TEENAGE CAVEMAN
PLOT-In a post-apocalyptic future, a group of teenagers who live like barbarians meet up with a mysterious and outrageous couple who have maganged to stay technologically advanced.
VIOLENCE-This movie is very gory! Wahoo! A cross is shoved in someone's eye, people are impaled, hearts and guts are ripped out, a head is torn off, and people explode in a gory mess.
SEX/NUDITY-Oh my! Lots of this too! Pretty much through the whole movie we see the entire cast naked and/or having cable-tv sex. Too many naked breasts and asses (male and female) to count.
WHY I LIKED IT-Everyone will agree that, like him or not, Larry Clark makes pretty twisted films. KIDS and BULLY both got a huge reaction from audiences and critics alike, and you can't refute that. He's just got a certain gritty realistic style that is a bit too true to life than most films present. So imagine what he'd do if a major cable television production company gave him a lot of money to do a horror film. Well look no further than TEENAGE CAVEMAN, part of Showtime's "Creature Features" series of films that debuted on their network last Halloween. Of the 5 flicks that were made (all quite good in my opinion), Clark's was by far the weirdest and most exploitational of them all. Full of sex and violence in the traditional drive-in-movie sense. I loved it. And it's pretty hard to shock someone like me because I've seen a lot of whacked-out movies in my time. I'd almost venture to say that I actively seek out films that are controversial or have a reputation, quite similar to people who travel the globe riding the scariest rollercoasters. But TEENAGE CAVEMAN did shock me and that is awesome. Great cast, great acting, great story, great effects (thanks to Oscar-winning monster maker Stan Winston), and brilliant filmmaking on Clark's part.
DOWNSIDE-The movie itself is fantastic, but the DVD release is pretty sparse. The making-of featurette is terrible, all it talks about are the costumes. You'd think, given the audience for the film and the nature of the talent involved, they'd spend some time detailing how the special effects were done. I'd have loved to hear commentary from the cast or from Clark. The DVD, while great-looking and great-sounding (with kickass cover art too), doesn't have much to offer in terms of extras. I thought that was the whole point of DVD in the first place.
MEMORABLE SCENES-After a character's head is ripped off, it hangs around till the end of the movie because Clark always films it for some reason. The head isn't moving around or talking, it's just kinda there sitting on a chair. I guess they thought that it was such a good dummy head, they should have as many shots of it as possible. Weird.
NOTES-This film was originally shown unrated on cable TV, but the DVD release has an R rating. I couldn't tell the difference myself.
(July 2002)