Caveman (1981)

When I first considered reviewing Carl Gottlieb’s (co-screenwriter of JAWS) Caveman, I immediately thought of it in terms of comparisons to Eddie Cline and Buster Keaton’s Three Ages with the latter’s Stone Age segment.  I also assumed that the 1923 film was the earliest cinematic depiction of cavemen in comedic fashion (however, cavemen have been beating up dinosaurs in an adventurous vein on screen going, to my knowledge, as far back as 1912 in Man’s Genesis).  To absolutely no one’s surprise, I was wrong, and (to the best information my five minutes of research could cull) the earliest funny caveman movie was Charlie Chaplin’s 1914 short His Prehistoric Past (although it is feasible to disqualify it from this particular discussion, because it’s a short film [the same could be argued about the Keaton film, since that one is three short films cut together, but I digress], and because it’s not a straight up caveman film [I’ll let you spoil the particulars on this hundred-and-one year old film for yourself]).  Still, both of those films and Caveman (and the vast majority of prehistoric films) deal with a man standing up to a strong, evil tribal leader/rival in order to win the hand of the woman he loves (whether or not he realizes who that is).  To my mind, the reason this plot is so pervasive is because it is simple and primal.  It deals with the will to survive/dominate one’s world, and what could play to that better than killing giant beasts and taking the person you desire sexually?  Naturally, unlike something such as Don Chaffey’s One Million Years B.C. (which, of course, gave us arguably the world’s most famous fur bikini), Gottlieb’s film has to frustrate our protagonist Atouk (the unlikely, but brilliantly cast when you think about it, Ringo Starr) in comedic ways, even when his life is threatened.  But the basic themes are present, and they work well (as they work well in most of the subgenre just for being what they are).

Atouk is the runt of a clan ruled by Tonda (the late John Matuszak), and he desires Tonda’s voluptuous woman Lana (Starr’s real life spouse Barbara Bach, who proves here that even cavewomen knew how to crimp hair).  However, after being kicked out of the clan on a trumped up gross incompetence accusation, Atouk and friend Lar (Dennis Quaid), meet up with Tala (Shelley Long) and her blind friend, the elderly Gog (Jack Gilford, who, unsurprisingly threatens to steal the entire movie at times).  But while Tala has eyes for Atouk, Atouk still pines for Lana and hatches schemes to take her away from Tonda.

Caveman is one of those movies that exemplifies just exactly how far a PG rating could be stretched back in the early Eighties.  There is cleavage and fur-clad bums thither and yon.  There is toilet humor galore, including, but not limited to, an explosive fart gag, a fart in the face gag, and (most famously) a scene where characters literally dig through a pile of dinosaur shit.  Atouk gets goosed and molested by a sentient plant.  A dinosaur gets its genitals stimulated.  Perhaps most startling, our hero basically Rufies his desired and tries to get in her loins while she’s passed out.  Yet, this is handled so innocently, so desperately on the part of Atouk/Starr that it doesn’t play as offensively as it could have in another context.  Atouk genuinely has feelings for Lana (however wrongheaded they may be), and he has a sense of wide-eyed reverence for her (he offers her fruit he has squirreled away, while the rest of the tribe has failed to “bring home the Bronto”).  That I saw this at such an early age amazes me (well, not really; this would have attracted me just from the Chris Walas designed Abominable Snowman [played by Richard Moll] and David Allen’s stop motion dinosaurs [an obsession I’ve had since 1933’s King Kong and set in stone by The Valley of Gwangi, a film my uncle claims was made for kids who like to pull the wings off of flies, though I only half agree with that statement]).  That I understood all of it, including the “naughty” bits, is impressive and indicative of just how much can be conveyed through an extremely limited vocabulary (I still like saying “zug zug” from time to time), and pantomime/gestures (a filmic vocabulary created and refined in the silent era by luminaries such as those named in the first paragraph).

The film’s primary theme concerns itself with misfits and the coalition/power built around what many consider to be the dregs of society (yet another in the long, long list of things that I would argue harkens back to Tod Browning’s superlative Freaks).  As previously stated, Atouk is a runt.  Lar, who is good-looking and in relatively good health, is kicked out of the clan for hurting his leg (a wounded hunter-gatherer is a useless hunter-gatherer).  Gog is sightless and old.  Later on, Atouk will meet up with a black man, an Asian man (who, of course, is the only one who can speak fluent English), a little man, a gay couple, and various other throwaways.  Outside of those more clearly defined in their outsider status, the majority of the others in this makeshift tribe are closer in resemblance to Atouk.  They are slight of build, odd, shorter than normal, essentially square pegs.  Just as Atouk is the opposite of Tonda (weak versus strong, short versus tall, Ringo versus handsome, et cetera), Tala is the opposite of Lana.  She is blonde, skinny, small-chested, and quite intelligent (Lana may be intelligent as well, but her unwavering obeisance to Tonda marks her as a sheep, not a shepherd, so to speak).  In cinematic terms, this signifies Tala as “good” and the natural choice to be Atouk’s mate (in a Betty versus Veronica sort of way).  Atouk just needs to have his eyes opened, because even though he accepts these oddballs who have coalesced around him, his desire lies with the popular opinion of what a man should be and should want in a woman (be they cave or otherwise, and rather ironic considering Starr and Bach’s relationship off screen, but this is the movies where there is little difference between what’s “right” and what choices its traditional, underdog protagonist will make).  Atouk doesn’t want to be a misfit (hey, who does?), yet this is the exact thing he must embrace in order to triumph in his prehistoric world.

Caveman was released in America on DVD and Blu-ray via Olive Films, and it’s presented at 1.85:1 ratio.  The color palette of the film was never something that popped off the screen, but its hues look nice here, and the picture quality is as pristine as it can get.  The mono soundtrack is in English only (not that this movie would need much in the way of dubbing or subtitles), and it’s satisfying with every grunt and gaseous expulsion coming through loud and clear, but especially Lalo Schifrin’s jaunty score, which is so catchy, it will resound in your head for days (nay, years) after hearing it.  The disc includes a trailer for the film.

MVT:  I love the film’s light, slightly naughty tone.  You can slip into this film like a comfy pair of old slippers and just enjoy it like a pot of macaroni and cheese.

Make or Break:  The Make for me is the Ice Age scene.  Anyone who has read my reviews knows of my adoration for hirsute monsters, and the Snowman is a great costume.  Plus, the slapstick chase across the ice just works in spades, like something out of a Three Stooges short.  Sold!

Score:  7.5/10

The Unseen (1980)

I don’t really get sick.  Oh, I get a nice head cold once or twice a year, and I have hay fever that would debilitate a lesser man, but it’s rare for me to contract something akin to the flu (and bear in mind, I’m in and out of multiple people’s houses everyday in the course of my job).  I don’t chalk this up to having an iron constitution or anything of the sort.  As a matter of fact, I’d probably just call it dumb luck.  However, when I do get the flu, I get it bad.  I don’t just get a fever, headache, and nausea.  I get a high fever, migraines, and a stomach so twisted it’s nothing short of crippling.  Often, this also leads to fever dreams which, for as bizarre and interesting as they are, I could frankly do without on the whole.  What I’m getting at is even at my worst, even when I’m vomiting so much and so hard that it feels like the only thing I have left to bring up is my own anus (if it were someone else’s, I’d really be worried), I have never coughed during the act.  This is one of those cinema tropes which has always bugged me, that people will spit up a bit and then erupt in a coughing jag that would make a “lunger” green with envy.  I get that it’s called “acting,” but to my mind, this is the kind of thing that’s simply not true to life.  Even in Horror movies.

Television reporter Jennifer Fast (Barbara Bach) walks out (ironically enough) on beau Tony (Doug Barr, who you may recall as Howie Munson on TV’s The Fall Guy), who has recently undergone knee surgery.  Traveling with sister Karen (Karen Lamm) and assistant Vicki (Lois Young) to the hamlet of Solvang (an anagram for Vanglos, in case you were wondering), the three find the local hotel completely booked up.  Coming upon the Union Hotel and its not-at-all-creepy proprietor Ernest (Sydney Lassick) they ask for a room, but are informed that it’s just a museum.  However, he can let them stay at his house, where fragile wife Virginia (Lelia Goldoni) takes care of things.  But the horrors to come are still (wait for it) unseen.

If my synopsis for Danny Steinmann’s (director of the Linda Blair vehicle Savage Streets, here credited as Peter Foleg) The Unseen seems a bit slight and not all that scary, that’s because the film is a bit slight and not all that scary.  It has all the elements for a Horror film, and it puts them mostly in the right order.  Nonetheless, the filmmakers don’t seem to want to focus on the people ostensibly set up as the heroines of the piece.  If anything, this is more the story of the twisted Keller family, and had they played up the skeezy, gothic elements associated with them, this could very well have been a decent little Psychodrama.  Instead, they tried to force a standard Slasher structure onto the film, and I feel that it suffers greatly as a result.  It also doesn’t help that the acting seesaws between wooden and manic (with Lassick earning the coveted BEM Award for overdoing it this time out).  Sure, the viewers’ fingernails will dig rivulets into their arm rests, but it’s strictly a reaction to the thespian skills on display and the film’s lumbering plot, not due to any tension constructed by Steinmann and company.

It’s impossible to discuss this film in any detail without some form of SPOILERS, although it could also be argued that this is an unspoilable film, since one of the big twists (out of two) is only a twist in its appearance and has probably been discussed more than Rosebud (okay, not really).  Ready?  Here we go.  So, former Flounder Stephen Furst plays Junior Keller (aka the titular Unseen), the large mongoloid offspring of Ernest and Virginia who have kept him locked in the basement, assumedly since he could walk (and not in the attic where this sort of familial black eye is normally secreted away).  He is the murderer of two of the female characters, but it is Ernest who is the true villain of this flick, and we get that simply upon first sight.  Why else would you cast Lassick, unless you were looking for an unctuous yet somewhat effete character that is instantly untrustworthy and unlikable?  Regardless, it is Ernest’s relationship with not only Junior but also Virginia which underpins the major themes in the movie.  That the filmmakers tried to have these same themes mirrored by Jennifer and her relationship with Tony is admirable but also ineffective (I can only assume they couldn’t afford Bach’s salary to keep her onscreen longer).

The first of the major themes is one of children and parents, specifically mothers.  Virginia is a mother in a very traditional sense.  She stays at home and takes care of the house and cooks and cleans.  She is also abused mentally and physically.  Jennifer, by contrast, is an independent woman and doesn’t want a child at this point in her career.  She has repressed her mothering instinct (though it can just as easily be argued that she has none as portrayed in Bach’s icy performance), and this is conveyed in the first scenes of the film.  Jennifer walks out on Tony as he struggles to lift weights with his repaired knees (and Steinmann’s insistence on showing a closeup of his scar drives home the point that Tony is an incomplete man and in need of someone who can care for him, though not to the point an infant would).  Naturally then, when Jennifer is confronted with Junior, she must essentially face “the return of the repressed.”  What she has attempted to kill in her own life now threatens that life in a much larger (and terminal) fashion.  What’s interesting (or at least befuddling) is that we are given no indication as to how any of this will affect her life in the future.  We see the actions that she takes, but it is difficult to believe that her ordeals will strengthen her maternal impulses and change her mind about having a child of her own.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had her tubes tied after the film fades out.  Again, the film’s focus is rooted in the Kellers (not the outsiders), and it is how Virginia and Ernest act which depicts any character growth.

The second theme I’d like to touch on deals with forgetting and burying the past (which can also be read as guilt).  Here, we should be paying attention to Jennifer and Tony in this regard, but pretty much everything which the filmmakers have to say about the two is put out in the first scene and then all but hung out to dry.  No, it is the Kellers who encompass this theme almost in its entirety.  Virginia has been scarred by the past actions which have formed her present situation.  Junior is a living embodiment of the malignant past which birthed him (though he acts merely within his severe limitations and without malice).  Ernest, who is the catalyst for everything bad in the Kellers’ lives, is himself a victim of the past.  Yet in the past, when Ernest acted out to escape from the cycle of abuse which defined his young life, he only made things worse and progressed (some would argue regressed) from there, thus further perpetuating the cycle.  He owns a hotel which was turned into a museum, a place and livelihood literally trapped in the past.  To be fair, there is a certain richness in this material.  The filmmakers just didn’t dig into it past a surface level, and consequently The Unseen is a film which should resonate but ultimately doesn’t.

MVT:  Furst’s Junior is the standout of the film.  For the first few minutes he’s onscreen, he is moderately impressive and not a little creepy.  Unfortunately, when he starts doing things which are a bit on the ridiculous side (in Furst’s defense, a preoperational child would very likely behave in the same fashion), any sense of unease quickly turns to comedy.  It’s a shame, really.

Make Or Break:  The Break is the scene where Ernest gets drunk and has a conversation with a family member.  Not only is it leaden with hamfisted exposition, but it also gives us some truly overwrought acting which just crushes any expectations you might have for the film’s remainder.

Score:  5/10

**Like this review?  Share it with a friend.  Hate it?  Share it with an enemy.**

The Big Alligator River (1979)

From the late 1970s to the early/mid-1980s, you would be hard-pressed to find an Italian-produced horror/science fiction film that didn't have at least one scene with a helicopter in it. From Luigi Cozzi's Contamination to Lucio Fulci's Zombie and beyond (okay, maybe not The Beyond), a helicopter is seen either carting people into the heart of a jungle or spotting some unmanned craft (in a callout to Dracula's Demeter?) floating like an open door to a spider's web. My understanding is that helicopters had been around for some time, so it's not as if they were exploiting some new technology or craze. Does Italy have a corner on the helicopter-building market? Are helicopters free to rent for Italian citizens? Much like the Easter-egg-ish bottles of J&B whisky that pop up in the better-furnished studies of Italy like Hitchcock in his own films, helicopters seem to turn up like thumb prints on many Italian films of the time.


Sergio Martino's The Big Alligator River (aka The Great Alligator, aka Il Fiume Del Grande Caimano) opens with a helicopter carting Joshua (Mel Ferrer), the owner of the new Paradise House resort, into the heart of the jungle (see?). Accompanying Joshua are photographer, Daniel (Claudio Cassinelli), and the oddly-mute model, Sheena (Geneve Hutton). At the hotel, along with being introduced to the cruel Peter (Romano Puppo) and the voluptuous Ali (Barbara Bach), we discover that Joshua has been using the local native tribe, the Kuma, to help build and staff the resort. Soon, a very large alligator (the Kuma believe it is their god, Kroona) turns up to gnaw on the defilers of his people. Not good news with the first guests arriving soon for the resort's big, grand opening. 

The first thing that leaps out at you when watching this film is its resemblance to both King Kong and Jurassic Park (and, yes, Jaws, but to a lesser degree, I think). The first is obvious. You have a giant animal worshipped as a god by natives. You have our protagonists watching a secret ceremony and being discovered. You have a woman kidnapped and splayed out as a sacrifice to appease said god. On the later film, you have a nature preserve located in a remote location. You have the guests getting picked off by the preserve's attractions. Mel Ferrer takes the Sir Richard Attenborough role, though Joshua is far more avaricious than John Hammond ever was. You have the "child in peril" angle. Of course, Michael Crichton's novel was written about eleven years after The Big Alligator River was released. Still, there are a great many similarities (and dissimilarities, to be fair).

Martino's movie does seem to have a point to make (in much the same way as Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust), however. The natives are exploited by Joshua for his own ends. As their reward, he gives them blue jeans and Coca Cola. The natives are overjoyed, and the viewer is slightly horrified. It's this more than anything else (not the dynamiting of the landscape or deforestation) which seems to trigger the appearance of Kroona. Whenever venal, rich, white characters go into the jungle, they are invariably abusive and exploitive toward the native populace. There are almost always depictions of the despoiling and "civilizing" (or attempts at "civilizing") of these "savages." This invariably winds up biting the venal, rich, white characters in the ass, much to the audience's satisfaction. Nevertheless, sympathy toward the natives' plight does not guarantee a character's safety (especially in Italian films), and of course, the natives who align themselves with the white folks' objectives are the first to go.

Kroona as a character is firmly in the Kong-ian mold, yet he is portrayed as being truly an old, vengeful god. At no point do any characters say that he is just an enormous alligator (which we're told are non-indigenous to the area) with a taste for human flesh. And since his coming is presaged by his peoples' turning from him to American consumerism/status symbols, he becomes a representation of the wrath of the gods. Like the fickle Greek gods, who would strike down or transform in some ironic fashion their venerators as soon as look at them. Or the Catholic God of the Old Testament, who destroyed Sodom and turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt just for watching its decimation. And yet, Kroona displays no true intelligence or supernatural power. It's hinted that he may have pulled the helicopter into the river to prevent the humans' escape, but it could just as easily have been the Kuma who did it (and this is also suggested in the narrative). He never makes it onto land to attack anyone (as if he becomes powerless out of water), and there's never even a moment where he and a human stare into each others' eyes, taking the measure of each other. The avenging deity is an interesting idea for the character, but there's no character in its execution to be found herein.

Which brings me to the most interesting twist on the film's basic premise; namely the natives turning back to their god. Once the Kuma realize Kroona is angry over their transgressions, they decide to attack the resort and everyone in it as recompense and atonement. It's a marvelous way to ratchet up the danger level, because now there are menaces on all sides. This is where my reference to Cannibal Holocaust comes in. If the" alligator god" angle was removed from the film entirely, this could have been an engaging and worthwhile siege/cannibal flick (never mind that the Kuma never show a predilection for anthropophagy). Between the natives' revenge and the vengeance of Kroona, the film hues closely to Freud's notion of "the return of the repressed." By turning away from their true nature, trying to tamp it down, and embracing Western culture, their past comes back to haunt them (and the white interlopers) in a huge way (pardon the pun).

The film's special effects are hit-and-miss. The first few times we glimpse Kroona, it's through a combination of quick closeup shots. The full-size creature is never seen at first, and the model work is of a high enough quality that it pulls off the illusion relatively well. Sadly, there is a plethora of miniature model work in the second half which not only destroys the suspension of disbelief but also the sense of scale and the very idea that Kroona is anything other than a rubber toy in a bathtub (which is exactly what it looks like in these shots). For a filmmaker as capable as Martino, that he would linger so on these shots tells me he was desperate to stretch the film's runtime out. 

With that in mind, this film's pacing is its biggest drawback, and it's enough for me to dislike the film on the whole. Scenes go on forever, dragging out conflicts that have petered out of their own momentum well before the movie moves on. Scenes seem to have been included simply to give the characters something to do for five minutes at a stretch. At the end of the film's first forty-four minutes, there has been only one, not-very-graphic Kroona attack. Granted, the third act is almost wall-to-wall carnage, but this too wears out its welcome after about ten minutes. It truly is a case of lather, rinse, and repeat. Perhaps if Martino and company had more story than film stock, The Big Alligator River wouldn't have turned out to be such a giant turkey.

MVT: The themes are the most intriguing aspects of the film. They just seem wasted on a project that feels like it's 100% filler, all additives.

Make Or Break: The "Break" is the first kill scene, which manages to go on interminably, crosscuts without building an iota of tension (or titillation, for that matter), and then (perhaps most egregiously) culminates in a staid attack.

Score: 5/10