Let us take a moment of silence for the lost brain cells — yours, mine, and those of everyone involved in the making of Eegah. Directed by Arch Hall Sr. under the cleverly deceitful pseudonym “Nicholas Merriwether,” this is a film that asks the haunting question: “What if a caveman survived into the modern era… and fell in love with your girlfriend… and then shaved… and then died?”
Somewhere between a rock concert, a vacation slideshow, and a fever dream about Neanderthals learning table manners, Eegah unfolds like a student film that’s been left in the sun too long. It is perhaps best remembered for its inclusion on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which is a polite way of saying that its true destiny was to be mocked with pizza and a six-pack.
The Plot — or What Passes For One
The story, and I use that term loosely, follows Roxy (Marilyn Manning), a teen with the survival instincts of an open sandwich. While driving alone through the desert — a brilliant idea at night — she almost runs over a shaggy, grunting behemoth of a man. This is Eegah, played by the towering Richard Kiel, who later redeemed himself by portraying Jaws in the Bond films — proof that evolution is real and sometimes even kind.
She tells her father (Arch Hall Sr.) and her boyfriend Tom (Arch Hall Jr.) about the encounter, and Dad, apparently starved for excitement in his job as an adventure novelist, ventures into the desert alone to investigate. Naturally, he disappears, prompting Roxy and her quiff-haired crooner boyfriend Tom to embark on a search in their trusty dune buggy. What they find is less “Jurassic Park,” more “Jurassic Bark.”
Dad has been kidnapped by the caveman, and to pass the time before inevitable clubbing-to-death, he encourages his daughter to flirt with the enormous, grunting troglodyte, like some sadistic version of The Bachelor: Pleistocene Edition. “Play along,” he urges, as Eegah grunts and paws and generally behaves like someone who hasn’t bathed since the Ice Age — which, to be fair, is canonically accurate.
Say It With Rock and Roll
This entire production is a vanity project designed to elevate Arch Hall Jr. to “teen idol” status. Instead, he ends up resembling a kid whose garage band got lost on the way to the beach and ended up in a caveman’s crawlspace. Hall Jr. strums through a couple of original numbers, including “Vicky” and “Valerie,” which sound suspiciously like two halves of the same undercooked love song.
Every time the film comes to a grinding halt — and it does, frequently, like a car running out of gas on the road to coherence — we are treated to Tom crooning while Roxy twirls her hair and stares blankly into the middle distance. You’d think a prehistoric monster kidnapping her family would elicit more emotion than the reaction one gives to an overdone cheeseburger.
Shave and a Haircut — Two Millennia
The most notorious moment in Eegah — and there are several contenders — is the “shaving scene.” Yes, Marilyn Manning actually shaves Eegah’s face in his cave. The moment is supposed to be tender. It is instead horrifying. There is a wordless suggestion that this cave romance is heating up, and for a fleeting moment, one wonders if the film is about to do something truly transgressive. But no — it just lets that uncomfortable ambiguity fester, like five-day-old meat left out in the sun.
Eegah Takes the Town (Briefly)
After the daring dune buggy escape, Eegah makes his way to civilization — meaning a hotel swimming pool and a party with four people in it. His big city rampage consists of shoving one man into a pool and getting shot by the police. It’s like King Kong by way of a retirement home water aerobics class.
What’s most baffling is the lack of urgency. Eegah grunts and ambles like a man who got lost on the way to Arby’s, and the cast reacts with the emotional bandwidth of Ambien patients. The climactic shootout isn’t climactic. It’s more like an exhausted shrug — a mercy killing for both Eegah and the audience.
Production Notes from the Cave
The movie was shot on the kind of budget that makes Ed Wood look like Steven Spielberg. The desert doubles as every location. Arch Hall Sr.’s house apparently substitutes as an apartment, a hotel, and possibly a hospital. The sound mix was likely handled by a possum with tinnitus. Continuity errors abound, and dialogue seems dubbed in post by people guessing what the actors might have said.
Even Richard Kiel, a physical marvel and surprisingly nuanced performer when given material (Moonraker comes to mind), is reduced to a lumbering, moaning joke here. His caveman is all height and no menace — a sort of prehistoric Mister Rogers in a loincloth.
Final Thoughts: Prehistoric Purgatory
If you ever wondered what a rock-and-roll caveman romance would look like if shot in someone’s backyard with their dad’s camera and edited by gremlins, Eegah is the answer. It’s not scary. It’s not funny — intentionally, at least. It’s not even endearing in its incompetence. It’s just… baffling.
Eegah is a fossil — not because it’s from the past, but because watching it is like trying to extract meaning from a dried-out bone. There is, however, a strange fascination in how utterly, completely it misses every mark. If cinematic failure were an Olympic sport, Eegah would take gold, grunt once, and then be immediately shot by the police.
