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Caveman
Movie Poster
Directed by	Carl Gottlieb
Produced by	David Foster Lawrence Turman
Written by	Rudy De Luca Carl Gottlieb
Starring	Ringo Starr Barbara Bach Dennis Quaid
Music by	Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography	Alan Hume
Editing by	Gene Fowler Jr.
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	1981
Running time	91 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Caveman is a 1981 slapstick comedy film financed by George Harrison, written and directed by Carl Gottlieb and starring Ringo Starr.

• Ringo Starr as Atouk
• Dennis Quaid as Lar
• Shelley Long as Tala
• Jack Gilford as Gog
• Barbara Bach as Lana
• Evan C. Kim as Nook
• Carl Lumbly as Bork
• John Matuszak as Tonda
• Avery Schreiber as Ock
• Richard Moll as Abominable Snowman

Atouk is a bullied and scrawny caveman living in "One Zillion BC". He lusts after the beautiful but shallow Lana, who is the mate of Tonda, their tribe's physically imposing leader. After being banished along with his friend Lar, Atouk falls in with a band of assorted misfits, among them the comely Tala and the elderly blind man Gog. The group has ongoing encounters with hungry dinosaurs, and rescues Lar from a "nearby ice age", where they encounter an abominable snowman. In the course of these adventures they discover drugs, fire, cooking, music, and learn how to walk fully upright. Atouk uses these advancements to lead an attack on Tonda, overthrowing him and becoming the tribe's new leader. He discards Lana and takes Tala as his mate, and they live happily ever after.

The movie was filmed in the Sierra De Organos near Sombrerete, Zacatecas, Mexico, and features stop-motion animated dinosaurs constructed by David W. Allen, including one memorable scene where a Tyrannosaurus rex becomes intoxicated by a Cannabis-type drug.

The film's dialog is almost entirely in "caveman" language, which is very simple and can easily be understood by the audience: "ool" is food, "zug zug" is sex, "haraka" is fire, "pooka" is broken, "macha" is monster and so on. The only English dialog is used for comedic effect, when it is spoken by a caveman played by Evan Kim who speaks modern English but is understood by none of the other characters.

• During its theatrical release, cards with translations for the Caveman language were given to theater customers.
• Barbara Bach and Ringo Starr first met on the set of the film, and were married a few weeks after the film's release

• In the 2004 apocalyptic film The Day After Tomorrow, Jason Evans (Dash Mihok), in response to his friend (portrayed by Dennis Quaid) asked do you think we will be able to survive a second Ice Age, he responds, "You were there for the first one," potentially a reference to his role in Caveman. Interestingly, Mihok plays one of the GEICO Cavemen.[1]

• In the MMORPG World of Warcraft one of the female orc's /flirt emotes is "You had me at zug zug."

• Caveman at the Internet Movie Database
• Cavespeak: A Dictionary Of Cavese