Caveman on DVD

Caveman is probably more silly than laugh out loud funny, but that’s okay.

Ringo Starr starrs as Atouk, a bright and innovative, but basically chickenhearted, cave man lusting after the heart (or whatever) of his tribe’s leader's main squeeze Lana (Barbara Bach). But he ends up being an outcast (more than once, in fact) and eventually puts together his own tribe made up of outcasts like himself and including a very young Dennis Quaid, a pre-Cheers Shelley Long, veteran character actor Jack Gilford and others.

The plot, such as it is, meanders from episode to episode, and includes hip drug jokes, hip sex jokes, and other examples of hipness. It takes a while to begin understanding the characters’ gibberish language, though by the time you’re getting comfortable with it one of the characters explains what all the grunts mean in English anyway - a case of talking down to the audience if we’ve ever heard of one…

The real highlight of the flick, at least for sci-fi movie fans, are the special effects, which features low budget but well done stop motion animation in the grand Ray Harryhausen tradition (though Harryhausen, of course, is still the Master). We’re treated to a variety of dinosaurs (yes, of course they didn’t inhabit the earth at the same time, but so what?) going through a variety of comedic situations, and on the whole it’s pretty cool. Perhaps the funniest is a kind of T-Rex-compatible getting stoned on a marijuana plant.

The DVD's pretty good, though as DVD’s go it’s nothing if not Spartan. Still, the anamorphic widescreen picture (16x9 TV compatible) is good, crisp and clean for the most part and though the Dolby Digital audio is mono it has a pretty good low frequency effects channel that’ll give your subwoofer some exercise (though not too much).

MGM has also included a Pan&Scan version on the disc which, if you just have to do it, is the way to go rather than forcing consumers to choose between the different formats - then possibly getting stuck with the wrong one down the road if they change TV screen formats.

Extras are limited to the theatrical trailer.

Caveman is by no means a heavyweight movie or DVD, but it’s fun and that’s all it pretends to.

Caveman, from MGM Home Video
92 min. anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1), 16x9 TV compatible/ Pan&Scan, Dolby Digital mono
Starring Ringo Starr, Barbara Bach, Dennis Quaid, Shelley Long, John Matuszak, Avery Schreiber and Jack Gilford
Produced by Lawrence Turman and David Foster
Written by Rudy De Luca and Carl Gottlieb, directed by Carl Gottlieb

Tell us at TechnoFile what YOU think