Le monde oublié

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!

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?

No doubt about it, this was absurd. That doesn't mean I didn't like it, though. You can thank the gratuitous nudity for that. It starts off fairly decent when Rex (Daniel Roebuck) is caught in the middle of a practical joke and is in the women's locker room with at least 4 topless women. Good start it my book.

Anyhow, on what seems to be some kind of class field trip or something, Rex ends up going back in time by about 25,000 years or so and meets a tribe or family of cavemen (and cavegirls). This is where he meets Eba (Cynthia Thompson), the cavegirl I assume the title of this movie refers to. Eba is very hot when compared to the other cavegirls of this era, one of whom is a hefty old heifer who can't keep her breasts covered around Rex. Naturally, Rex falls for Eba and cheesy 80's hilariousness ensues.

I can compare this movie to Teen Wolf, Weird Science or movies like that, although not nearly as good.. and with nudity. What can I say, that's what kept me around. Cavegirl is not even close to flawless, but it wasn't too horrible to finish watching, unlike Savage Roses or A Home At The End Of The World. 6/10

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.

The 1980's were a virtual golden age for low budget teen sex comedies, a reliably successful genre whose purveyors cranked out new titles throughout the decade with such frenzied regularity that many video stores gave these movies their own dedicated section. Cavegirl is fairly prototypical aside from its admittedly novel concept, neither the worst nor the best of its species, but it's still a good time despite its sophomoric execution making something like Hardbodies look like a masterpiece by comparison.

The action centers around a hopeless high school egghead named Rex (played by an actor who looks to be in his late 20's, naturally) who encounters some nebulously defined magic crystals during a field trip to a mine and somehow gets transported back in time to the dawn of homo erectus. There, he meets the titular Cavegirl, a gorgeous neolithic nymphette named Eva, and proceeds to spend the rest of the movie awkwardly lusting after her and teaching her to say the word "boobs".

The bulk of the hijinks here are more amusing than truly funny, but this flick is still fairly endearing in its own quirky way. The introduction meant to establish Rex as a lovable loser is done away with in the first ten minutes, which mostly consist of his classmates punking him with a series of pranks like dropping firecrackers on him while he's sitting on the toilet and leading him into the girls' locker room to be chased by a group of topless women wielding tennis rackets. Oddly, other than those gals, there only seems to be five other students at Rex's school and their entire purpose for attending seems to be to torment him. Even odder, Rex doesn't seem particularly put-off by their shenanigans-though one gag results in the entire backside of his trousers being torn off, he's wearing fresh pants in the next scene, which suggests he's so resigned to their oafish antics that he plans ahead by bringing an extra pair of jeans to class just in case.

The story hits its stride once Rex reaches the "Stone Age" (although the "Stone Age" looks suspiciously like the California mountains). Once we meet Eva (played by the stunning Cindy Ann Thompson), it isn't hard to gather why her presence was flagged as the focal point of the film. Amidst a series of pratfalls, flatulence vignettes, and Rex's thwarted attempts to score with his prehistoric princess, he gradually integrates himself into her furry-loinclothed family and becomes one of their rock-dwelling tribe. There's also a fleeting subplot about Eva and her squad being kidnapped by cannibals and Rex conquering his geeky skittishness to come to their rescue, but since that entire thread is introduced and resolved within the span of exactly five minutes, it's rendered more of a skit than a legitimate conflict.

But hey, taking a caper like Cavegirl seriously is missing the point. Those with a healthy appetite for '80s nostalgia will have plenty to chew on here. The whole production is so evocative of its era it practically serves as a postcard, and a smattering of choice synth-rock numbers by bands so obscure they aren't even identified in the credits are almost worth the movie alone. Rex turns out to be a likeable goofball, Eva is a delight to behold every time she's on the screen, and despite the horny-adolescent mindset of the humor their clumsy courtship unfolds with a genuine sweetness that makes it difficult not to root them on.

There are certainly raunchier and funnier entries in this crowded canon, yet Cavegirl has enough appealing attributes to make it worth a $2.99 rental-which is precisely the result the producers were counting on when it was released. Today, it serves as both an enjoyable reminder of a simpler time and an untaxing way to turn off your brain for 80 minutes. And as far as I'm concerned, that result is equally worthy.