Insane, R-Rated 90s Sci-Fi Sends Alien Caveman On Virtual Reality Revenge Arc

By Robert Scucci
| Published 24 seconds ago

It really takes a lot for me to sit through an entire movie without knowing what the hell it’s about, and I most recently experienced this with 1996’s Savage. There are so many unrelated storylines that feel like they should connect and lead to a satisfying payoff, but they never really do. My experience with the film made me want it all to make sense, but I had to read detailed plot synopses on both Wikipedia and IMDb just to make heads or tails of the thing, and somehow I ended up even more confused.

Normally when I write reviews, I open those tabs to get the character and talent names straight because I’m great with faces but terrible with names. In this case, I had to SparkNote my way through the plot because Savage is profoundly nonsensical, to the point where I think it should be studied.

Savage is a sci-fi action film, but also a revenge film, but also a film about ancient aliens, super-powered cavemen, and an evil virtual reality game company, all of which are completely at odds with each other. Visually, it’s an absolute feast of low-budget special effects, which is what drew me to it during a late-night Tubi scroll in the first place. I don’t regret watching it, but I can’t speak for how you’ll feel about this one, dear reader.

Hell Hath No Fury Like An Alien Caveman Hellbent On Revenge

Here’s where I try to explain what Savage is all about. A man named Alex Verne (Olivier Gruner) gets committed to a psychiatric hospital after his family is randomly murdered. One day, two years later, he decides it’s time to escape. Wandering through the desert, he hears a voice that leads him to a cave. Inside are paintings of ancient aliens. Alex lives like this for an indeterminate amount of time until he encounters an alien apparition that first takes the form of his dead wife, and then the killer. The alien tells him he has to get revenge because the killer will do it again to “millions of others.”

Alex gets electrocuted and suddenly has superhuman strength, which pairs nicely with the caveman skills he developed while living out in the desert. He wanders the streets naked and gets taken into police custody, where he meets Officer Nicky Carter (Jennifer Grant), who’s put off by his strange behavior but still somehow finds him irresistible enough to become a valuable ally by the third act.

Meanwhile, and completely out of nowhere, we’re introduced to Reese Burroughs (Kario Salem), the corrupt chairman of the Titan Corporation. He specializes in virtual reality video games and has hilariously named henchmen Marie Beloc (Kristin Minter), Edgar Wallace (Sam McMurray), and Allan Poe (Herschel Sparber) following him around wherever he goes. As luck would have it, Reese has been waiting a long time for a police report about a weird naked caveman type getting arrested, and now he has to track down Alex and eliminate him for … reasons, I guess.

Alex, now referred to as a savage by Reese and his goons due to his alien caveman abilities, escapes the holding cell, hellbent on breaching the Titan Corporation for … other reasons, I guess, as the home viewer (because this is obviously a direct-to-VHS effort) tries to piece these plot points together. You’re left wondering how the final showdown between these characters will play out in both the real world and the virtual one they occupy.

Thematically Bankrupt With Plenty Of Visual Bangers

Most reasonable people will read the above synopsis of Savage and decide not to watch it. I don’t blame them. However, for a direct-to-video sci-fi B-movie, it has tremendous visuals. The virtual reality sequences are immersive. The aliens are corny but cool, and they perfectly capture that “waking up at 3 am and this is what’s playing on TV after I passed out watching something else” vibe that I remember so fondly from my university days.

If you can get past the fact that the plot makes no sense, Savage is tremendously fun to watch. Personally, I treated it as a series of vaguely related vignettes occupying the same universe, which allowed me to appreciate the visuals without scrutinizing the storytelling too much. That said, it feels like there has to be a director’s cut floating around somewhere because the connection between Alex and Reese is vague at best until far too late in the runtime.

Savage, in all of its insane glory, is currently streaming for free on Tubi. Throw it on when you’re looking for something different because there’s nothing quite like it. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you when you get halfway through and realize that so much has happened without telling anything close to a coherent story.