Teenage Caveman Or, A B-Class Movie Containing History

"The old law has served us well for a long time"
says the head of the clan to the teenager in Teenage Caveman
"and it will take time to change it."

The teenage caveman stares suspiciously at the old man.
He wishes to cross the forbidden river
where gods of fire can kill a man by touch
and the earth devours cave people.

And he does cross.
And he does discover:
a baby alligator with a fin pasted on its back
fighting with a gila monster
magnified 30 times by unknown deities
so that they appear as giants to the ignorant little cave
people.

He does cross.
And he does discover
an old pilot in a burnt up radiation suit that looks like a
shiny black rooster.
He does cross
And he does discover
a book with strange photos of the atomic war
that created the Stone Age these cave people have been bombed
back into.

"The old law is over"
the teenage caveman announces,
"man will explore the lands beyond the lake of fire.
Man will meet up with other men."

Then the narrator breaks in to explain that
these were our ancestors, and they built themselves up
from a radioactive wasteland
as had their ancestors before them
(clips of giant insects and mutants arising out of the sea)
and so on
until the history of the world appears before our eyes
like a 50s Dagwood sandwich
civilizations stacked, one upon another
on our daily bread of nuclear war.

"How many times, o man, how many times!"

The teenage caveman, played by a young Robert Vaughn,
walks off into a mushroom cloud
the way a cowboy would ride into a sunset.
He's heading for a new civilization too.
Or rather, a new job in a new time.

For teenage caveman will grow up to by a spy in the 60s
named Napoleon Solo
and, as the star in The Man From Uncle,
will fight the cold war in a whole new way.