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.

Eegah is all it has been hyped up to be. It is an awful film with some of the most ludicrous scenes, dialog, and performances to be seen in film. And by the way - it's a whole lot of fun to sit through. A caveman, having lived out his life in Southern California in a cave with a family that is now mummified, stops the car of a beautiful teen one night. She tells her famous author dad, and he goes into the mountain to find the prehistoric man. Soon she and her idiot boyfriend go to find pops and the adventure begins. Eeagh is a terrible film on many levels. The script for starters is just plain stupid. How did a cave man live in the cave of a mountain covered with nothing but sand and brush for over a century? Where did he get his food and water? Yeah, sure we saw him with a rabbit but let's get real. The cave man acts like a child for much of the film even allowing himself to be shaved by Roxy, the girl of his dreams(after a century or so any woman could have fit that bill). The Neanderthal is played by none other than Richard Kiel, Jaws from James Bond fame. Kiel is actually the best thing about this film. He gives a performance with some depth. His colleagues; however, are sufficiently deficient in that department as to make a complete mockery of the film's plot. Roxy is bad. Her dad, Arch Hall Sr. (the director as well) is wooden, and the worst acting prize goes to the director's son Arch Hall Jr. as a real annoying boyfriend who has to sing some songs every now and then. Here is a sample of the lyrics: "I wish I had a billion dollars and a banker's salary and I would buy up all the flowers to give to Valerie." That's one of the better lines. Hall Jr. mugs, struts, and ambles through much of the film delivering inane dialog. The end of the film has the obvious denouement to a relationship that just "caved in." Even though it is bad, this film is a whole lot of fun. The errors jump out at you from the first scene and the laughs ensue almost immediately from the unintentional ineptitude of the makers of the film.

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'

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.

I agree with Dave Sagehorn's review in Bad Movie Nights. See it by clicking the Reviews button. I saw this at a U.S. Naval Station theatre when it came out in 1962 for an admission charge of ten cents. It was overpriced. It was so bad that the sailors enjoyed booing, hissing, cheering, and throwing empty popcorn boxes at the screen at appropriate moments (you don 't get to share such moments with home video).

Years later, on the radio I heard a review of a book called "The 100 Worst Movies of All Time". The movie that the author rated as the No. 1 Worst Movie of all time was Eegah! On the IMDb ratings search, only 23 other movies have ratings that equal or fall below the 2.1 user rating achived by Eegah! So this is not just a bad movie. It is so flamboyantly bad that it has earned a permanent niche in the history of the cinema. I recommend it only if you and a group of friends are in the mood to hiss, boo, and throw popcorn boxes.