"Good boy, Trog!"

So speaks silver screen legend Joan Crawford in her final film, "Trog" (1970), in which the three-time best actress Oscar nominee is cast opposite a leading man who's part brutish Jack Palance (her co-star in 1952's "Sudden Fear) and part Lassie.

He's nicknamed Trog, as in troglodyte, although the three-dollar word for caveman never is used in the film, not even by Crawford's Dr. Brockton character, whose research facility is conveniently located near the cavern from which the hairy old missing link emerges after being disturbed by a trio of unlucky spelunkers.

Trog is "a perfect example of a Trog," Dr. Brockton redundantly explains. "Half man, half ape. Trog — a primitive cave dweller." He's also "the greatest scientific find of modern civilization." He's also a vegetarian, she says, before inexplicably feeding Trog dead fish and jiggly rubber lizards.

So, to recap: Trog's a Trog and I'm agog. Why? Because I couldn't be happier: "Trog" is now available on DVD, thanks to Warner Home Video.

The DVD (which includes a vintage trailer as its only bonus feature) is available separately for $14.99) or in a three-disc box set titled "Cult Camp Classics Vol. 2 — Women in Peril," which will cost you $29.98.

The other movies in the set — also available separately — include "Caged" (1950), the first women-in-prison film, and the LSD-exploiting "The Big Cube" (1969), with Lana Turner.

The noirish "Caged," which earned a best actress Oscar nomination for Eleanor Parker, is the unsung gem of this set, but "Trog" is the movie that left an indelible painting on the Lascaux cave wall of my junior high school mind in the early 1970s, when it was broadcast a few times on the "CBS Late Movie."

Even then, I knew "Trog" was ridiculous, goofy and just plain bad, but it was also fun, even if it remains more camp than classic.

One Joe Cornelius (probably a stuntman) portrays Trog, who is a fairly impressive subhuman from the neck up, thanks to an outsize headpiece with fangs, moving lips and a prognathic jaw.

Unfortunately, this cool-looking head sits atop the pink, hairless, clean and less than impressive body of a late 20th-century white man. The unconvincing costume is completed by fur booties and fur trunks, with some patchy dark cotton glued to the back of Trog's hands.

After Trog emerges from his cave (and casually tosses a boulder onto a TV cameraman), he's knocked out by Dr. Brockton's "hypo-gun" and moved to the scientist's lab, where he is kept in a jail cell-sized cage with nothing to sleep on but a box of straw. He may be a scientific marvel, but his accommodations are no better than those Bela Lugosi provided for his gorilla in "The Ape Man."

Brockton and her associates basically treat Trog like an idiot stepchild, a naughty schoolboy or a highly evolved dog, essentially playing fetch with him on the research institute's lawn ("Good boy, Trog!"). The scientists also discover that Trog appreciates classical music but rock 'n' roll sends him into a frenzy.

Inevitably, Trog escapes and goes on a mini-rampage in the nearest village, overturning a car, tossing a green grocer through a plate-glass window and hanging a butcher on a meat hook. (Cold cuts, half price?)

Directed without much apparent enthusiasm by Oscar-winning cinematographer Freddie Francis (who died March 17) and produced by longtime horror veteran Herman Cohen ("I Was a Teenage Werewolf"), "Trog" at least provided Joan Crawford with a change of scenery for her imbibing.

According to Cohen, the actress spent her time on the set drinking from a large frosted Pepsi-Cola glass that actually contained hundred-proof vodka.