FILM · 1981 · MEXICO
Caveman
28 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (28)
- #001
Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach's long-term relationship began after they met on the set of this film. They married ten months after meeting. Around the time the film was released, Bach said in promotion: "It wasn't love at first sight, but it started to grow a few days after we met."
- #002
In an interview, Shelley Long said she did not know any English at her audition. She responded to everything with a series of improvised grunts. Apparently it worked.
- #003
This film opens with "One Zillion B. C. - October 9." The date October 9 was John Lennon's birthday. This was in memory of Ringo Starr's friend and former bandmate in The Beatles.
- #004
This film was Shelley Long's first major theatrical role.
- #005
Around 1978, one of the film's producers, Lawrence Turman, saw comedian Buddy Hackett in a sketch in a caveman loincloth on "The Tonight Show" and thought: "Wouldn't a prehistoric comedy be a great idea?" He said: "As a kid I loved 'One Million Years B.C.' [1966], and the idea of doing a film like that with the same wardrobe and the same language but played for laughs seemed like a great idea."
- #006
Jim Danforth, the special effects designer for the stop-motion animated dinosaurs (dinosaur and effects designer), reportedly left the production of this film about two-thirds of the way through because the Directors Guild of America would not allow a contracted co-directing credit alongside director Carl Gottlieb. For this reason, Danforth is not credited as a director on this film, only as special effects and second unit director.
- #007
According to the film's end credits, the prehistoric tribes were named the "Misfit Tribe" and the "Hostile Tribe." In the end credits, the actors playing the animals were billed under the banner "The Critters."
- #008
According to actress Barbara Bach's official website: "Filming took place mostly in a protected ecological research area called 'Sierra de Órganos' in the town of Sombrerete in the Mexican state of Zacatecas."
- #009
This was the first theatrical film directed by Carl Gottlieb. To date, although this remains Gottlieb's first, last and only full theatrical film as director, he directed a number of segments of 'Amazon Women on the Moon' (1987) and also directed uncredited on the title sequences of 'Mickey Blue Eyes' (1999).
- #010
According to the film's production notes, the commercial success of 'Jaws' (1975) and 'Jaws 2' (1978), which writer-director Carl Gottlieb wrote the screenplays for, as well as Gottlieb's work on both 'The Jerk' (1979) and 'Which Way Is Up?' (1977), encouraged the film's producers David Foster and Lawrence Turman to believe that Gottlieb had a sharp understanding of audience tastes. Gottlieb worked on the first versions of the script with screenwriter Rudy De Luca and was later appointed director of the film.
- #011
The producers of 'Night Shift' (1982), Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, discovered Shelley Long in Caveman (1981), but she was shooting Losin' It (1982) in Calexico, California. Later, during a two-day leave to go to Hollywood, Long read for the female lead role of "Belinda Keaton" and was asked to return the next day to meet actor Henry Winkler. Although Long was initially hesitant about playing a prostitute, she did her own research and accepted the role.
- #012
The writers created a caveman language for this film. There were words for food (ool), love (alunda), sex (zugzug), the dinosaur Atouk rides (Matcha), handicapped (puka) and several other words specific to this film. The subtitles ignore this language, so when the cavemen use any of these words, the subtitles only read "babbling" and "chattering." For the hearing impaired, this greatly reduces the film's entertainment value.
- #013
The film was nominated for Worst Film at the Hastings Bad Cinema Society's 4th Stinkers Bad Movie Awards in 1981. There it was nominated for Worst Film in the "Most Painfully Unfunny Comedy" category but won the Stinker Award in the "Least 'Special' Special Effects" category.
- #014
The only actor who speaks some English in this film is Evan C. Kim, who plays Nook. The words "shit," "friend" and "fire."
- #015
Following this film, Ringo Starr and his wife Barbara Bach appeared in the short film The Cooler (1982). Another former Beatle and his wife, Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney, were also in the film.
- #016
Almost all of "Caveman" was shot on location in Mexico.
- #017
Mostly no English dialogue is heard in this film. The language heard grunts like "Caveman Talk." Technically, the language heard in this film (aside from a small amount of English) can be described as 'gibberish,' just as it was described as a 'grunting language' for the French film 'Themroc' (1973).
- #018
The film's Charity Benefit World Premiere, held to benefit "Friends of Handicapped Children," took place in early April 1981 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, California, USA. The film then went into wide theatrical release in America about one or two weeks later, on April 17, 1981.
- #019
This is the first of two fictional feature films in which the real-life couple Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach appeared in acting roles. The second and last [as of April 2022] would come several years later with Paul McCartney's 'Give My Regards to Broadstreet' (1984).
- #020
Pairing real-life couples of film stars, especially with dual billing above the title, has long been a staple of the Hollywood production machine. In the case of Caveman (1981), bringing together real-life couple Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach was not a planned casting move by the filmmakers. According to Bach's official website, the two fell in love on set toward the end of production; the romance began about two weeks before filming wrapped. By the time the film was released they were a committed couple, worked on top billing and helped market the film. The couple married on 27 April 1981, about 10 days after the film opened in the US on the 17th of that month and shortly after its world premiere earlier that month.
- #021
The last leading role in a fictional feature film for actor Ringo Starr and actress Barbara Bach [as of April 2022].
- #022
In the Spanish (Castilian) DVD version of Cavegirl (1985), the film is titled "Cavegirl: Cavernicola 2" and is presented as a sequel to Caveman (1981), though it is not one.
- #023
Principal photography was initially scheduled to begin in the summer of 1979, but the start of production was pushed back to 18 February 1980.
- #024
The giant horned lizard in the film is actually an Iguanodon, based specifically on its first reconstruction, in which the pointed tip of the thumb was thought to be a horn.
- #025
Actress Barbara Bach had recently starred in an Italian monster film opposite a giant reptile of prehistoric origin, The Great Alligator (1979) (aka 'Il fiume del grande caimano'). Caveman (1981) also features giant reptilian monster characters, albeit humorously.
- #026
Cavegirl (1985), made and released about four years later, was not an authorized sequel to this film, but there was a public perception among global audiences that it was an official or perhaps loose sequel to Caveman (1981).
- #027
Real-life couple and former Beatle Ringo Starr and former Bond girl Barbara Bach starred together in this film. Starr had recently appeared in Sextette (1978) alongside future James Bond actor Timothy Dalton, while his former Beatles bandmate Paul McCartney had sung the title song for the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973) with his band Wings. Moreover, Bach had attended a Beatles concert in New York in 1965 before an audience of 55,000. Starr had also appeared in The Magic Christian (1969), which featured Peter Sellers, who played Evelyn Tremble in the Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967), and Christopher Lee, who played the title character (Scaramanga) in the Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). Caveman was first released in 1981, the same year as the Bond film For Your Eyes Only, in which Roger Moore played Agent 007. Moore was the same actor playing James Bond who had starred with Bach in what was then his latest Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).
- #028
The unrelated, similarly titled film The Caveman's Valentine was later released in 2001, exactly twenty years after this film's premiere, which was the 20th anniversary year of Caveman (1981).
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