though they tried. Sure, they picked up on one absurd line, "Watch out for snakes," and it's now a catch phrase for those of us who have been "Eegah!-ed." But focusing on just that one line is so wrong, like just thinking "Rosebud" when someone mentions "Citizen Kane." There's so much else going on here, and for once Joel and his 'bots seemed at a loss.

You can't get angry at a film that fails on so many levels. It's like a reverse tutorial in cinematic competency. It's just good these guys found work making movies rather than in nuclear fission.

Really bad music, bad acting, bad dialogue, but all bad in an enjoyable way, like the phony fight scenes by the pool and the way Roxy pretends to cut Kiel's fake beard while her father murmurs creepy encouragement from the sidelines. Bad films are fun to read about, but they are rarely fun to watch the way "Eegah!" is.