Every single day, discoveries emerge that alter the course of humanity. One day, it’s just a giant floating rock until we land, claiming a giant leap for mankind (unless you believe it was a hoaxy leap for Kubrick kind). We dig in our backyards and think, “Oh, this three-thousand-year-old bone must be the first people who roamed the Earth,” until we find a new bone three weeks later that’s ten thousand years old. Our understanding of the Stone Age cavemen’s history is constantly being rewritten as discoveries are unearthed. The “caveman” as we know it today (or at least until Tuesday when it all changes) reigned during the “stone age” (far out, man) from about three million years ago when our ancestors started making handheld tools till around three hundred thousand years ago (when idiots named Todd showed up in flipped colors) and would often have massive jawlines, hairy backs (Gillette wouldn’t be around for another millennia or so), and prominent brow ridges. As you can imagine, they looked like real studly fellows, but what they certainly never looked like was clean-shaven guys from Malibu beach, just like the fellow Neanderthals like handsome Robert Vaughn in the Roger Corman lizard-lounger Teenage Caveman (“I don’t want to take the T-rex for a walk, mom!”).
A long time ago, in the depths of an oily swampland called Hollyweird, two archeologists of pop cinema culture, James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff of American International Pictures, dug out a diamond in the rough with a cheap and efficient filmmaker named Roger Corman, and all three’s careers were never the same again. Working for very little money and getting entire movies in the can in mere days (two days and a night for Little Shop of Horrors), for AIP, it was a match made in heaven. With Corman’s quick approach to filmmaking (and low overhead), Arkoff and Nicholson found a (cash cow) partner in crime that would yield them nice houses and expand their theatrical to be one of the true original (and profitable) independents to ever compete with the major studios. In fact, it was not long before the majors copied them with their own juvenile delinquent films, or they would eventually buy and distribute some of the AIP films directly. Although Corman had nothing to do with them, AIP’s early success with two monster hits (in more ways then one) that used the word “Teenage” in their titles (I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein) led the company to slap the moniker on anything they could, including a Corman directed film originally lensed under the title Prehistoric World. Chiseled together on a meek budget of seventy thousand dollars, and filmed entirely in Griffith Park, California, within two weeks, Corman has had a mighty jurrais roar over the years regarding the title switch on the film, and rightly so. Clearly, Robert Vaughn is not a teenager whatsoever (he has five o’clock shadow at nine in the morning), dealing with several adult situations, from relationship heartaches to tribal politics, but to be fair, neither is the film a “Prehistoric” environment, as it takes place in the future where the planet has reverted to paleolithic times (there isn’t even a dinosaur as promised with the poster). It’s hard to tell which thickhead had the better title, as certainly the “Teenage” verbiage for the poster campaign pulled the juvenile delinquents to the seats, excavating huge sales in rentals with its double feature with AIP’s How to Make a Monster (profit).
In the distant future (not a long, long time ago), humans have reverted to their old ways. Instead of dressing in nice tailored suits and riding in automobiles, mankind raided the old Tarzan wardrobes, lived in caves, and literally had to re-invent the wheel to survive. Lately, though, their resources have been diminishing, even though across the river of where they live lies a lush, plant filled utopia that could provide endless resources (until they themselves diminish it later – humans… will we ever learn), but there is one issue” an old and scient tribal tale of a horrific deity that will kill them if they cross the river (talk about being landlocked)! However, once a member of the tribe (handsome and loinclothed Vaughn) crosses the river, he discovers there is no ancient and old God but an old survivor of a nuclear holocaust in a dissolved suit. As you watch the film, prepare to answer the question at the end of the film: Will humanity someday repeat its nuclear folly after civilization has once again risen to its former heights, or will we continue to make cheap, quickie flickies like this for a few extra rocks in our pockets?
Chiseled out of rock at a crumbling sixty-five minutes, Vaughn once commented this was the worst film he had ever appeared in, and this was years after starring in such high-quality art films like Starship Invasions and C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud! Although rare to not be one of the numerous Corman-AIP public Domain dinosaurs, you can find bootleg copies online and on platforms like TUBI, but be sure to catch the classic episode of MST3K. So, the next time you are in history class looking at a beautifully drawn caricature of a caveman, remember that thanks to Corman, you might not be looking at your ancestor. It might be a future descendant struggling to survive a ravaged landscape void of ancient drive-ins!
