Eegah (1962)

Eegah is a notoriously bad film, but it has a reputation in some circles as a bad film that's not fun to watch. That's not the case - so many scenes in this film will have you laughing at how ridiculous it is that Eegah provides a couple hours of entertainment.

The story is simple - a young woman, Roxy, almost runs over Eegah, a "prehistoric giant," on the desert highway one night. She tells her lover, Tom, and her dad, Robert, a professor, who goes to investigate because he wants to write a book about Eegah. While searching for Eegah, the professor is kidnapped, and Tom and Roxy head out to the desert mountains in Tom's hip dune buggy to search for him. Roxy is caught by Eegah also. She and her dad escape. Eegah later heads towards civilization in search of Roxy.

While the plot is kinda silly, it's not inherently bad. What makes it so ridiculous is a combination of the bad dialogue, bad acting and poor production values. Again, unlike some bad films (The Fear, Beyond the Door III) these are bad in a way that makes Eegah funny rather than just torturous. The cream of the camp crop here is probably Tom. I don't know if his character was ever supposed to seem cool, but he comes across as just a buffoon. And his songs are atrocious and inexplicable. And he keeps singing to a girl named Valerie, even though there's no Valerie in the movie.

Richard Kiel's (known primarily as Jaws in the James Bond films) performance as Eegah is just as bad as the rest of the cast. At times, he looks like he thinks he's doing a profound caveman interpretation of Frankenstein, but he just looks like a big goofy guy lumbering around in a ridiculous costume carrying around a big fake club.

The stock footage used (mostly of desert animals) is inserted as artfully as Ed Wood (meaning it looks like you changed the channel on your TV set all of a sudden) and the dubbing of the dialogue rarely matches the actor's mouths. Half the time, Richard Kiel's mouth doesn't even move when you hear him speaking. I wonder if they even bothered to watch the film while recording the dialogue.

This is a classic of bad cinema. Any self-respecting fan of bad films must see Eegah at least once. For all others, only watch Eegah when your only other alternatives are watching C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud or shooting yourself.