Eegah! The Crazed Love Of a Prehistoric Giant For a Ravishing Teen-Aged Girl! (Played by a woman in her late 30s) Eegah Had Never Seen a Girl, Until One Fell Into His Arms. Boy Fights Giant For Girl! Eeeeegahhh!
Yep, this is the retarded drunk clown show where Jaws himself from James Bond (Richard Kiel) plays a not-so-convincing prehistoric caveman with the cleanest skin and fakest beard, and lives on sulphur water. Then you have the incompetent sound guy who forgot to push the record button during most of the filming, later fixed with bad dubbing. Classic. Add some cringe and desperate nepotism to eleven where the director had some big hopes to plant his son as the new Elvis Presley. And according to the film’s poster: Desert dune buggy first time on screen! This film has it all.
So, this Eegah-guy (his name never gets mentioned, by the way) is wandering one night on some road not so far from the Californian desert with his club where he almost gets run over by Roxy. While Eegah looks like someone doing a Flintstones cosplay, the same could be said about Roxy, who looks more like Betty, as she wears a cute blue dress, and even talking like a low-IQ Hanna-Barbera character. After she faints of shock, Eegah heads back to the desert. Her boyfriend, Tom, suddenly shows up and takes her back to her dad. She tries to convince her dad, Robert (played by the director himself, Arch Hall Sr.) and Tom that she just saw a giant. And guess what — dad believes her, because according to the Book of Genesis, the giants once walked the Earth. Amen and God bless. Her boyfriend isn’t so sure, though. Here you have some of the dialogues between Roxy and Tom. Roll the clip:
Roxy: My dad still doesn’t believe! (Uhm, ok?)
Tom: Suuure he does.
Roxy: And neither do YOU!
Tom: I swear on my Elvis Presley LP. How big did you say he was?
Roxy: Oh, bigger than anybody YOU ever saw!
Tom: I bet you were scared, huh?
Roxy: A little. But I had the funniest feeling that he wouldn’t hurt me.
Next morning Betty, I mean Roxy, shows her dad the spot where she saw the giant. Watch out for snakes! Holy COW, he was standing right here WATCHING us, Tom says. Then he took off for Shadow Mountains. While Roxy’s dad flies to the mountains in a helicopter to search for this giant, our love couple spends some quality time by the pool. Here we get our first song number (of three) from Tom where he sings the love ballad of Vicky to Roxy while she has a little swim:
♫ ♪ I LoOOove You Vicky, Yoouu Know I DoOOo, Vicky Oh Viickyy ♪ …
My heart just melts. The random singing doesn’t come from nowhere though. Tom is played by Arch Hall Jr, the son of the director, who, as mentioned, had big plans to make him the new Elvis. He thought it was a good idea to utilize several parts of the film to showcase his talent, where he has more of the charisma as an average roadhouse singer while the songs are mixed with some laughable bad lip-sync. Hall Sr tried for the last time to put him that same year in the comedy/romance Wild Guitar. Didn’t go so well. Junior retired from showbiz in 1965 and was never keen on talking about his short-lived acting career ever again. Who can blame him.
Anyway… When Roxy’s dad goes radio silence, her and Tom goes out to the desert in a buggy where Roxy gets kidnapped by Eegah (no shit) and taken to his cave where she gets reunited with her dad. The cave entrance is, of course, filmed at the iconic Bronson Caves, which was also used in Robot Monster (1954) and numerous other movies and TV shows. The exteriors of Eegah’s cave looks as fake as you can imagine. It’s now up to Barney, I mean Tom, to save his girlfriend Betty, I mean Roxy, and her dad.
Some highlights:
— When Tom and Roxy are buggy-cruising through the desert while Roxy shouts Weee!, like Lucas The Spider.
— When Roxy shaves Eegah’s fake beard. Yes, really.
— When Eegah then eats some of the shaving cream. Comedy gold!
— When Eegah introduces Roxy to his dead, mummified family in the corner of his cave. Here it gets a little creepy.
— All of the Eegah’s mumbling dubbed “dialogue“.
— The fight scenes where Eegah bitch-slaps like a real caveman instead of using his club.
— When Eegah crashes a party and does everything he can to not destroy a single valuable thing with his big club, since there wasn’t any budget for expendable set pieces. The one and only thing he destroys during the entire film is a door.
— The whole movie.
Eegah is on the public domain and easy to find. Yabba Dabba Cheese!
Director: Arch Hall Sr.
Writers: Bob Wehling, Arch Hall Sr.
Country & year: USA, 1962
Actors: Arch Hall Jr., Marilyn Manning, Richard Kiel, Arch Hall Sr., Clay Stearns, Bob Davis, Deke Richards, Ron Shane, Addalyn Pollitt
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055946/
