1. His Prehistoric Past (1914)

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Mack Swain, Gene Marsh

Caveman Quotient:

This movie is non-stop caveman from word go, although it does feature a cop-out ending.

Analysis:

I don’t know if His Prehistoric Past is the very first caveman film ever made, but it’s certainly the earliest on which I could find any information. What’s interesting, therefore, is just how many of the clichés of the genre are already in place right here at the beginning. You see, when it comes to caveman movies there are generally two types. The first consists of those that take place entirely in a distant past, and purport to present a sort of documentary-style “life of the savage” overview of the daily hardships involved in fighting dinosaurs and running for caveman mayor (see: One Million BC and its progeny). The other, arguably more popular approach involves a guy or guys penetrating a lost world or being shipwrecked on a mysterious island, only to find that it is home to a race of (generally female and more often than not rather shapely) cave people. The latter approach is certainly less scientifically accurate, but on the other hand it lets guys in U-boats or Tarzan get in fights with pliosaurs, and that’s hardly something to argue with.

His Prehistoric Past appears to be set way back in caveman times, but it nonetheless follows the Lost World formula pretty squarely, albeit playing it entirely for laughs and satirising the salacious, club-em-and-drag-em-back-to-the-cave mentality captured so well by the Jimmy Castor Bunch's "Troglodyte". The setting is the Solomon Islands, a place “South of 53 – where the man with the biggest club has all the fun”. The inhabitants of the Solomons consist, in finest caveman movie tradition, of a fat old king named Low-Brow who looks alarmingly like Francis Greenslade, a bearded jester named Ku-Ku who spends all his time mincing about like a coked-up chorus girl, a scrawny assistant who does nothing much of anything and a gross of sexy cavewomen who spend their time fawning over the king and looking deeply dissatisfied with their lot. So, right from the outset we have the standard Neolithic sex fantasy – something which has persisted down through the ages and seems to be the principle impetus around most of the genre.

Of course, this being a Chaplin film, the Tramp shows-up to take advantage of the situation, by immediately scheming to take advantage of the women. This translates into things like chatting-up the King’s favourite wife, Sum-Babee, behind his back and then trying to kill Low-Brow by pushing him off of a cliff. If this gives you the impression that the Tramp is kind of a dick, then you’d be right – the king befriends him, invites him into his house, gives him martinis and takes him hunting for turkeys, and all the Tramp can think to do is pretend to shoot him with an arrow and then throw him off his cliff and steal his wife? What a nasty character. And it’s nothing compared to his behaviour after seizing the throne, which consists of using the sexy cave-girls as foot stools and stealing kisses from Sum-Babee.

Of course the Tramp gets his come-uppance when Ku-Ku, who the Tramp had replaced as Low-Brow’s favourite, rescues the king from the canyon into which he’d tumbled, thus allowing the Tramp to get smashed over the head with a rock just as he’s declared how happy he is. This has the peculiar effect of rousing the Tramp from his slumber on a park bench, where he was dreaming until he got hit on the head by a spoil-sport copper.

As entertainment goes this is mildly entertaining, but regrettably a lot of the humour is pretty prehistoric (ahaha). The comedy mostly comes from the idea of the Tramp, a twentieth century wise-ass, wandering about in caveman times doing things like mixing martinis and lighting a rock against the heel of his boot like a match. Admittedly the image of a pipe-smoking caveman in a bowler hat is a pretty neat one, but it’s not really enough to raise this to classic status. The cheerfully misogynistic tone of the humour is another curious aspect (although sexism is par for the course in caveman flicks), and I’m not really sure what to think of a line like “We catch’em young, treat ‘em rough and tell ‘em nothing”. At the same time the Tramp is such a good-natured arsehole that it’s pretty clear we’re not supposed to be taking these things to heart, and it mostly seems to play into the “put-upon woman” style of comedy that was ever so popular back then. It's just more of that "Oh we we're such uncivilised savages" comedy, where it's funny because we haven't changed all that much - something roughly analogous to that TV show where the chimpanzees starred in a soap opera.

Unfortunately while there’s good stuff here, most of the film is just blandly diverting in a sort of flat, vaudeville style. The Tramp is constantly mugging and chattering, and it actually really made me wish that the film could have been shot in sound. As it is, Chaplin wagging his caveman furs like a tail as he chats to Sum-Babee may be a pretty cute concept, but it’s not exactly riotous comedy. Similarly, Mack Swain’s mugging may be truly awe-inspiring, but that doesn’t really make it all that funny. And what am I to make of an exchange like

King: In the Solomon Islands, every man has one thousand wives

The Tramp: I should have brought a bigger club!

Ah yes, dick jokes. The common bond between all peoples across both space and time.

I’m No Scientist, But...

Okay so the idea of critiquing the science in a movie like this is ridiculous. I’m not even sure when the damned thing is supposed to be taking place! I do have a lot of questions about how the society in the Solomon Islands sustains itself, though – namely, despite the king's "one thousand women" line, there are about half a dozen sexy cave women, one old guy, one fat guy, and one guy who is just a little too “Rip Taylor”. There are no children present, and no other men, and no old women either. The only possible explanations for how such a society could arise are either 1) some kind of deadly plague that took all but the most stereotypical of the inhabitants or 2) the king kidnapped a bunch of ladies and then took-off to a new island along with a couple of guys who could never possibly present him with any real competition.

On the other hand, while the cave girls here are of a sexy persuasion it's the sort of sexiness that you might actually encounter in an ordinary woman in your supermarket or place of work. In addition to this, all the cave-girls have awful hair and dress in these lumpen, unappealing fur togas that actually look like something a chilly primitive might wear. This unexpected touch of realism puts His Prehistoric History ahead of practically every single other caveman film ever made.

Other questions which arise include the ever-popular trend of having the cavemen all live in a desert for some reason or other. Why is this always the case (aside from the fact that it’s cheap to shoot footage in Bronson Canyon)? The prehistoric era was just as heavily foliated as our current times, if not more so, and in general people don’t like to live in noxious wastes unless they have to. I suppose this might be a misunderstanding arising from the fact that fossils are often found in what are now barren deserts, but it’s more likely just laziness on the film makers’ parts. In any event, the habitat of the Solomon Islands, rather than sporting lush forests full of cuscuses and wild pigs, seems to consist entirely of one tree with a turkey in it. And given the lack of skill the natives display in catching that turkey, I’m surprised they were alive at all when the Tramp washed-up, let alone that they didn’t conk him on the head and devour him.

Say, that’s an idea – maybe the reason there are so few people is because the king and his brides have been eating them all. After all, Low-Brow did say that everything was permitted.

Overall:

Two McClures out of five.


Download His Prehistoric Past from archive.org

Mission Statement.

What Are You Doing Here?

The plan is to post regular reviews of various caveman films produced throughout the ages, thus producing a systematic and comprehensive overview of the genre in toto. I imagine that the reviews will average once per week in regularity, but given that I am a notoriously inconstant character it is more than probable that I will increase or decrease the frequency of my posting with a complete disregard for the interests of any readers.

How Exactly Do You Define A "Caveman Film"? It Seems A Bit Vague.

Well it is actually a bit vague, yes. There are a number of problems with this sort of list, the most obvious of which is 1) what exactly counts as a caveman? and 2) where and when must they be located and with what intensity for the film to qualify as a "caveman picture"? Well as to the first, I have decided that I probably won't count Italian cannibal films, or films about modern day "primitives" in general. Even though I suppose that the lifestyle of a bunch of modern tribesmen probably isn't all that different from what a caveman would have gone through, it's quite clearly not the sort of thing that people think of when they hear the word "caveman". Caveman implies a little distance from reality, I feel. It also implies a cave. This is also why I have decided that I probably will count movies about lost colonies of primitive Amazons, as they have absolutely no bearing in real life (if located outside of ancient Eastern Europe, anyway) and it allows me to review Fantasy Mission Force at some point. The main proviso is that the cavefolk preferably not use any technology more advanced than a bow and arrow.

As to the second point - both the where and the when and the just how much - I suppose that, as long as they look scraggy enough, and aren't just a throw-away gag, it's a free for all in terms of time and place. This encompasses "caveman of the future" post-historical films such as Teenage Caveman and Yor, The Hunter from the Future, as well as more traditional prehistoric fare like Clan of the Cave Bear. Again, this is just an excuse for me to be allowed to review Fantasy Mission Force at some point, but I don't really care. Does this mean that Planet of the Apes can somehow be interpreted to count as a caveman film? What about 2001: A Space Odyssey? To be honest, we'll just have to wait and see.

The can of worms that is lost world pictures is something that will probably remain unopened, since thankfully most of such films seem to include at least one monkey man in the proceedings. I suppose, thinking about it, that caveman-free films set in a prehistoric era might count, but anyone expecting reviews of The Valley of Gwangi is going to be sorely disappointed by the end of this thing.

Ultimately, I'm just gonna wing it.

Why Caveman Films?

One day, many years ago, when men were men and women were something somewhat more than women, I stayed home from school for no good reason at all and caught One Million Years BC on television. I was hooked! The Grandure! The Spectacle! This, my friends, was the greatest film since Dune!

Or maybe not.

In any case, some people have the capacity for enjoyment of a thing wired into them. Myself, I didn't really grow out of dinosaurs until I was almost twenty. It was a mania, although not of the type that ever led me to be dumb enough as to think that I could find being a paleontologist interesting. Now, of course, I can barely spell "parasaurolophus", but during my late teens I went through a period of devouring everything from Walking with Beasts to Edgar Rice Burrough's extremely silly but highly entertaining Caspak series, and it's left me with an enduring fondness for prehistoric shenanigans.

It's that "silly but highly entertaining" quality, actually, that really sums-up why I'm doing this. I'm long past the stage of considering Battlefield Earth high art, and I'll freely admit that I've yet to see a caveman film I'd describe as better than fair (N.B. I'm also yet to see Quest for Fire), but at the same time there's a great source of fascination to be had for me in the idea of the movie caveman. Yes, in real life prehistoric man spent his life wandering around on tundras spearing elks, but that is boring. Give me action! Give me excitement! Give me a giant stop-motion turtle menacing John Richardson! I may not have seen all caveman films, or even particularly many, but damn it if I don't have a half-hearted desire to rectify that.

And so it is with a spring in my step that I wander out across the rippling veldt of filmdom, eager to see where my feet (and wallet) take me in my quest to see as many caveman films as I can before I lose interest and start writing Lovecraft pastiches again.