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

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In B-movie king Roger Corman’s last directorial effort to date, Frankenstein Unbound, L.A.-based scientist Dr. Buchanan (John Hurt, Alien) hits a “time slip” caused by testing his latest weapon, thus transporting him back to 19th-century Geneva, where the monstrous creature (Nick Brimble, Little John of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) created by Dr. Frankenstein (Raul Julia, The Addams Family) is running loose and killing people.

Buchanan drives around the primitive village in his computerized super car, trying to end the reign of the monster, who at one point pulls a guy’s heart out and shows it to the poor guy just before he drops dead. Somehow, Buchanan still finds time to get inside the corset of Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda, Jackie Brown). “Percy and Byron preach free love,” she says. “I practice it.” Bo-i-i-ing!

Bizarrely, Buchanan and the monster team up to get the car in another time slip, in a scene that recalls both Back to the Future and TV’s Knight Rider. That’s kind of the uneasy mix that floats in and out of this one. Put good actors in front of Corman’s camera and his proficiency as a director can be seen. Based on the 1973 Brian Aldiss novel of the same name, Unbound is unusual, colorful and sometimes cool. Although it lags in its dream sequences, Corman’s take on the tale is better than Kenneth Branagh’s more straightforward one just a few years later. —Rod Lott

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