White Pongo

This movie for some reason isn't as popular as Plan 9 and Robot Monster, but it's really good (in a bad way).

The whole film is a waste of your time. You got a stupid storyline - an albino gorilla running around the jungle terrorizing people. You got scientist trying to stop the havoc. Then there's the horrible monkey suit and dialogue. Yes, it's one of the worst! Watch it!

One of many Poverty Row jungle films, this has to be one of the truly "so bad it's good" films of its era. A Chief Native Bearer named "Mumbo Jumbo" -- addressed by the other actors with a straight face! Pongo is a white gorilla, and one of the natives points to the ground and cries, "B'wana! B'wana! Pongo tracks!" Normal gorillas leave recognizably different tracks? Pressing through the jungle on their trek, they pass the same tree multiple times.

I have a copy of the film on videotape. One of my favorite scenes was edited out of the print it was made from. The hero and heroine are drifting down the river on a boat. They're sitting in the moonlight, and Pongo is following the boat in the jungle, making quite a racket as he snaps small trees, hurls aside boulders, and rustles through the underbrush, to keep up with the boat. He's framed by the profiles of the hero and heroine, in the background. The hero looks deeply into the heroine's eyes and says, dreamily, "Quiet out here in the river, isn't it?" I hope the DVD has that one left in.

This is not a great film, and all of its humorous scenes are intended to be serious. But because of that, it's a fun film.

This is another story of a jungle expedition that runs across a legendary white ape that may or may not be the missing link. There has got to be five or six of these films floating around in the film vaults and everyone of them is a turkey or a close cousin.

The problem here, as in almost every jungle movie, is that the gorillas look like what they are, men in suits. Worse if the fact that the suits are absolutely terrible and so unconvincing that anyone watching it is going to laugh rather than scream.

This movie isn't too terrible, and is actually okay if you have a love of bad movies, especially ones that you can talk back to and make fun of. As these things go its not a movie that I' search out, but it is one that I'd put on if I was in need of some unintentional laughs.

White Pongo isn't an A movie. It isn't even a B movie. It falls more into the range of a D-level movie, made on a shoe string by a minor film company. It fails in just about every way a film can. It's not just that it's cheap and openly racist; it's just plain boring!

The film follows an expedition to capture a rare white gorilla believed to be the missing link. (Why would the missing link have to be white?) In the process, the adventurers run into hostile natives, criminals, and the worst gorilla suit known to man. (I know this was made before the time of Jane Goodall, but couldn't they have come up with something vaguely realistic?)

The film's racism is very obvious, to the point that it verges on satire. The lead black character is named Mumbo-Jumbo for crying out loud. The Africans are shown as savages who are automatically hostile to white people for no reason-never mind the fact that during the colonial era, they would have had every reason to distrust Europeans.

However, what's most damning is the boredom factor. Even though the movie is roughly seventy minutes long, it is filled with scenes of people just cruising down the river with canoes, with no accompanying action or dialogue. It's filler of the worst kind.

This is the kind of film that kids will enjoy and does not contain a lot of violence. The setting looked good with a lot of jungle greenery and men in gorilla suits. There is actually a plot to this thing. I would have rather had the plot revolve around looking for and trying to capture a rare white gorilla than looking for a white ape that they suppose to be the 'missing link',,,but I guess the 'link' bit adds something(??). Check out the filmography of Wrixen and Fraser, the native safari guide named, believe it or not..Mumbo Jumbo, they were accomplished actors and played in many notable films. White Pongo is not bad but not good either. There is decent character development and a slight surprise near the end. Ape gets girl, ape looses girl, guy gets girl. Happy ending. Good clean fun.