For Teenage Caveman, a remake of Roger Corman’s 1958 adventure starring Robert Vaughn, talentless pervo Kids director Larry Clark rounded up perhaps the most unappealing group of what looks like malnourished, anorexic, doped-up, but well-shampooed young adults he could unearth. These teens live in a cave in a post-apocalyptic America, but when one of them kills the sexually predatory tribal leader, they hightail it toward the ruins of Seattle, but a storm knocks them out en route.
They mysteriously wake up in their underwear, in a high-tech, 21st-century compound, having been brought there by its inhabitants, an Asian slut (Tiffany Limos, Clark’s Ken Park) and her boyfriend, Neil (Richard Hillman, Bring It On), who looks like James Van Der Beek if he were a member of the New York Dolls. From here, Clark’s waste of a film becomes the making of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, as Neil and his lady introduce the innocents to the joys of shaving your pubic region in a communal bath, snorting coke, drinking Cutty Sark by the bottle and — with detailed, hands-on instruction — having promiscuous sex.
This paradise soon sours as the kids begin dying at the hands of Neil, who is really a 120-year-old genetic freak with superheightened senses. He hulks out into a large-craniumed, hairy-chested monster who runs around in silver trousers. Thus, it’s the usual Clark film: quasi-kiddie porn with amateur acting and a shitty screenplay (“You’re a looner!” the heroine exclaims at the monster), but with the added bonus of the occasional exploding human.
Just because this is the only movie you’re likely to see where the creature flips off the “hero” and screams “You fuckin’ cunt!” before being blown to smithereens doesn’t mean you should. —Rod Lott