REVIEW DATE:4:19:9:9

Oh, heck, I just couldn't resist. I mean look at this movie's title. Just look at it. Teenage Caveman. What decent critic would pass up a chance like this?

All of you who answered "Roger Ebert" now loose two hundred points.

But it was more then the name that attracted me to Teenage Cavemen. First of all, its from the 1950s. Secondly, it was directed by Roger (The Day the World Ended) Corman. Waving a movie with this much stuff in my face is like waving a T-bone steak in front of a starving dog.

And so, like a moth to a flame was I drawn no Teenage Caveman. And, much like that moth,  I was burned. Badly. Though, this is a sci-fi (sorta) movie from the 1950s with Roger Corman's name on it, so you get what you expect.

I really shouldn't blame Roge, though. I mean, he's only the director. He didn't write this script, R. Wright Campbell did. And oh, what a script it is. At times watching the pointless non-plot felt like walking through quicksand with cannon balls tied to my neck.

The non-plot centers around one teenage caveman (Robert Vaughn), who, being a teenager, questions the laws of his tribe. His tribe, called The Clan, is forbidden to "go beyond the river". Beyond the river there lots of nasty things, like "sinking earth", reptiles dressed up to look like dinosaurs, and that old Roger Corman stable: ungainly rubber monsters.

Being a teenager, the Teenage Caveman (since none of these characters have names I'll just call him that) goes beyond the river with some of his buddies. Once there, they meet up with the (ahem) dinosaurs, one of them gets sucked into the "sinking earth", and two others chicken out. Soon its just TC, left all alone to meet the ungainly rubber monster.

By now I figured I had been watching this thing for over an hour. No such luck. Turns out it was only 30 minuets. Amazing how time drags when your not having fun.

TC is found, brought back, and made a man by the tribe, against the wishes of the "Black Bearded One" (hey, that's what the script calls him). In a surprise to no one, the Black Bearded One, like all Black Bearded Ones, is evil. Next topic, please.

After another hour that seams to crawl by like a crippled turtle the movie mercifully ends. And its got a twist ending to boot. Since this movie sucks so much I'm going to spoil it for you. Turns out that these "cave people" are actually survivors of a nuclear war. The ungainly rubber monster that looks like a man in a rubber suit is. . .well, a man in a rubber suit. He's killed by the Black Bearded One and through flashbacks we discover that Teenage Caveman might just be a sequel to The Day the World Ended. If anyone cares.

Cheese is the main word here, ladies and gentlemen. TC is packed full of cheese. The moldy, oldie, stinky kind of cheese. Man, I've suffered through some CRAP, but this takes the cake. Dialogue is as stilted as a California beach home. A plot that keeps going and going and going. . . Characters? Pfeh! What characters!?

We now move on to the part of the review devoted to hating a movie's writer. R. Wright Campbell, in lieu of actually advancing the plot, wrote in lots of scenes in which the various Cave people stand around and talk. I would have a problem with this (lots of movies have scenes where people stand around and talk), if it weren't for the fact that these characters say the same things over and over and over again. If I want to listen to a skipping sound track I'll throw one of my CDs in a dishwasher, okay? And God Lord, they discuss philosophy too. Whoever though that watching cavemen sit around and discuss the principles of their own religion would make a fun movie should have his thumbs broken. End of story.

And yet. . .

Yet, the sheer cheeziness of the movie is a gift as well as a curse. When a movie completely fails to entertain on any other level, one is forced to do nothing, but sit back, and riff said movie mercilessly. So it is with Teenage Caveman. Take the above mentioned dinosaurs, for example. Those dinos are actually stock footage from the movie One Million Years B.C. (no, not this One Million Years B.C.) which used the advance special effects technique of strapping a cardboard fin onto a baby crocodile's back. It looks as bad as it sounds, trust me.

When faced with a site like that, as well as the obligatory silly looking rubber monster, I can't help but laugh myself silly. However, unlike Roger Ebert, I don't think unintentional laugher is a good thing. In fact, I think that movies with this microscopic an amount of entertainment value should be burnt. And their staff along with them. Unfortunatly, Roger Corman would go on, making many more terrible movies until his career would come to a final, merciful end.

Oh crap, I just remembered something: Roger Corman is still alive. Oh my God, no!

RATING (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE

ALMOST AS BAD AS ARMAGEDDON. ALMOST.