Quest for Fire (1981)

"It's a bunch of cavemen and the movie is all grunting, no talking. They carry around fire on a stick and it goes out and they grunt about it." -Jake

I thought this was a joke movie from the way Jake described it, and gleefully put it on the list as a joke. I was surprised when I went looking for it to see that Ebert gave it three and a half stars.

When Ron Perlman's name was flashed up during the opening credits Jake said, "Oh, of course." We imagined him getting the call for this role and then sighing and thinking, "Well, I knew this day would come." Poor Ron Perlman. Actually, I'm looking it up now and it looks like this was his first role. He apparently said, "When the producer saw my forehead, he gave me the job on the spot."

Perlman stole the show, though. It's outrageous that he didn't get to play lead caveman, because he was the only one whose behaviour seemed legitimately caveman-y to me. A year from now the scenes I will remember will probably be: Perlman hordes his eggs, Perlman can't carry all of the bananas, Perlman never gets laid, Perlman rolls his eyes at his numnutz friend trying to make fire. The other cavemen all look like regular dudes playing dress-up and flailing around, but Perlman obviously did some serious study of apes and incorporated their behaviour into his role. I'm glad he's the one who eventually became famous.

"I got a Genie Award for this, MoFos."

Jake's initial description of the plot was pretty accurate. The cavemen we start with (Neanderthals) have fire but don't know how to make it. When it goes out, they go on a quest to find more fire. During the film they discover not only fire, but animal domestication, laughter, superior weapons, and missionary sex (aka love). I was taken off guard by all the sex, actually. With a run time of 100 minutes, this movie has four sex scenes and a lot of nudity. It must have been scandalous when it came out.

I can see putting a costume on an elephant, but how did they get those saberteeth onto those lions? Dental glue? Is that ethical?

Quest for Fire won an Oscar for make-up, which was probably unfair because that's just how Ron Perlman's forehead looks.

Historical Accuracy

Uh...in bits. This movie is supposed to be set 80,000 years ago. According to Wikipedia, our main characters, the Neanderthals, probably wouldn't have interacted with homo sapiens until about 40,000 to 60,000 years later. It's also probably too early for homo sapiens to have full language, body ornamentation, containers and atlatls. However, there could have been red haired Neanderthals and they definitely bred with homo sapiens.

But I'll give this movie a rating of "orange" because we did think that it gave an idea of how shitty it must have been to live way back then getting beaten up by homo erectus and eaten by wolves and sabertooth tigers all the time. Also, I enjoyed the depiction of atlatl use, a prehistoric weapon I've been impressed with since Robb Wolf killed an elk with one on Discovery's I, Caveman show.

I wonder if Neanderthals really did trim each other's beards with their teeth.

Illustration copyright Richard Klein

Notes from Jake

The gift of historical enthusiasm may be a blessing that my girlfriend has yet to receive, but apparently we’re not letting that get in our way. We've always been fans of changing the medium if a point can’t be conveyed so the idea of learning history through film seemed right up our alley.

Incidentally, when she asked me to explain international politics to her, I gave it a solid effort.  I presented politics to her against the backgrounds of economics, ethnicity and good old-fashioned human nature. I carefully nurtured each lecture with consideration to the eager neophyte I had before me but it sorta failed miserably. Eventually she suggested I use sock puppets and cartoonish voices for the various heads of state. We still may.  

Quest for Fire is a great place to start. I hadn't seen it since high-school and really only remembered some key plot points, notably the mortifying hilarity of a Neanderthal dragging the only fire for hundreds of miles through a river, and the look of abject horror on his face when he sees what’s happened. And all his friends are like, "GROG YOU HAD ONE JOB MAN."

Perlman made this movie, though. And I'm not just saying that because he happens to look somewhat brutish. I'm saying that because he was truly excellent in it. Every moment on screen was magic and he stole every scene he was in, which is saying something considering the fact that Quest for Fire has a full-on force-play sex-scene roughly every fifteen minutes. 

In terms of whether this was what one might call ‘historically accurate’, I'm inclined to put it somewhere in the middle. They demonstrate certain technologies which Neanderthals would have possessed, like striking flint with harder stone to form sharp edges, and the value placed on animal skins. That having been said, I know from experience that starting a fire by manually rolling a dowel into dry wood is exhausting and takes forever and Tommy Chong’s daughter (yes, the naked dust-covered chick is Tommy Chong’s daughter ) does it in under five minutes.  It’s exponentially easier with a bow drill, but we wouldn't invent one for roughly 75 thousand more years and so I'm pleased that it was omitted.  

Canadian!