Untamed Women

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.

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...

This film begins with an Army pilot named "Captain Steve Holloway" (Mikel Conrad) undergoing treatment in a hospital after suffering from a head injury which has affected his memory. As it so happens his bomber was hit by Japanese flak and he and his crew were subsequently forced to ditch the plane somewhere in the Pacific. After drifting in a life raft for 8 days they finally come upon an uncharted island where they are taken prisoner by a small party of native women back to their camp. At first the high priestess named "Sandra" (Doris Merrick) wants to have them killed. However, after much dancing and deliberation the rest of the women convince her to have the men mate with them instead. Unfortunately, this idea doesn't appeal to Sandra who unties them and forces them into the wilderness where they encounter all sorts of dangerous prehistoric animals and flesh-eating plants-and it's then that things become even more hazardous for everyone concerned. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a rather low-quality B-movie from the 50's which suffered from substandard acting and an even worse script. Likewise, although the special effects weren't that bad for this particular time-period, it should be noted that much of it was acquired directly from a previous film "One Million B.C." which diminishes my regard for the imagination and talent of those involved in producing it even more in my view. That said, I don't consider this to be a very good film and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

"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.

As recalled by a concussed, possibly deranged, man found floating in a life-raft, a downed U. S. bomber crew drifted onto an uncharted volcanic island inhabited by primeval creatures and by comely women who were the descendants of ancient Druid refugees and whose menfolk had recently been eradicated by rampaging cavemen. The story is sketchy and ludicrous, and is largely an excuse to recycle special effects footage from 1940's 'One Million BC' (the source of 'dinosaur' footage in a plethora of B-movies and TV programs) as the men pointlessly trudge through the monster-infested wastelands before returning to their starting point (only to be threatened by 'One Million BC's exploding volcano, lava and rockslides). The 'untamed women' (or the 'dolls' as they are frequently referred to) are statuesque, perfectly coiffed epitomes of early '50's beauty and, of course, they immediately fall in love with the rugged American flyboys. Despite being a hold-over from a religion that faded away millennia ago, they speakith in a pseudo-Shakespearian English (verily, they soundith more like American Quakers than Elizabethans). No explanation is hazarded as to why the island is populated by antediluvian monsters and hirsute cavemen, so the women's diction is not the film's greatest mystery. The Americans include the usual Hollywood G. I. tropes, a wiseacre from Brooklyn, a farm-boy from Arkansas, etc and the script is essentially a series of clichés held together by occasional plot-driving sentences. No one would expect that acting ability was high on the list of prerequisites when casting the lovely Druidesses but the men are terrible (although they were probably up to the material they were given). For a film with an apparently negligible budget, the opening crash of the B17 is pretty well done (except for the scenes in the spartan cockpit) and the movie's ending is not as 'Hollywood' as I smugly anticipated. Unfortunately for young men in the 1950's, the heights of the 'sexy cave-women' genre would not be reached until Raquel Welch battled Mesozoic horrors in a fur-bikini in 'One Million Years BC' (the 1966 remake of the Hal Roach classic that provided the aforementioned saurian beasties) or when Victoria Vetri left her primordial two-piece at the side of the swimming hole in 1970's 'When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth'.