TEENAGE CAVE MAN (1958)
Article #307 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 1-16-2002
Posting date: 6-2-2002

A rebellious cave man keeps breaking the laws of the tribe to explore the regions in the land across the river.

It’s easy to poke fun at the obvious cheapness and the silliness of a lot of this movie, but if you consider that it was a caveman epic, it was quite ambitious in some ways. It’s actually trying to make some real commentary on the nature of law and tradition, and I can’t help but admire the intention; if only the script weren’t so preachily verbose about it, it might have worked better. The fact that the story just seems to wander from scene to scene doesn’t help much, either; it really could have used a couple of rewrites. Still, it gives you a chance to see ample dinosaur stock footage, with my favorite slurpasaurs Ignatz and Rumsford thrown into the mix to perform their classic battle dance. You also get to see footage from THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED and THE SHE-CREATURE, not to mention the costume from NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST. The movie features a young Robert Vaughan, Frank De Kova, Leslie Bradley, Beech Dickerson (in several roles) and Jonathan Haze.