Eegah (1962)

You know what; I just found out that I cannot legally have a movie-reviewing website like I do without having a review up for Eegah.

It's not like I review stuff like The Bicycle Thief or La Dolce Vita on a regular basis, understand; this is a site that caters to Mr. and Mrs. Lowest Common Denominator out there (no offense, of course) and shows them what they should be watching, bless their hearts.

With this in mind, and wanting to be within my legal rights as Webmaster, I now present to you the masterwork of several people involved herein, excluding Richard Kiel, but we'll get to the big guy soon enough.

Let's start, though, with the director of this magnum opus: Arch Hall Sr. Here is a man who had an interesting life. Grew up in South Dakota and not only spoke the Sioux language fluently but even had a Sioux name (Waa-toe-gala Oak-Shilla, which translates to mean Wild Boy. Hmmm...).

He was a pilot in the Air Force, worked as a stuntman in 1930s Hollywood, got some speaking roles, started his own production company (Fairway International Productions) and under this banner he either produced, wrote or directed - or sometimes all three - films specifically for the drive-in consumption. We lovingly know them as B-Movies.

Hall Sr. met loving wife Addalyn Faye Pollitt when they both worked at the same South Dakota radio station. They married and had one son, whom they named after Arch...just added a Jr. at the end of his name and history was made.

And so it came to be that Arch Jr.'s acting abilities came to be known to the world at large in only his second-ever film (his first was The Choppers, but we're not here to talk about that one).

Now, before we get to the impact of this thing on you, the casual viewer, let us find out what the whole thing is about. While driving through the vast, sprawling desert just outside Palm Springs, teenage girl Roxy (Marilyn Manning) is frightened by a seven-foot giant (Richard Kiel), dressed in animal skins and long beard, which appears in her path. After escaping, she returns to the site with her boyfriend Tom (Arch Jr.) and her father Mr. Muller (Arch Sr.) in an attempt to find the giant. They do, and through a series of events that involve abduction, musical numbers, dune buggy riding (WHEE!) and shaving, the beast proceeds to terrorize this intrepid trio and various residents, culminating in the rocking-est poolside party this side of Frankie and Annette.

Logically, everyone thinks that this creature, (named "Eegah" by Mr. Miller because he says that word a few times) is a caveman, because he dresses like one, he lives in a cave and his best friends are all mummified remains of poncho-wearing cave dwellers. So no wonder everyone fears him. Being over seven feet tall and carrying a huge club doesn't help matters, either.

This is a movie in which conventional reviewing doesn't take. You don't look at how good the cinematography is, how rich the colors are, how many beautiful people star in it or any parallels to the works of Eisenstein or Bertolucci.

Eegah is a film made strictly for the drive-in movie crowd. Right down to the rock and roll music. Tunes like "Vicki", "Valerie" and "Nobody Lives on the Brownsville Road" probably made the teenyboppers wriggle in their seats - especially if their seats were anywhere near as uncomfortable as mine is - and at least had a good beat and you could dance to them.

The acting is something else altogether: Roxy, as essayed by Manning (who was a personal secretary for Hall Sr prior to this), is a good screamer but also at least a wily vixen who thinks on her feet - when she isn't being picked up off of them and carried away after fainting. Hall Sr. (naming himself William Watters so no one could dare call out "auteur" in his presence) does the doting dad/intrepid explorer/stuffed shirt thing quite well, and he at least knows enough to underplay and let the kids and the caveman take the spotlight. And Arch Jr. plays the boyfriend/rock singer well enough - even if he shouldn't wear tight white shorts or get as many close-ups as he does here. He does work that pompadour, I'll say that.

Hall Sr. directed (as Nicholas Merriwether - ANOTHER alias??) and at least proved he was a competent filmer; it's not his fault that was in the service of a giant modern-day caveman movie featuring his son and his secretary.

The movie belongs to Richard Kiel, though. Hall Sr. even based Eegah on meeting Kiel one time (thinking, no doubt, "Hey, that guy looks like a caveman!"). Kiel worked as a bouncer in a night club prior to this role, his second big movie (his first was The Phantom Planet - word to my "Mystery Science Theater 3000" contingent!). Glowering into the camera, wearing a long fake beard, muttering out "eegah" or "dehmlow" every so often, eating whole slabs of meat, picking up and tossing Ray Dennis Steckler into a pool and lusting after the beauteous Roxy, Kiel owns.

I would go so far as to say that Eegah is better known to any fan of Kiel than The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker or The Human Duplicators. After all, who can think of Eegah without thinking of him; the titular (cave)man of the hour? Even the standard-issue regular-car made up to look like a cop-car doesn't upstage our boy.

And as far as Hall Sr. goes; he kept up his winning combo of low-budget/high-concept film-making and made quite the nice profit with Eegah, easily earning back his $15,000 budget on the premiere night alone (held at a Nebraska drive in, natch). Anything more he earned was gravy.

This movie has been called one of the most enjoyably bad films made, one of the fifty worst films ever and other such. But even with that kind of derision, it is still endlessly enjoyable. This is the old school, kids; film-making that guaranteed to distributors there would be butts in the seats (or at least cars in the drive-in lot) and money to be made. And even today, Eegah is making money - it's a rare and happy b-movie collector who can get their grubby mitts on a copy of this little gem. I have mine - you got yours?

By the time Hall Sr. died in 1978, he had produced nine movies, written eight (including co-writing The Corpse Grinders, another classic) and been a featured actor in 24 projects overall. Eegah was the only movie that he directed, however. And why that is I have no idea. Even Roger Corman directed 56 movies; of course, Corman had connections, too. Hall Sr. may not have had the breaks Corman did, but the one film he did direct - I think we can agree that it was a doozy.

If there is a bad part about Eegah, it is that a certain sadness lingers on after watching it. Very few movies can be at once so very bad and still so very good. And by good, I mean as re-watchable, as re-quotable and redoubtable as this. A certain innocence and lightness of tone permeates the proceedings, making even the action scenes take on a note of child-like wonder. Even with such an openly-obvious dubbed warning to be careful of the mother-lovin' snakes on the mother-lovin' desert floor, you can't help but overlook the faults, smile, sit back and enjoy.

In short; Eegah is dumb, but it's a good dumb.