Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Blistering performances.

It's not so much bad as it is boring; the gaps between the deliciously bad bits are often long and action free. It's also missing a necessary element of camp and delightfully bad dialog, more of a Dick and Jane mentality that is historically interesting only because it features future Bond villain Richard Kiel. Heading to a nightclub one night, Marilyn Manning runs over what she believes to be a giant, or a caveman. Boyfriend Arch Hall Jr. agrees to help her find him, and somehow, Manning and her father end up as unwilling guests of the obviously lonely Kiel, perhaps the long lost cousin of Joan Crawford's pal, Trog. Hall spends the time roaming the desert, avoiding rattlesnakes, coyotes and large lizards while Manning gives Kiel a shave and a haircut. Her reward? A grunt suggesting that she take a look at his etchings. It gets momentarily very funny and even a little touching when Kiel grunts his way into his reluctant guest's heart. But it's just so silly when it's trying to be even remotely intelligent science fiction. The film is truly low quality, with very tinny sound, faded color, cue card reading style acting and the feeling of being rushed out. I find it strangely endearing, however, because after Hall's sneering, drooling performance in "The Sadist", he seems surprisingly normal in this. I'm just glad that acting wasn't his first choice of a long term career. Kiel's performance can just be described as one that has to be seen to be believed, and I mean that as nicely as possible. At least he got the free shave. The film seems to come to a conclusion an hour into the film, but makes the audience suffer for another half an hour, pretty much going nowhere but down. By this time, any intentional humor has vanished, and the temptation to hit fast forward becomes overwhelming.

Unlike other movies that have been on Mystery Science Theater 3000 I did not watch this movie through that, I instead watched this through the modern day Elvira show (I'll review that after this) so the movie centers around a caveman who is 7 foot tall and scares the crap out of Roxy, a supposed teen and has a boyfriend who likes performing music as a non-sequitur and considering this person is played by the director's son I would not be surprised if he had his own wannabe pop band that he wanted hits inserted into the movie so he could be what The Beatles were... it's all speculation but considering how not-relevant to the plot it is right down to Roxy having no problem with him singing songs about other girls it's pretty sound. So anyway they look for the caveman and find it and he has evidently survived all this time, untouched by civilization because "shut up it does" and takes a liking to Roxy. So they try and get away from it and the caveman tries getting to her apparently not taking "no" for an answer and gets killed once it goes back to civilization as we're supposed to feel sorry for it. This movie is not interesting - the plot is ridiculous, the acting is annoying and it could not be more evident of it's low budget and it gets per-occupied with shooting crap Arch Hall Jr music videos.

Eegah (1962)** (out of 4) Roxy Miller (Marilyn Manning) is driving through the desert one night when a giant caveman (Richard Kiel) jumps out at her. No one believes her wild story so her father (Arch Hall, Sr.) goes out there looking for him and when he doesn't return her boyfriend (Arch Hall, Jr.) takes the lead. Soon the caveman has a love for Roxy that will stop at nothing.EEGAH is often called one of the worst movies ever made but I have to really laugh at this. To me, many awful quality movies are out there and some of them are so boring that watching the film is like seeing paint dry and having to write a ten thousand word essay on it. Even many big-budget pictures from Hollywood are just downright boring to the point where you can't get through them. That's certainly not the case for EEGAH, which might technically be awful but at least it's entertaining in its own goofy way.Arch Hall, Sr. was trying to turn his son into a superstar, which was the main purpose of this movie. You have him acting and singing like a wannabe Elvis but can you really not watch these scenes and not laugh? Can you not listen to the silly back-and-forth banter between Junior and Manning and not giggle? The dialogue going on during the sequence where the father and daughter are in the cave is without question some of the strangest you're ever going to hear. As for Richard Kiel, he's delightful in the title role and seeing him run around with a club is entertaining! Much more entertaining than the majority of "class" movies out there.Yes, the performances, the direction, the screenplay and just about everything else is awful but this is without question one of the most entertaining bad movies ever made, which is exactly why I'd refuse to call it one of the worst. A movie this entertaining really doesn't deserve to be call the "worst" of anything. EEGAH features some pretty silly stuff from start to finish but as long as you're entertained by it I'm not going to complain.

Say what you like about this film but it's certainly a one off. Some folks will no doubt consider this a blessing of course. For me, this is a strange and trashy movie that is worthy of its cult status. It's not exactly good as such but it's a unique oddity and for that it scores some points. The story is about a giant caveman called Eegah who has somehow survived into 60's California by living in a cave in the Mojave Desert. His life is complicated when he falls in love with a young woman who discovers him by chance. And from here on in a bunch of stuff happens.Production values are rock bottom and the acting is really bad but none of that damages the film very much. The ridiculous story doesn't need production values. What we do have though is the somewhat unorthodox leading man Arch Hall Jr. in the role of the rock 'n' rolling boyfriend. He intermittently calls a halt to proceedings and knocks out one of his rock 'n' roll numbers. This adds an extra layer of unusualness to proceedings, giving Eegah yet a further string to its bow. The scenes with Eegah and the girl and her father in the confines of his cave are also worthy of note. In the sense that they are very dodgy indeed! At one point the daughter shaves her father, which I have to say just felt wrong on a number of levels. And then later she is roughly fondled by Eegah while her strange dad impassively looks on. Again, the tone and handling of the scene is bordering on being fairly inappropriate in a film that otherwise would probably be a kids movie. Still, its details like that that simply add to Eegah's bizarro reputation.It's bad but sort of quite good at the same time. Whichever way you look at it, it's far superior to the much bigger budgeted but essentially quite similar California Man from 1992. That one starred the appalling Pauly Shore – give me Arch Hall Jr. any day of the week over that guy!