Mook ugh caveman need help!

October 31, 2006 5:34 AM

Seeking popular culture representations of cave men.

Books, movies, comics, music, etc. Help!

Ooog oog ok oog!

posted by Astro Zombie to media & arts (42 comments total)

Captain Caveman
Encino Man
Volvic TV ads
posted by SpacemanRed at 5:39 AM on October 31, 2006

I was about to list more inc. 2001 and The Flintstones but a search on IMDB threw up 71 films/tv shows that have the word "caveman" as a keyword, try there first...
posted by SpacemanRed at 5:42 AM on October 31, 2006

Series of ads from Geico where phrases such as "so simple even a caveman could use it" infuriate cavemen who live in modern times. Here they are on youtube.
posted by allterrainbrain at 5:45 AM on October 31, 2006

Alley Oop the comic-strip cave man.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 5:49 AM on October 31, 2006

Caveman starring Ringo Starr as a Cave Man.
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 5:53 AM on October 31, 2006

B.C. and Alley Oop, of course, for comics. Wikipedia has a couple more, including a weird Minute Maid ad, a Neanderthals in pop culture page, and a link to CaveMan Forum. Why do you want to know?
posted by mediareport at 5:57 AM on October 31, 2006

Quest for Fire
Clan of the Cave Bear
Don't forget the song "Alley Oop" by the Hollywood Argyles
"Land of the Lost" -- sort of
Iceman
the very beginning of Mel Brooks's History of the World, Part I
posted by Dr. Wu at 5:57 AM on October 31, 2006

Quest for Fire
Clan of the Cave Bear
2001, A Space Odyssey
posted by crunchland at 6:00 AM on October 31, 2006

Before Adam
Often, The Far Side
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 6:02 AM on October 31, 2006

In performance, there's Rob Becker's Defending the Caveman (IBroadwayDB link), an obnoxious solo show that brought a caveman perspective to contemporary gender politics. Yeah, it was as bad as it sounds. There may have been a cable broadcast or DVD release, though I don't see it on Netflix.
posted by Mngo at 6:02 AM on October 31, 2006

Oh, there's this guy, too.
posted by mediareport at 6:06 AM on October 31, 2006

Korg 70000 BC
posted by bunglin jones at 6:18 AM on October 31, 2006

Tubular Bells, track 2.
posted by altolinguistic at 6:18 AM on October 31, 2006

Geiko ads.
posted by klangklangston at 6:19 AM on October 31, 2006

"I am but a simple caveman lawyer, your world frightens and confuses me..."
posted by klangklangston at 6:20 AM on October 31, 2006

Stig of the dump
posted by fire&wings at 6:22 AM on October 31, 2006

Ice Age (they're minor characters at the beginning and end, unless you count the kid the movie is about).
posted by spaceman_spiff at 6:22 AM on October 31, 2006

Don't know if this would help, but there is an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where SpongeBob, Patrick and Squidward are shown as cavemen (well, cavesponge, cavestarfish and caveoctopus, anyway...)
posted by Lucinda at 6:24 AM on October 31, 2006

Iceman.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 6:24 AM on October 31, 2006

Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer from SNL
posted by kookoobirdz at 6:31 AM on October 31, 2006

This may be too meta for your purposes, but there's an excellent story by George Saunders about a man who spends his life playing a caveman at a theme park. Here's an excerpt.
posted by allterrainbrain at 6:42 AM on October 31, 2006

What? No mention yet of Troglodyte? His saga is continued in this song.
posted by TedW at 7:03 AM on October 31, 2006

professional sports?
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 7:11 AM on October 31, 2006

The Jimmy Castor Bunch visited the caveman theme on a number of their super funky tracks, as the cover of this album depicts--that's some serious cave booty swinging. The track "Troglodyte (Cave Man)" (sample here) even gets into the single-minded head of a caveman, to the persistent beat of jungle drums:

Let's take the average cave man at home, listening to his stereo. Sometimes he'd get up, try to do his thing. He'd begin to move, something like this: "Dance...dance". When he got tired of dancing alone, he'd look in the mirror: "Gotta find a woman gotta find a woman gotta find a woman gotta find a woman"...

The cave man makes a reappearance in this track, trying to woo the dancing big-bottomed Bertha Butt, who jumps "off her stump" to do the "Bump":

When Bertha Butt did her goodie,
She started "The Bertha Butt Boogie".
I said no question.

Hey, Leroy, get away from that woman!
The boy'll never learn!
Uh-oh, here comes the Troglodyte!
Troglodyte: "Come here, sock it to me!"

posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 7:12 AM on October 31, 2006

There's 'Cavemen Rejoice,' a song by The Bags, which appears in the Guitar Hero video game.

I may have missed it, but I don't think anybody mentioned that Raquel Welch movie yet? 1,000,000 BC or something?

And, I suppose, there's the Seinfeld episode where a 'cave man' is, y'know, a man who caves.
posted by box at 7:14 AM on October 31, 2006

oops: This is the "Bertha Butt Boogie" sample, lyrics here.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 7:14 AM on October 31, 2006

I'd look through New Yorker cartoons from the 50s, you'll find some good stuff there.
posted by gubo at 7:22 AM on October 31, 2006

You also should check out Tex Avery's The First Bad Man if you can find it. It inspired some of the look of The Flintstones.
posted by gubo at 7:26 AM on October 31, 2006

Dinosaurus! [not a typo]
posted by Brainy at 7:39 AM on October 31, 2006

I just read a novel written from a caveman's perspective. It's called Evolution Man, by Roy Lewis.
posted by xo at 8:20 AM on October 31, 2006

Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax series of novels for something that's a little bit more well informed on the paleaontological front.

And if you REALLY want to get your paleontology geek on, there's Orphan of Creation by Roger Allen McBride and No Enemy But Time by Michael Bishop.
posted by ursus_comiter at 8:54 AM on October 31, 2006

If by any chance your interest is academic or serious in a cultural-studies sort of way, I can recommend two books by a pal of mine:
Ancestral Images
Envisioning the Past.
posted by Rumple at 9:53 AM on October 31, 2006

Here's my post of Randy Luck's I was a Teenage Caveman
posted by shipbreaker at 10:48 AM on October 31, 2006

A few caveman-themed video games:

Caveman
Caveman Ninja
Caveman Games
Big Nose the Caveman
B.C. Racers
posted by Durhey at 12:22 PM on October 31, 2006

And don't forget Ascent of Man.
posted by crunchland at 2:21 PM on October 31, 2006

Apparently the Slag Brothers, from Wacky Races, were the forerunners of Captain Caveman.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 6:23 PM on October 31, 2006

Don't forget the craptacular Sherwood Schwarz opus It's About Time*, about two astronauts hurled back to the Dawn of Man. Shadd and Gronk were played by the wonderful Imogene Coca and Joe E. Ross.
*imdb has some choice trivia on the series.
posted by rob511 at 9:07 PM on October 31, 2006

The rest of the Jean Auel books and William Golding's The Inheritors.
posted by brujita at 10:42 PM on October 31, 2006

Trawl through the Archaeology in Fiction Bibliography for some ideas, maybe.

Also, other good bibliographic links here
posted by Rumple at 10:48 PM on October 31, 2006

Like this one, with awesome retro caveperson bookcover goodness.
posted by Rumple at 10:50 PM on October 31, 2006

That really is awesome, Rumple.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:29 AM on November 1, 2006

Bonk's Adventure is another caveman-themed videogame (and Bonk also appears in some other games, including Saturn Bomberman), and Soul Calibur features a character named Rock who seems to meet a lot of the, uh, caveman qualifications.
posted by box at 7:24 AM on November 2, 2006