315 - TEENAGE CAVEMAN with shorts: AQUATIC WIZARDS and CATCHING TROUBLE

Shorts:  This experiment begins with two great shorts.  The first is called Aquatic Wizards and it’s a dated little light-hearted newsreel on the stunt water skiing at Cypress Gardens, Florida.  J&tBs do a great job riffing this short and it is one of my personal favorites from the show.  (This short is also available on the MST Shorts Vol. 3 videocassette).  The second short called Catching Trouble is a nature bit about a man named Ross Allen who goes into the woods to capture live animals for zoos that’s very dated in its insultingly inhumane treatment of animals.  J&tBs riff this one even better than the first short and the follow-up host segment in which they spoof the short and get sweet revenge on the cruel animal catcher is absolutely hilarious, one of my all-time favorite host segments.  This short is also available on video, on the MST Shorts Vol. 2 tape, but – unfortunately – without the great host segment that goes with it  (Rhino really should have put it on there, because the short is incomplete without the cathartic host segment).

Synopsis:  The feature is another dull one from Roger Corman that was probably shot in about three days, with a day off in the middle.  The movie opens on a caveman tribe, living according to the “law” passed on down through the years.  A greasy-haired Robert Vaughn plays one particular caveman – the 30-ish teenage caveman of the title – and he questions the law, an act that is forbidden.  Egged on by a lame guy (in both meanings of the term), Vaughn wants to travel to the forbidden area on the other side of the river, where a deadly beast is said to live.  His father tells him to obey the law, but Vaughn just continues to look off wistfully and talk on and on about the other side of the river.  After his father is wounded by a guy in a bear suit during a hunting expedition, Vaughn decides to visit the forbidden area alone.  There he invents the bow-and-arrow, encounters the strange beast, and then later is chased by some dogs that escaped from the pound.  But Vaughn’s injured father soon shows up and takes him back to the tribe.  Vaughn next convinces some other young hunters to go with him to the other side of the river, but – after one of them is killed – they also return to the tribe.  Vaughn is tried for breaking the law and the Lame Guy, who hates him, wants Vaughn put to death. But his only punishment is that the rest of the tribe can’t talk to him until he reaches manhood.  (Given that he’s in his thirties already, when exactly will that be?)  Of course, this is pretty much ignored by the script as everyone still continues to talk to him, and so when Vaughn does reach manhood (his 38th birthday, I guess), he takes a woman and, for a short time, settles down.  But, before long, he is looking away wistfully again, so he decides to once again cross the river into the forbidden area.  He sneaks over there... but his father soon follows him yet again.  Meanwhile, the Lame Guy hears that Vaughn crossed the river again, so he puts together a posse to go and find the law-breaker.  And the escaped dogs from the pound also show up as well.  Vaughn runs into the strange, goofy-looking beast again and is trying to communicate with it, when the Lame Guy throws a rock on the beast’s head and kills it.  This causes Vaughn to kill the Lame Guy with his flimsy bow-and-arrow.  He then pulls the head off the beast and sees that it’s just an old man underneath, who has a strange picture book with him.  The movie ends as this dead old man narrates and explains that a nuclear war destroyed the world and resurrected the dinosaurs, while the few survivors regressed back into cavemen.

Don’s Review:  Lame movie from Roger Corman that’s so low budget that the cavemen costumes look like strips of shag carpet and cut-up sheets sewn together, plus the few shots of “prehistoric” creatures are simply stock footage of bad special effects from other movies.  And Robert Vaughn’s “wistful” acting in this consisted almost entirely of him staring off and spacing out.  While the twist ending was an attempt to try to add a little something of interest to this movie, it’s really too little too late.  But the riffing by J&tBs is excellent and really helps make this dull movie into an enjoyable watch.  The host segments are great all around, with a funny spoof of kids having nothing to do on a rainy day in the prologue (which is probably my all-time favorite prologue, because it captures a sense of what being a kid on a rainy day was really like in the years before home computers, video, and cable TV), a great invention by J&tBs, and a hilarious gang fight spoof by the Mads.  All-in-all, this is a pretty solid episode top-to-bottom.

Don’s Rating:     [ S1: S2: F: ]

Forrest’s Review:  When I saw this episode the first time, I was disappointed, but then I watched it again on a high quality DVD from www.mst3kvideos.com, and I will say that I liked the episode a lot more the second time.  First of all, I remember this movie being really slow and boring, and the second time, it seemed to go by faster.
      The movie Teenage Cavemen is horrible, but I’d have to say that it is much better than its perverted remake.  It’s a Roger Corman film, so it’s obviously boring as hell, but luckily, this movie is short.  Joel and the ’Bots riff the movie decently enough, with plenty of jokes that made me chuckle, and quite a few that made me laugh out loud, but nothing like classic episodes such as Escape 2000 or Space Mutiny.  But I am not quick to jump on BBI for it – this movie is simply to dry and boring to be made into a great MST3K episode.  Still, there were a lot of good riffs, and I’d have to say that they saved the movie.  I actually appreciated Roger Corman’s attempt to have a surprise twist ending, and it was a pretty good one, but the vast majority of the movie is too lame and corny to support any attempt at intelligence.
      The first short has some decent riffing, but I simply think that there are too many shorts out there that have funnier riffing.  The second one however was funny as hell, as Joel and the ’Bots heckle Ross and his cruel ambitions.  But it was the host segments that truly stand out here.  The one on catching Ross was as funny as anything done on the show, and the constant gang fight with the Mads was hilarious.  The invention exchanges were pretty amusing, and the end segment with Crow and Tom dressed up as the lame monsters/old guys in radiation suits in the movie was a great end to this episode.  Though I believe that there are episodes with far better riffing on movies, the great host segments and a great short really help this one.

Forrest’s Rating:     [ S1: S2: F: ]

Related Link:
   (1) Mighty Jack’s MST3K Review (Episode Review)