The new release 10,000 B.C. revives a genre that some of us thought was long past reviving, the dawn-of-man cave people melodrama. The new movie's director, Roland Emmerich, is a technophile size freak who probably thinks that the latest developments in computer animation and other special effects make it a great time to visualize a chaotic, untamed planet overrun with strange forms of wildlife threatening actors who are modeling proposed hair styles for Rob Zombie — though my recollection is that, in the past, the whole point of these movies was to showcase a rising performer (such as Victor Mature, star of the 1940 One Million B.C., or Raquel Welch, star of its 1966 remake) who seems made to be photographed wearing a loincloth. Anyway, this genre received its knockout blow more than twenty-five years ago, in Caveman, filmed in Mexico by the director Carl Gottlieb, who also co-wrote the script with Rudy DeLuca. Gottlieb is a well-travelled show business jack-of-all-trades whose career includes a stint with the '60s improv-comedy troupe the Committee, various acting gigs, and partial authorship of the script of Jaws (as well as full authorship of its making-of book). Gottlieb made his film directing debut with the 1977 Steve Martin short The Absent-Minded Waiter, but Caveman was his first time behind the camera on a feature film. It remains his only feature, maybe because he's yet to find a project that might count as a worthy follow-up to directing a cast, all speaking "prehistoric" gibberish, that included Ringo Starr, John Matuszak, and a stoned Tyrannosaurus rex.
Ringo plays Atouk, the sad-sack misfit of a tribe of cave folk led by — or, rather, bullied and pushed around by — Tonda, played by the towering, fiercely bearded Matuszak. Atouk graduates from loser to outcast when he enrages Tonda by lusting after the big guy's lady, Barbara Bach. (This was the movie where Ringo and Bach met. They were married before it was released to theaters, and in a month they'll be celebrating their twenty-seventh anniversary. Tip your hats, people.) The resourceful Ringo takes advantage of his new freedom to assemble his own rival tribe, which includes Dennis Quaid, Carl Lumbly, the great Jack Gilford and, as Gilford's daughter and Ringo's eventual love interest, a very charming, pre-Cheers Shelley Long. He also discovers fire, music, advanced weaponry, and the pleasures of standing upright. (He proceeds to convert his friends, grabbing them from behind as if administering the Heimlich maneuver and yanking their spines straight to the accompaniment of a terrific cracking noise.) The whole thing has a playful, friendly quality, and the good guys are pretty close to irresistable. The bad guys are no slouches themselves; the late Matuszak gets to demonstrate an all-out slapstick aplomb that Hollywood seldom bothered to tap during his acting career, and Bach, strutting about in her fur bikini, was accurately described by one reviewer, Michael Sragow, as looking like a Frank Frazetta illustration come to life. Mixed in among the people are a quartet of stop-motion dinosaurs, including the aforementioned T-rex, who are very ready for their close-ups. Will 10,000 B.C. reveal that its makers have learned anything from Ringo and company? It remains to be seen, but I have a feeling that if Roland Emmerich understood anything about the appeal of stop-motion dinosaurs, he never would have made Godzilla.