I had never seen any of Clark's infamous films, such as Kids and Ken Park, but I have heard that he is a talented director.
Then I saw Teenage Caveman.
A painfully obvious cable TV production, shot on video in what looks like a national park five minutes out of LA, Teenage Caveman is awful in almost every way. Flat, boring direction, uninspired use of the camera, abysmal production values, dull attempts at titillation (in a "lots of breasts but nothing else" made for cable kind of way), a bad script that just goes nowhere, and a terrible cast... I could go on and on about how awful this film is.
The real tragedy is that the idea is an interesting one - generations after an unspecified apocalypse, a group of young neo-cavemen stumble across an old scientific installation, occupied only by two apparently young people. These two are the products of an experiment of a hundred years before, to create people who could survive the coming devastation. Predictably, their motives in taking in the young primitives are less than pure.
Aesthetically, the film is a mess. The titular teenage cavemen and cavewomen are obnoxiously clean, with perfect teeth, salon hair, and flawless skin which is liberally coated in makeup. Their clothing consists of carefully tailored rags which would not look at all out of place in a goth club or on a catwalk. It is just plain stupid. Even worse is their dialogue - completely contemporary at all times, with a complete modern vocabulary full of words that should not be known by a fifth generation primitive with no technology.
The horror makeup and gore effects are about the only competent thing about the whole film, created as they were by Stan Winston's crew. The digitally-assisted effects never really work, but the prosthetics and animatronics are decent.
In summary: do not watch this film. It is poorly-written, poorly-made, poorly-performed garbage, the worst film I have seen in 2003.
Then I saw Teenage Caveman.
A painfully obvious cable TV production, shot on video in what looks like a national park five minutes out of LA, Teenage Caveman is awful in almost every way. Flat, boring direction, uninspired use of the camera, abysmal production values, dull attempts at titillation (in a "lots of breasts but nothing else" made for cable kind of way), a bad script that just goes nowhere, and a terrible cast... I could go on and on about how awful this film is.
The real tragedy is that the idea is an interesting one - generations after an unspecified apocalypse, a group of young neo-cavemen stumble across an old scientific installation, occupied only by two apparently young people. These two are the products of an experiment of a hundred years before, to create people who could survive the coming devastation. Predictably, their motives in taking in the young primitives are less than pure.
Aesthetically, the film is a mess. The titular teenage cavemen and cavewomen are obnoxiously clean, with perfect teeth, salon hair, and flawless skin which is liberally coated in makeup. Their clothing consists of carefully tailored rags which would not look at all out of place in a goth club or on a catwalk. It is just plain stupid. Even worse is their dialogue - completely contemporary at all times, with a complete modern vocabulary full of words that should not be known by a fifth generation primitive with no technology.
The horror makeup and gore effects are about the only competent thing about the whole film, created as they were by Stan Winston's crew. The digitally-assisted effects never really work, but the prosthetics and animatronics are decent.
In summary: do not watch this film. It is poorly-written, poorly-made, poorly-performed garbage, the worst film I have seen in 2003.