Eegah (1962) Poster

(1962)

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3/10
"Wowzie! Wow! Wow!"
BaronBl00d5 November 2005
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.
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3/10
Arch Jr and his magic guitar
manicgecko10 April 2006
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.
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1/10
Brilliantly Bad
slokes15 December 2004
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.
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Goof Meter Overload
lost1-123 October 2003
This movie is an anthropological curiosity about an anthropological curiosity. Dug up from a time when it would seem like a good idea to produce a caveman/horror/comedy/musical, "Eegah" today leaves viewers astounded by the shear freakish nature of the film itself. Richard Kiel stars as Eegah the caveman whom for millinea had survived in a cave with his mummified relatives in the hills near a desert town. For some reason he didn't choose to emerge from the desolate perimeters of his home until 1962. The hapless female played by Marilyn Manning almost runs him down one night while driving home. After she screeches to a halt she faints at the sight of the collosal Eegah donning furs and swinging a plastic club. When she awakes she tells her boyfriend played by the esteemed Arch Hall Jr., all about the "giant" she saw. Eventually Eegah kidnapps Marilyn's Dad (played by Arch Hall Sr). Arch and Marilyn go into the hills in a dune buggy to find him. After the ensuing incidents they all escape an angry Eegah who then follows them on foot back to town where the real fun begins. Arch Hall Jr. is the ham of all hams in this one, singing badly these love songs devoted to different girls his character had supposedly been involved with. His voice is that of a fifteen year old kid who hasn't completely developed the manly timbre and squeaks out emotive ballads like the low-point of any high school talent show. The goof-meter on this film is to overload as scene after scene actors act badly, Richard Kiel tweeks his face in reaction to whatever is taking place while an out of sync voice over grunts "RRRRRRR....SHTEMLO...EEGAH...." The lighting in the interior scenes look like a home movie from days of yore and the props are straight out of an arts and crafts store. Overall, I can't say "Eegah" is one of the worst films ever made as it's never really painful and too much fun to watch. The films that vie for that title cause the viewer excrutiating agony and are made by those who have no apparent intent on entertaining anyone(i.e. "Robot Monster", "Flesh Feast", "House of 1000 Corpses"). I recommend "Eegah" as a cult classic and a fun party movie.
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2/10
Egad
Gafke2 May 2004
This. Movie. Hurts. A LOT!

In the early 1960s, bug-eyed space cadet Roxy drives out into the desert and directly into the path of a club-wielding giant with a fake beard glued to his face. It's EEGAH, a poor caveman who has somehow survived the Neanderthal age and is living just outside of L.A. in a cardboard cave. No one believes Roxy's tale, except for her incredibly greasy dad and her icky boyfriend. Dad decides to hike out into the desert to see if he can discover the truth behind Eegah, but when he is late coming home, Roxy and icky boyfriend Tom drive out in their wacky dunebuggy to search for him. Soon, Roxy and her dad are held prisoner in Eegah's garbage bag-draped cave and Tom must find them before Roxy falls victim to a caveman's lust!

Gag. This is pretty bottom-of-the-barrel godawful stuff. It's silly, goofy, stupid and cheap, and at it's worst it makes for some pretty uncomfortable viewing. See Roxy shave daddy and Eegah! See Roxy try to pry herself out of Eegah's slimy embrace whilst sweaty dad looks on and does nothing! Ugh, it's pretty gross. Even the MST3K version is hard to sit through, even though Joel and the Bots do their best to make the nauseating sequences more bearable. There's some decent music in here for fans of 1960s beach-twisty crud, and fans of schlock will be delighted to see a cameo appearance by Ray Dennis Steckler and then- wife Carolyn Brandt as the Couple By The Pool. But other than that, this film has little to offer in the way of entertainment and may only be appreciated by true hardcore fans of bad movies.
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1/10
"Did I mention my tires are filled with water?? ....My tires are filled with water!!"
lemon_magic30 April 2005
Watching this movie is an experience akin to being run over by a dairy truck...it leaves you dazed and confused, with an overwhelming memory of cheese.

'Eegah!" is one of those enjoyably wretched films of a long gone era, made in a time when anyone thought they could make a film, and indeed, anyone could. (See "Manos" or "Teenage Strangler" for further examples.). The script is so disconnected and incoherent, the actors so unconvincing and affected, the whole vibe so amateurish and transparent in its effort to be cool and hip and with it, while having no clue as to what 'hip' really is....that you almost want to affectionately pat the cast and crew on their little heads and comfort them. "There, there, Arch Hall Sr., you did your best, that's all that matters," you want to say.

That is, when you don't want everyone associated with the film dead.

Arch Hall Jr. has been the target of numerous remarks comparing his face and appearance unfavorably to everything up to "a pile of napalmed squirrels heaped around a parking meter" (Rick Johnson from Creem magazine). In his defense, I am sure that he probably didn't look all that bad in person. But there is that unfortunate blond Pompadour and an unfortunate snub nose and too much skin bronzer, and the results on camera are indescribably uncompelling. So the camera hates him, and the poor kid is completely out of his depth; he can't act, he can't sing, and he can't do action, and the director keeps forcing him to do all those things front and center for the entire movie. You can only wonder if the kid actually thought his performance in EEGAH was going to make him the new Fabian, or if he knew that he would be lucky not to get lynched by the public when the film was released.

There are three songs 'performed' (along with an swinging band instrumental piece) by AH Jr in this film, and they are all guaranteed classics of unintended low comedy. The most side splitting is the one where Arch and his amps are poolside, and he starts lip-syncing to a song about about 'Vicki'.A coloratura soprano voice kicks in behind him a measure later, doing solfeggio on the melody line a full two octaves above his thin little voice and completely overpowering it. It's the goofiest, most overblown, inappropriate thing possible to do to this simple little ballad, but they tear right into it with gusto. What was the arranger smoking when he came up with this? (Or what did he start smoking in order to get through having to arrange it in the first place???)

The plot is also endearingly pathetic in its attempt to work in a 'Beauty and The Beast' motif between the female lead and Eegah himself...Roxy is apparently supposed to be torn between her fear of Eegah and her sympathy for him as an innocent. Or else she's supposed to be torn between Eegah and Arch Hall Jr. However...I have no idea what the young lady playing the girl was like in real life, but there has rarely been a poorer choice to play an ingénue. She does faint on cue real good, though.

Any time a film chooses to end with a quote from the Bible, you can bet that the filmmakers knew they were in trouble and wanted to invoke a 'class act' so they could gain validity from association. Given how creepy and self important Arch Hall Sr's performance was during the film, his quote from the Old Testament about "There were Giants In the Earth' , which was meant to serve as Eegah's eulogy comes completely out of nowhere, and leaves you going..."What? Huh?" And the final embrace between Archy and Roxy, where he dubs in the line "Remember...I love you" and no ones' lips move is fully as bad as "Watch Out For Snakes"...but because it comes after the movie has bludgeoned the viewer fully into a coma, I don't think people remember it as often.

Watch EEGAH! at least once. You'll have a great time heaping scorn on it.
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1/10
Hey, check it out, there's an oven in the living room!
harricklomax8 December 2004
This would have been an okay sixties monster movie with a decent monster performance by Kiel, who manages to almost pull of scary and nearly pull off sad. However there was one fatal flaw in the making of this film. That flaw was Arch Hall Sr., who co wrote, directed, acted in, and I think produced the movie. I don't know what he was thinking when he put this thing together, but it was demented. First off, the movie is just stupid. The dialogue is horrible, there are big parts that make no sense, very little happens, and the characters are all annoying and retarded. Furthermore, there are lots of really weird voice over problems, like when the three main people walk past the screen and a voice from the sky shouts at extra high volume while no one is speaking, "Watch out for snakes!". Then there's the fact that Arch Hall Sr. cast himself as the father of the girl who gets kidnapped. Maybe she was really his girlfriend in real life or maybe Arch Hall Sr. is just weird, but whatever it was, the two act really bizarre together. First of all, they do a lot of strange, "semi-sexual but in a weird and kind of gross way" things. Also, Arch, as the father, keeps pimping his daughter out to Eegah.

But the WORST thing about this movie is Arch Hall Sr.'s most painful contribution to the film. Arch Hall Jr. All I can say is that Arch Hall Jr. is probably one of the worst actor's I've ever seen, and probably one of the most horrendously ugly people who's ever lived. His face is so creepy it made me shiver ever time he smiled. Of course he was the hero.

The good thing about Eegah? Made a great episode for Mystery Science Theater 3000. The show that makes bad movies good. Watch for the living room with an oven on the wall. Check this one out. But not without MST3K to protect you. It wouldn't be worth the pain.
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5/10
Well, you can't say that this isn't a little bit different...
Red-Barracuda4 February 2014
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!
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5/10
Eegah
johnsonconstruction9 June 2007
I saw this movie last night online. I have to say it stirred my interest enough to look at the details on IMDb. I had to make sure the giant was who I thought it was. He ended up with a nice career even if the other actors didn't. I certainly wouldn't rate it as the worse movie I've seen. I am a huge fan of movies from that era and see everything I can get my eyes on. This was the first time I have ever seen this movie so I watched it intently. Not that bad by comparison. It fit perfectly into what I expected. I love IMDb, but on movies like this it is almost impossible to write 10 lines about it. But I can say if you would like to see this movie again, you can see if for free with no download at Retrovision Internet TV. Tons of movies to watch for free just click and watch. I liked it.
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1/10
Disturbing and Disgusting(possible spoilers)
jgreen88243 March 2004
Warning: Spoilers
This film is disturbing and disgusting. I wonder what Arch Hall Sr. was thinking during the making of this film. (Here's the possible spoilers) Watching the girl shave first her dad - that was gross enough. Then watching her shave Eegah and then having Eegah pawing the girl - that was really disgusting. As was said in the MST3K version - the guy must've gone to the Torgo school of fondling. I watched it under the protective seal of Mystery Science Theater 3000, then I watched the uncut version. I think the only way to watch the film is with Joel and the 'Bots.
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1/10
Craptacular!
Coventry6 November 2005
On her way to the beach, to show off with her new swimsuit, young Roxy collides a 7 ft tall caveman swinging around a big bludgeon. The prehistoric humanoid vanishes into the desert again but Roxy, along with her father and nerdy boyfriend, promptly organizes an expedition to search for him. The caveman – who only produces the word "Eegah" and therefore gets named like that – kidnaps Roxy and her father and falls deeply in love with her after she gives him a thorough shaving. When they eventually escape, Eegah is so heart-broken that he goes on a rampage in the civilized world to get back his Roxy. This is righteously labeled as one of the poorest movies ever, with awful plotting, atrocious acting and completely retarded characters. Richard Kiel looks everything but scary as the giant caveman and the "heroes" are even bigger losers (especially grease-haired Archie Hall. Jr). The screenplay contains some of the most inept lines ever written ("He's a creature - why, you just have to look at him to see that. But I know, whatever he is, he's a human being...") and the tempo is often interrupted by silly Archie Hall play-backing a God-awful love song. Avoid if you want to protect your eyes and ears from hurting.

The "MST3K"-version is vastly entertaining, though, with hilarious commentaries and witty remarks about the film's ineptitude ("He's been here since the beginning of time and all he did was three drawings??")
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10/10
Homer's Odyssey Meets Shakespeare
bobloblaw20029 December 2009
This is the second-greatest story every told. A lesson for posterity. A tale of star-crossed lovers, tortured souls, intrigue, adventure, passion, lies, anger, denial, betrayal, and finally, redemption. The master story-teller, Arch Hall Sr., regales us with an epic feature that only DeMille or Scorsese could ever truly appreciate in its sheer brilliance, the insane could only ever lament in its simplicity, and the plebeian masses could only ever envy in its complexity.

To experience Eegah is to experience being alive through:

Tommy, our intrepid hero. Although Tommy is the hero here, his dark side is evident when he gratuitously calls Eegah, the giant, "High Pockets." Does a caveman giant not also have feelings? Is this sort of callous disregard for human life really necessary? This style of writing and directing would be copied years later by Peckinpah and Tarantino. Nevertheless, Tommy redeems himself by taking Roxy into the desert to go whizing. These days, that would get you a citation and a restraining order. But in those days, that's how it was done. A guitar, a dune buggy, some bad lyrics and a tube a Brylcreem were the only tools necessary to overcome inequities of mythological proportions. Even brave Ulysses couldn't overcome these odds.

Roxy, a misunderstood teenager. You'd think that you'd have a grip on your adolescent foolishness by your mid thirties. You'd think that if your father tried to whore you off to the first lecherous bearded caveman giant that came along, you'd have a clue that something was wrong in your life. Not Roxy. She's just bought a new swim suit and you oughta see her swim. Blame it on the sulfur water. Notably, ever the avant-garde Director, Arch Hall Sr. makes use of the wild and carefree sexual revolution of the sixties as explored through the subtle nuance of Roxy's Electra complex. This is most evident when Roxy shaves her father's face in Eegah's cave. Disturbing? Perhaps.

Robert I. Miller, writer of all those adventure books, and Roxy's father. He lives up at the club, and has an oven in his living room. He mixes metaphors really badly. He quotes Bible verses that don't exist. Sometimes, he falls on his camera bag. And sometimes, just sometimes, he needs a little extra dose of those "aspirins" in his gear bag. When you were young, your mom told you not to sit so close to the TV. Now you understand why.

Then there's Krueger, the helicopter pilot who is tormented by a life of blown gaskets and acid-induced flashbacks. The headaches never really went away, and the doctors told him that he needed to stop flying people into the desert in his helicopter. How many people had he flown in, now? Was it 40? Was it 50? He couldn't remember. They were still there, where he had left them, in the desert. That wasn't important now. The doctors were trying to take his wings away. But Krueger would show them! He'd find that secret VC ammo dump and really let'em have it! If only the headaches would stop. Really, nothing the VA hospital and a hundred bucks couldn't fix.

And finally, Eegah, the caveman giant. His life was a metaphor for the conflict that exists between our inner-most desires and our need to exist as a civilized society. His downfall was the result of the primitive desires of a caveman that just didn't understand, and a tag-team Tequila themed pool party gone awry. Predictably, these monumental forces converge to create a pool party version of the perfect storm. As we see, the pool party devolves into a drunken debauchery, the likes of which would shock even Nero or Caligula. Should blame be cast upon the Desert Patrol for its lack of pool party etiquette or untrained response to a 311G in progress (large man or giant creating a disturbance)? Should blame be cast upon Roxy for her wild hypnotic dancing and seductive siren-like advances towards one of the band's guitar players? Or perhaps blame should be cast upon Tommy for getting in way over his head in a tag-team rendition of Tequila requiring no less than six musicians, when clearly, the song can only be played safely by no more than three. The message to our society is quite clear: Without the rigid rules of civilization, you too may experience the crazed love of a prehistoric giant. Alas, for Eegah, there are no good answers. God gives pistachios to those that have no teeth, and so it was unto poor Eegah. Yes, I too cried at the end.

I know. "But what of Citizen Kane? Casablanca? Gone with the Wind? Surely these works must come into play before naming a movie the second-greatest story ever told" you may ask. Did Citizen Kane have a bearded caveman giant? Did Casablanca have an oven in the living room? Was there any whizing in Gone with the Wind? I think not. To grasp the significance and depth of a masterpiece such as Eegah, one need only ponder the phrase: "You oughta see. Her. Swim."
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7/10
A prehistoric caveman falls in love with a girl, Roxie, and her father and boyfriend try to get her back after he captures her.
tfog922 February 2013
Even though this film is one of the worst movies of all time and has terrible acting, a bad plot, and awful dialog, I love it. I have been watching Eegah since I was a very young kid after we got it as a joke present from my uncle. It is so bad it is very fun to watch and I must have seen it at least 50 times over the course of my life! There is a certain sweetness about the film and the characters that makes it interesting, and by the end of the film you really will grow to to like the giant, Eegah, who despite his menacing appearance, is a nice guy. I have such great memories of this movie and while it is terrible, Eegah remains a very special film for me and all of my family.
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2/10
Disembodied Voices...
joebridge6 April 2006
An unbearable movie (which feels about three hours long) about a giant prehistoric caveman - who one day actually decides (because of a nicely-scented girl) to walk just a little farther from his cave, straight into modern civilization. Problem Number One - is that according to what I understand about ancient man and evolution (which has nothing at all to do with Bible verses as the movie implies), cavemen were actually much SMALLER than modern man. By the way, where did he get that huge bone that still had a bit of meat on it? It looked like it came from a mastodon or something.

This movie should have been called "Disembodied Voices", because whenever someone (especially Eegah) is talking loudly or shouting, their lips are barely moving (or badly out of sync) or NOT MOVING AT ALL, from start to finish! The most ludicrous scene is when Tom is singing and playing guitar and instead of the guitar, we hear a band and some additional female vocals. The scene cuts to Eegah and the music seems at a lower volume as if he is hearing an invisible band and invisible singers from a distance, then it seems to get louder again when cutting back! The other thing that makes no sense (and nor is it amusing in any way) is how he keeps loudly growling "Eegah" (with lips not moving) throughout. Yes, I know it is supposed to be funny, but I didn't find myself enjoying it much. Why would you be wandering around growling your own name endlessly, anyway? Some sort of identity crisis?

Certain young children MIGHT enjoy this movie (except for the naughty grabbing and shaving bits), but I wouldn't be too sure.

Roxy can never seem to decide whether she wants to play with Eegah's face or scream in fear.

I absolutely DETESTED the ending, also, which didn't fit at all for the general style and overall comical mood of the movie. In fact, if it had actually had a decent ending, I might have given it a three. I also might have rated it one higher had it not felt like it was so long.

2/10. I gave it as high as a two because of the very interesting opening titles, which were about a hundred times better than what came later. In fact, the opening titles looked as if ten times more was spent on those sequences than the entire rest of the movie.
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Rated Worst in "The 100 Worst Movies of All Time"
GaryZZZZ6 September 1998
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.
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1/10
Created by cavemen FOR cavemen
Travis_Moran27 July 2005
The boneheads who made and acted in this movie ought to be exiled to the mesozoic era or something. Hopefully they didn't get a chance to make any more.

That kid who played the boyfriend was the absolute WORST actor I have ever seen---I can't believe anyone could act that bad even if they were trying. And man did I suffer every time that kid tried to sing. Did they lip sync everything in this crappy fiasco? Half the time it was out of sync.

What's really hard to believe is that to date there are over 70 reviews of this movie. I can hardly imagine 70 people WATCHING this movie let alone reviewing it. All I can say is we're a hardy breed eh.

A person would be well-advised to only watch this movie if they're well intoxicated. It's the stupidest, most idiotic piece of crap I've seen in a long time. I was really, extra bored last night or I couldn't have stood more than a few minutes of this torture. The story is so weak as to be almost non-existent. And the pawing of the heroine by the giant, the boyfriend, and even her father is sick.

This movie totally wasted my time. I didn't even get a laugh from hokey effects---there weren't any. Very few (if any) movies exist worse than this one. My real rating is a -10 of 10 on this. If there were any way to go lower on the vote scale I would have. Well, at least I've got another coaster!
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1/10
"Who says 'weeee'?"
Mantophasmid3 November 2006
Warning: Spoilers
This movie was an adventure of EEGAH proportions! Complete with ridiculously long and unnecessary pop songs, a pathetic female "heroine", and a spectacular death scene in a pool. My favorite part was when the bass player from the band came out and tried to dance with the chick...because it had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story. I watched it with some friends of mine who all agreed that Eegah deserved to live! Long Live Eegah! Why aren't more women abducted by ridiculously huge (and ancient) men who try and nourish them on radioactive sulfur water, while being sequestered in a desert cave? After completing the movie we all looked at each other and sighed. Someone said, "Well, now we've watched it, we can't unwatch it".
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2/10
See unbridled caveman lust in all its glory!
planktonrules12 June 2007
Warning: Spoilers
A teenage boy and his girl are driving about the desert looking for her father--unaware that there is a living caveman running amok! The caveman seems pretty dumb and he growls and grunts, but he does seem to understand that he might be the last of his kind and it's up to him to get mating....fast! So, like King Kong, he becomes immediately infatuated (or at least in lust) with the girl! After a prolonged chase, he actually does capture her and she finds her dad is already in the cavedude's cave. However, feeling the "call of the wild", the caveman (dubbed "Eegah" by her father) tries to rape her and beats up her old man. So it's up to her puny boyfriend to beat up Eegah and get them back to civilization. So it appears they've escaped and all is well. Or is it? Back in Palm Springs, the three go to a swinging pool party where the girl pines for Eegah (after all, beating up her dad and molesting her is a big turn-on) and she wonders where he is. Soon, her curiosity is satisfied when the beast shows up and crashes the party in search of nookie.

This film was apparently made for less than $15000 and stars the director's son, his secretary and himself (using a pseudonym). The film scream economy throughout and is clearly a bad film in so many ways--the script is amazingly simple and silly, the acting only fair and the "cool band" is clearly out of sync with the music. However, I've gotta say that for such a tiny financial investment, it's actually amazingly good...or at least it looks like more than $15000 was spent on it. It looks like it must have had a huge budget of over $18000! Still, it's good for a laugh, pretty easy to watch and fun in a kooky and silly sort of way. The only major problem is the whole rape myth aspect of the film--Eegah tries to molest the stupid girl and she spends much of the film feeling sorry for him and missing him! Duhhh!!!
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1/10
One of the best comedies in the world! Pity it's meant to be a horror...
ranaskaii24 January 2006
Warning: Spoilers
I came across this movie, already started, on TV while channel-hopping. As a self-confessed bad movie lover, I simply had to watch it. I discovered it during the scene where Arch Hall Jr. and Marilyn Manning were in the desert, trying to go to sleep. She keeps telling him not to let the fire go out, he says he'll stay awake and tend the fire; the fire will keep coyotes away. Then we cut to a wide shot.

Where's this damn fire?! No fire. At all. Not even a smouldering twig. 'Aha!' I thought, 'ultra bad movie alert' and went to get supplies of food and drink to sustain me through the movie. Then Arch Hall Jr started to sing (or rather, mime.Badly.) and I discovered a new phenomenon: 'Craptastic Musical Comedies'. Where did he get the backing track from anyway? He was 'playing' his guitar but that wasn't the only instrument - what, did he find a wandering troupe of musicians trekking across the scrub?

Speaking of finding things in the desert; at one point, after showing off his ludicrously fake beard that makes him look like a reject from the stoning scene in 'Life of Brian', Eegah goes off into the desert and comes back with a fresh bunch of daffodils. Yes, daffodils. In the middle of the desert. Fresh daffodils. A whole bunch.

I won't delve into the latter half of the movie, which simply became painful rather than funny, especially when Archie Hall started 'singing' again with a completely different voice.

Best line: 'Are they dead?' (referring to the mummified corpses of Eegah's family)

I've seen movies that were entertaining because they were so bad before, but never have I seen one this pants-wettingly hilarious. The worst thing is, they seem to be serious... And why, to go with his over long, scruffy nylon beard, does Eegah the giant caveman have a blatantly 60's haircut?
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3/10
Promising concept, but poorly carried out
NerdBat16 April 2018
Eegah was one of those science fiction B movies, for me, that you could sit through and get a good laugh out of it, but not necessarily love it. I mean, the concept is pretty cool, a caveman is living on his own in the wilderness somehow unaware of the modern world around him. This could loosely be based on the story of Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe whom was discovered in California as recently as the 1900s. So yea, the concept is good, but the acting is shoddy and the storyline tends to jump around a lot. Overall, it's a decent film, but not a great one.
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2/10
An 8 for the MST3K version
mhorg20189 November 2019
There is only one way to watch this terrible movie. Along with Joel and the Bots from MST3K.
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1/10
"I swear on my Elvis Presley L.P." Hilariously crap 60's horror.
poolandrews13 December 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Eegah starts late one night with the young & attractive Roxy Miller (Marilyn Manning) driving along a Californian desert highway in Palm Springs when suddenly she spots a 'giant' (Richard Kiel) in the middle of the road, luckily for Roxy her boyfriend Tommy Nelson (Arch Hall Jr.) turns up & scares him off. Roxy tells Tommy & her Father Robert (Arch Hall Sr. who also acted as director, producer, writer & musician) who don't believe her tales of 'giants', they don't believe her that is until they decide to check the area out the next morning & discover huge footprints that could only have been made by, yes you've guessed it, a giant. The entrepreneur that he is Robert thinks that there might be some money in their discovery so sets about hiring a helicopter to drop him off in the desert to take a look around, not that there is much to see in a desert obviously, just mainly sand really. Unfortunately for Robert it's not long before Eegah finds him... Roxy gets a phone-call from the helicopter pilot who says his chopper has broken down & can she pick her Father up to which she agrees & both her & Tommy set off. Eegah has a bit of a crush on Roxy & decides he wants her to himself & no one is going to get in his way...

As star, writer, producer & director Arch Hall Sr. must be the number one suspect on the list of people to blame for making such an inept & awful film, everything about Eegah is terrible. The script by Bob Wehling is painfully slow & dull with some of the most absurd narrative ever, so you get a broken collar bone from falling over in sand? Eegah has been living in the Californian desert for literally 1000's of year & yet no one has ever seen him before Roxy? Why does Tommy have to periodically break into an awful love song? Why would someone go & look for something in desert that is probably 1000's of square miles large all by himself? What's with the beard & hair? Surely it would have been longer than that by now? Why is Eegah so clean with a set of nice white teeth too, I mean this guy has supposedly been living in the desert by himself for years & just so we, the viewer that is, knows that he is a prehistoric caveman Eegah even gets a large wooden club made from a branch. Nothing in Eegah makes a blind bit of sense & the script doesn't even try to explain anything, we just have to accept it I'm afraid. Forget about the 'so bad it's good' thing as Eegah is truly difficult to sit through. This film has zero entertainment value whatsoever while the character's & dialogue are as dumb as any your likely to witness, Eegah really has to be seen & heard to be believed although please don't take that as a recommendation whatever you do.

Director Hall Sr. shows his incompetence both in front & behind the camera as Eegah is an extremely lifeless, dull, flat & unexciting film. For instance just take the climactic showdown when Eegah 'rampages' through the town, the best he can do is walk around a bit & throw a couple of people in a swimming pool. Please stop, I can't bear the excitement anymore. However there is a hilarious scene when Eegah walks along with a bunch of yellow flowers that he has just picked for Roxy! Isn't this guy meant to be well hard? Hall Sr. also films whole scenes in the irritating day-for-night process which hardly helps the mood of the film. A special mention goes to the opening credit sequence which is one of the most bizarre & yet at the same time annoying I've ever seen, it's certainly unique to say the least & those rotten corpses look terrible. Forget about any sort of violence as there isn't any.

Apparently Eegah had a budget of about $15,000 which still doesn't excuse it from being crap. Everything is substandard, the cinematography is terrible, the guitar twanging main theme seriously got on my nerves & as a whole Eegah is a very poorly staged & executed film & what on Earth is that so-called dune buggy all about? It looks like some 5 year old glued a load of old car parts together! The acting is awful by everyone involved, Manning was apparently Hall Sr.'s secretary & all I can say is don't give your day job while Hall Jr. lets his hair style do the talking. Eegah himself the 7'2" Kiel would go onto better things as Jaws in the two James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) & Moonraker (1979).

Eegah is an awful film plain & simple, it's beyond stupid & will bore most people to death. Do yourself a favour & give this one a miss, Eegah isn't even good for laughs as there just ain't enough of them. Definitely one to avoid.
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10/10
The name is NOT written in blood!
Tim Fox25 September 1999
If this film's title is trying to make us think that this caveman actually KIILS someone, the producers are out of their minds.

But we knew that.

Anyway, to put it best, this film is like "The Flintstones" meets "Beach Party". There's a kid named Arch Hall, Jr. who basically sings a lot (with an invisible backup group!) and looks pudgy. His girlfriend, Roxy, finds a prehistoric caveman in the desert and they go after it. But Roxy's dad (Arch Hall, Sr. in real life) breaks his arm and gets caught by Eegah, the caveman (Richard Kiel, "Jaws" from James Bond). Later, Roxy gets caught by Eegah, and just as they are about to engage in some hot monkey love (there's a disgusting shaving sequence in the previous scene), along comes Mr. Cabbage Patch Elvis (as our friends at MST3K put it) and shoots him. But as they drive away in what used to be a 1935 Ford, but what is called a "Dune Buggy", Eegah gives chase and follows them back to Palm Springs, where he pushes Ray Dennis Steckler into a pool and gets shot by the police. And the dad quips about a verse in the Bible showing that he is "real".

No wonder it was voted one of the Worst Movies of All Time. But anyone who liked Robot Monster or Plan 9 from Outer Space will probably enjoy it. And don't forget the valuable lesson . . .

"Watch out for snakes!"
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7/10
Hilariously Terrible
terminus42007 November 2013
Warning: Spoilers
Eegah! One of Le Bad Cinema's most notoriously terrible productions, was directed by Arch Hall Sr. and released on June 8th, 1962. Featuring a small cast of schlock actors and actresses including: Richard Kiel, Marilyn Manning, and Arch Hall Jr., the film has obtained "Fifty Worst Films of All Time" status as stated by Michael Medved. Although the film in itself is rather boring and especially cheesy, watching the film with commentary from the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is truly hilarious. The overall plot of Eegah is particularly unbelievable and based on absolutely no scientific basis. However, numerous films have followed the same format and are still moderately enjoyable such as Demolition Man. So, what exactly makes Eegah different? Besides its ungodly explanation for how Eegah survived for the past several hundred years, the acting isn't top notch either. Basically, the storyline follows a teenage girl as her and her boyfriend go on a scavenging hunt through the desert for a genuine caveman she ran into a few nights ago. Her father, played by Arch Hall Sr., actually went out looking for the giant also after listening to his daughter's claims of nearly hitting one with her car. Somewhere along the way, Roxy is kidnapped by Eegah and dragged away to his cavernous encampment where he is also holding her father. Once within Eegah's home, her father, Robert explains how he has begun to unsophisticatedly communicate with the Neanderthal. Eegah then presents his mummified relatives to Robert and Roxy, receives a shave, gives them a glass of sulfur water, and even attempts to sexually harass his new female companion. All the while, Arch Hall Jr., has been reluctantly scouring the desert-side in his dune buggy looking for his comrades. Upon discovering their location, Roxy and Robert break free of Eegah's clutches and hop in the dune buggy. For the next subsequent fifteen minutes, Eegah chases them around the entire hillside until they finally lose him. The film ends when Eegah finds his way into a party being hosted by Roxy and picks a fight with two cops each carrying a .357 Magnum. Although the ending was a rip-off of King Kong and The Cabinet of Dr. Calagari, in total, Eegah was a good yet terrible film. Its main strong point was its affinity for making me laugh due to the sheer level of nonsense filled within its scenes. However, as a warning, if I hadn't seen it with commentary from Mystery Science Theater 3000, I might not have appreciated it as much.
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3/10
'Jaws' is on the loose!
moonspinner5512 June 2005
Richard Kiel plays the title-named creature--a misplaced caveman found living in the California mountains near Palm Springs. A low-budget mess photographed by Vilis Lapeneicks, who later shot Nancy Sinatra's "Movin With Nancy" and the acclaimed "Cisco Pike". Still, criticizing it too harshly would be like tripping a midget; it has been made with all the know-how these filmmakers seem to possess. The people who discover Eegah are an uproarious lot (a kid with too much Brylcreem in his hair, a brassy young woman who sort of resembles Frances McDormand, and an overweight daddy in tweed suits and a thin little mustache). Kiel roams the streets in full caveman regalia (holding a big plastic club with a thorn in it) looking into store windows--at those sexy mannequins!--while on the trail of his woman who apparently has a scent that drives cavemen crazy. She's busy getting down at the local pool party. Calling 007! *1/2 from ****
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