Tonight's Awful Bedtime Movie: "Eegah!"


"Watch out for snakes!"

Long before he was Jaws, Richard Keil was an eons-old teenage caveman in this 1962 bomb.

Another one of director Arch Hall, Sr.'s vehicles for his singing, dancing, poor man's Elvis son Arch Hall, Jr., "Eeegah!" is widely known as one of the worst movies ever. So bad, Michael Medved picked it for his book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time." (Actually, Arch Hall, Jr. isn't all that bad. Though, he eventually left films to become an airline pilot.)

In this one, Junior's girlfriend nearly runs over caveman Richard Keil. Her father, a somehow famous adventure book author (played by his father, director Arch Hall, Sr.) sets out to find him in the desert.

When he doesn't return, Junior and girlfriend set out to find her dad/his dad. But not before a long and pointless dune buggy scene. (For some reason, Junior's ownership of a dune buggy seems to be a major plot point.)

Oh, and a forced and seemingly unending musical number, seeing as the entire film was just a reason for Arch Hall, Sr. to push his talented, but not that talented, singing son.

Once they get off their duff and go look for him, Jaws kidnaps the cute girl and keeps her in his cave, along with his/her dad. Oh, and he also keeps thousands of years worth of dead relatives in the cave, whom he talks to.

Junior rescues them, so Jaws follows them to the modern day city to get his girl back. Movie ends with folks cleaning up caveman with a pool skimmer.

Acting, non-rambling dialogue and editing are not strong points. In an infamous scene, as Junior, cute girl and his/her dad walk away from the car, a poorly dubbed voice belonging to none of the actors bellows "Watch out for snakes!"

Despite having few words of actual dialogue and just grunting his way through the film, Kiel's pretty cool in this one. A delightfully and legendarily awful movie.

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