Mara of the Wilderness

I viewed this movie when I was young teenager at the movies. I haven't seen it since. I had a definite crush on Lori Saunders and I still think she is the most beautiful actress I have ever seen. I enjoy watching Petticoat Junction. I only wish she would have done more acting.

The little girl of the title (Lelia Walsh) and her parents go on an excursion deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Dad's an anthropologist, there to study the fauna. Shockingly, the place is filled with wild animals! One of them, a "bear" eats mum and dad, leaving Mara alone in the woods. Providentially, a pair of kindly "wolves" decides to raise Mara as their own.

Twelve years later, naturalist Ken Williams (Adam "Batman" West) is writing a thesis on wolves, and heads for the deep forest, where he encounters the now fully grown Mara (Lori "Bobbie Jo" Saunders).

Uh oh!

There's also an eeevil hunter in the area. We can tell he's eeevil because of...

TWO FACTORS: #1- He treats his Native guide shamefully! #2- Eeevil hunter music plays whenever he appears!

Can Williams get acquainted with Mara before the eeevil hunter messes things up?

Ms. Saunders is a wonder to behold, spending her bountiful free time in her loincloth cavorting with her lupine friends. She also enjoys swimming in her -strategically obscured- loincloth-less-ness. All while sporting the world's biggest wild woman wig!

This movie is silliness itself. It's also loads of fun to watch!...

A well-acted, quietly haunting little film boasting excellent location photography with Deschutes National Forest in Oregon standing in for Alaska, and attractive lead performances by the late Adam West and by Linda Saunders, as she then was.

Wild girl Mara Wade, orphaned at 7 by a bear and raised by wolves, is assumed dead until 12 years later handsome hero West and ruthless hunter Theo Marcuse simultaneously stumble over her and things get ugly (despite the overall gentleness of the film, there are some quite rugged scenes of violence, as when West gets simultaneously caught in two of Marcuse's animal traps).

A German adventure film in colour shot in Africa about a blonde wild girl, 'Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald' (1956), in which Marion Marshall had spent the first half of the film topless, had been released in America as 'Liane, Jungle Goddess' in 1959, and was successful enough for her to reprise the role the following year in 'Liane, die weiße Sklavin' (1957). Also in 1959 Audrey Hepburn had played a similar, more modestly dressed, role as Reena the Bird Girl in a film version of William Henry Hudson's 1904 best seller 'Green Mansions'.

As the mature Mara, Linda Saunders wears considerably more than Liane and sports an impressive mane of stylish, immaculately combed sixties big hair down to her waist that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of 'Star Trek'. By day she run about barefoot with a knife in her belt and spends her nights curled up with a family of wolves. While Liane naturally spoke fluent German, Mara never says a word; and the film rather boldly has long stretches completely without dialogue.

Both West and Saunders soon afterwards found regular employment on TV in 'Batman' and 'Petticoat Junction' respectively, as did Roberto Contreras (who brings a fascinating stillness to his role as Marcuse's long-suffering Indian guide) in 'The High Chaparral' and Denver Pyle in 'The Dukes of Hazzard'. Shortly before his untimely death in a car crash in 1967, Marcuse appeared with West again in an episode of 'Batman'.

Having waited many years to see this film, I was not disappointed. Adam West is well cast in the lead role of the anthropologist and Theo Marcuse excels as the heavy. The scenery is eye-catching and the music score is haunting. Linda Saunders is a classic beauty and is memorable as Mara. A film that should be released on home video.