Untamed Women

During WWII, the survivors of a successful, but ill-fated bombing mission wind up on an uncharted island. They're soon taken captive by the feral females of the title. Much tribal dancing ensues.

UNTAMED WOMEN is just about as absurd as any movie of its type could possibly be. For their part, the male soldiers spend a lot of their time trapped in a cave. That, or being hounded by "prehistoric monsters" (lizards and armadillos with rubber horns and / or fins glued onto their backs). None of which is very exciting. Luckily, our heroes are equipped with those pistols that never run out of bullets. They also have deep discussions about their lives. None of which is very interesting.

Just wait until the secret of the women's origin is revealed! The introduction of the "hairy men" adds to the hilarity!

So, pop the corn and intoxicate some friends. Schlock of this caliber is rare indeed...

"Untamed Women" was a long forgotten United Artists release from 1952, its star Mikel Conrad having previously directed and starred in 1949's equally obscure "The Flying Saucer," which never suggests that its saucer comes from outer space. Director W. Merle Connell stayed on the fringes of Hollywood, usually as an editor, though among the films he photographed were John Carradine's "The Unearthly" and Phil Tucker's "The Cape Canaveral Monster." This was the last feature for screenwriter George Wallace Sayre, whose prior credits include the 1939 Boris Karloff vehicle "The Man They Could Not Hang," John Carradine's 1944 "Alaska" at Monogram, and the studio's 1945 Charlie Chan entry "The Shanghai Cobra." The late 40s and early 50s saw a rather large number of low grade 'Lost World' efforts like "Unknown World," "Two Lost Worlds," "Lost Continent," "The Jungle," and "Captive Women," all utilizing the same stock footage of lizards posing as dinosaurs from Hal Roach's 1940 "One Million B.C." "Untamed Women" is told in flashback by the only survivor of a WW2 bomber crew of four whose plane went down in the Pacific, drifting for days before reaching an island inhabited by scantily clad cave women, their first thought to capture the 'hairy men' who have a history of killing. Once the quartet prove to be friends, the girls fall all over each other to claim one as a mate, despite the protestations of high priestess Sandra (Doris Merrick). The boys survive attacks from a man eating plant and a single roaming dinosaur before a large number of cavemen appear to claim their brides (reliable Bronson Canyon again), most of their ammunition used to repel them. The entire pointless exercise concludes with a volcanic eruption that claims all the lives on the island, save the one man who overcomes his amnesia to tell the impossible tale. Lyle Talbot is the one familiar face, as the doctor who opens and closes the picture, his best known genre credits opposite Bela Lugosi, "One Body Too Many," "Glen or Glenda," and "Plan 9 from Outer Space." There's always camp value in seeing perfectly coiffed models trying to pass themselves off as prehistoric women, their tribal dances offering additional eye candy, and there is some attempt to meld live actors with stock footage but it's really a lost cause, these Untamed Women all looking quite docile to this viewer.

Okay, so it's a notch or two below the works of Orson Welles, but connoisseurs of tacky B-movies from the 1950s will find much to enjoy in this tale of four Air Force men who crash their World War II plane in the South Pacific and who then wind up on an island inhabited by a colony of beautiful women dressed in cavewoman chic. Especially notable is the dialog spoken by these women. Here are my four favorite lines: (1) "Thy lips are parched and dry." (2) "The ways of men are strange to us, O Sandra our priestess and protector." (3) "The strange-tongued one speaketh in riddles." (4) "They be only four and ye be many."

There are visual delights as well, such as the footage of nervous-looking lizards crawling around miniature rocks and trees in an attempt to palm themselves off as some kind of dinosaurs. And then there's the exploding volcano in the final reel!

However, these charms can't equal those found in "Island of Lost Women" because that movie has a more attractive cast. The females in "Untamed Women," for example, look like runner-up beauty queens from a small high school in Oklahoma, and the men are routine specimens who keep their clothes on. On the other hand, the females in "Island of Lost Women" rank on the va-va-voom scale and the two men are hot-looking hunks who shed their shirts faster than gay strippers at a New Year's Eve party.

And finally, would someone explain why a woman from a two-thousand-year-old Druid culture living on an uncharted Pacific island be called "Sandra?"

Crammed with Lost-World-Women Clad in Loin-Cloths and Premium Hair and Make-Up.

Magnified Lizards and Assorted Creatures, some Stolen from "One Million Years B. C." (1940), an Angry Volcano, and a Tribe of "The Harry Ones", just Waiting to Kill, Rape, and Pillage.

The Girls are All Pretty and Pretty Willing to be Friendly with the Newly Arrived Soldiers, who had to Crash-Land During Battle.

There are Copious Amounts of Genre Cliches, Tropes, and Expectations.

The Strength of the Movie is the Fast-Pacing and some Clever Shots and Angles. It's Obvious some Effort went into Making this Movie Entertaining.

The Weakness is a Never-Shuts-Up, Brooklyn Dodgers Fan who Routinely Brings the Movie to a Cringe-Inducing Halt.

But Overall if You are Attracted to this Type of Thing, it will Not Disappoint.

There is Enough Eye-Candy Here to Satisfy and the Musical Score Ain't Bad.

It also Goes Against the Grain of the Usual "Happy Ending".

The Poster Version with the T-Rex is a Colorful, Classy B-Movie Classic.

Slightly Above Average and...

Worth a Watch.

Untamed Women has pilot Mikel Conrad who has spent time on a rubber raft being rescued and is now in the hospital. He and his crew have crashed in the Pacific (I think because the film isn't real specific) laying in the bed totally mute and in shock. Dr. Lyle Talbot administers some sodium pentathol and Conrad like Ishmael tells his tale.

After sinking an enemy cruiser, the bomber is hit with flak and has to ditch in the ocean. The crew bails out and eventually four of them reach an uncharted island that the mapmakers missed.

The uncharted island was really losing currency at this time. There just aren't any of those in the Atlantic and in the Pacific during World War II, the Americans and the Japanese probably charted everything that was left, but I digress.

Once on the island Conrad and his crew run into all kinds of things, a tribe of Neanderthals who need some women because these guys definitely haven't had their itches scratched in like forever, a tribe of Amazons who are descended from Druids scattered to the four winds after the invasion of Britain by the Romans, a volcano everybody worships and for good measure some prehistoric beasts thrown in courtesy of One Million BC. I think you can figure out the rest of the plot with these elements.

The movie leaves this location purposely vague. At one point the usual guy from Brooklyn who pops up in all war movies says that if they get back on the ocean the enemy might pick them up and they'll spend the rest of the war in a concentration camp eating raw fish and rice. Clues that these guys could be in either theater.

These Amazons are without men because the Neanderthals have killed them all off in previous raids. They like what they see in this stranded bomber crew who speak so foreign, but want to make sure they're not with the Neanderthals. As for their looks, in those animal skins with Fifties styled hairdos, they look like a line that any Las Vegas club would be proud to have.

Untamed Women just goes to show that Ed Wood did not direct all the bad movies from this era.