Eegah
Eegah (1962) Rewatch: ✅
Fulfilling the bulk of my “perfect teen movie” requirements, Eegah also has the added bonus of a scene where someone shaves the fake beard off an all too horny caveman, the titular Eegah. There aren’t too many films with a scene like that in. If you need me to sell this a bit more (that should be enough for anyone but I know people can’t half be demanding), the caveman lives with the corpses of his dead relatives in the desert and he chats with them pretty often. Oh, and is played by the same dude who played Jaws in Bond.
Eegah is notorious for turning up on “worst film ever” lists but honestly, I think that does it a massive injustice. It’s not that bad in the grand scheme of things and it’s a stretch on my part and then some but if you get me drunk enough, I will totally try and convince you that it’s the closest a teen film gets to The Hills Have Eyes Part 2. Nobody will ever buy my argument but I’m holding onto it all the same. I don’t care. It is (hic).
Now, fair enough, it does all drag when two of the cast are stuck in a cave with Eegah but once they’re out, and Eegah is out and on the loose, it’s a riot. Some wealthy dudes get to go for an enforced swim, a rock and roll band plays in Eegah’s arrival at a motel party leading to a police chase, the most hilariously feeble rooftop escape (the motel is small, the caveman is big, it just doesn’t add up to a successful getaway plan) and leads into what threatens, momentarily, to be some party chaos on par with Piranha or Freddy’s Revenge. However! The rule of Eegah, as a film, is that if any whelm can be undered, it will under that whelm.
The seconds where it looks like some serious excitement and violence might ensue pass and, well, if you’ve never seen a clean shaven caveman fail to hit someone with a folding chair before, now is your chance to right that particular movie wrong. Eegah could totally, totally hurt someone with that chair the way he’s going about stuff. Lucky for us he can swing a club alright but not a chair, eh? Incident avoided.
It’s all complete nonsense but it’s also kinda the archetypal teen monster movie in so many regards. All the good stuff is there! The songs are a bit of a bop too, some nice and catchy teen rock n roll that all fits perfectly within the film. And! Out the blue, Richard Kiel brings a curious amount of dashing to the latter half of his performance, against all conceivable odds.
It wouldn’t even be in my top 50 worst films. It wouldn’t even be close. I’ll probably watch it again this week just because I can.