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| This lurid, sensationalistic poster for Arch Hall, Sr.'s Eegah promises much much more than the film delivers |
A girl in a car in the desert lives through a giant caveman jumping out of the darkness. She and her father are later kidnapped by the very same mysterious stranger, known as Eegah.
Already from the incredibly ugly, often unreadable title credits it is clear that Eegah is an unusual mess. The film has flaws aplenty (the sound, angles, editing, music and acting are continually botched), - in fact the mistakes are so astoundingly numerous that the film hardly has a single shot that is acceptably well done.
To this must be added the comical ineptness of the script (by Bob Wehling (Wild Guitar (1962)), based on director-producer-co-star Arch Hall, Sr.'s (The Corpse Grinders (1971)) original story), which is ridiculous to its core: SPOILER The girl and her father in it are not worried about being trapped in a cave and having to drink sulfurous water (!) there, but actually have a jolly good time shaving the old man and then the caveman, whom the girl also continually worries about at great lengths, despite his obvious intent to rape her. - Yes, these are just some of the weird developments in Eegah.
Hall, Sr. directed his son Arch Hall, Jr. (The Sadist (1963)) here as the dimwitted doo-woop rock'n'roll singer, and Hall, Jr. not only looks a bit bizarre, (take a look below in the nifty B/W promotional material), he also lip-syncs really bad.
Eegah is one of those legendary movie turkeys that any true bad movie buff just has to see.
Watch a telling 2-minute scene from the film here
Cost: Reportedly 15k $
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertain
[Eegah premiered 17 April (in Biloxi, Mississippi!) and runs 90 minutes. It was shot in California. Its gross is unknown, and the only other country than USA that it was released in seems to have been Mexico. - But Hall, Sr. and Hall, Jr. continued to make movies, indicating that the modest budget was returned, maybe with a profit. The film since grew in notoriety and fame with screenings on the TV-shows Mystery Science Theater 3000, Movie Macabre and Exploitica and many different video releases. It has fallen into public domain and is available for download and streaming free and legally right here. The film now rests at #47 on IMDb's user-generated Bottom 100, between Final Justice (1985) and Die Hard Dracula (1998). 4,763 IMDb users have given Eegah a 2.2/10 average rating.]
What do you think of Eegah?
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