An arctic exploration team discovers the frozen body of a 40,000 year old Neanderthal. They unfreeze him with the hopes of being able to salvage some of his DNA for study-and realize that his cells are alive, probably because of some type of plant he ate before he was frozen. They manage to resuscitate him-and put him in the facility's Vivarium, where they were keeping some bears. An anthropologist, Stanley Shephard (Timothy Hutton of THE DARK HALF), is called in to deal with him. They begin to bond-and become friends. The caveman tells him his name and it sounds close enough to "Charlie" (John Lone) so that's what Shephard calls him. There's also a woman biologist, Dr Diane Brady, who treats Charlie as an object at first but then comes around to realizing he's a person. But captivity is taking its toll on the Neanderthal and he wants to be free to continue his Vision Quest, the reason he was frozen in the ice to begin with. Although this movie is over 30 years old it holds up extremely well. One of the best genre movies of the 80's.
An arctic exploration team discovers the frozen body of a 40,000 year old Neanderthal. They unfreeze him with the hopes of being able to salvage some of his DNA for study-and realize that his cells are alive, probably because of some type of plant he ate before he was frozen. They manage to resuscitate him-and put him in the facility's Vivarium, where they were keeping some bears. An anthropologist, Stanley Shephard (Timothy Hutton of THE DARK HALF), is called in to deal with him. They begin to bond-and become friends. The caveman tells him his name and it sounds close enough to "Charlie" (John Lone) so that's what Shephard calls him. There's also a woman biologist, Dr Diane Brady, who treats Charlie as an object at first but then comes around to realizing he's a person. But captivity is taking its toll on the Neanderthal and he wants to be free to continue his Vision Quest, the reason he was frozen in the ice to begin with. Although this movie is over 30 years old it holds up extremely well. One of the best genre movies of the 80's.
