The Wild Women of Wongo

This 1950s bad movie classic takes us to Wongo, a tropical place (shot in Florida) where the women of Wongo have trouble with their men. When a very, very handsome stranger tells them about a place called Goona only a few miles away, where very, very handsome men are looking for beautiful companions, they are quick to consider their options...

I think the scene when the daughter of the king pretends to be engaged in a "life-or-death struggle" with a small rubber crocodile must have been worth the admission fee alone, although the talking parrot made me cringe every time... must be on screen every 5 minutes at least. The "leopard skin" jungle outfits of the 1950s are naturally nowhere near what Tanya Roberts was allowed to almost wear in the 1980s, so I wonder how hot "Women of Wongo" really seemed in the 1950s? As far as the male models (the word "actor" would be out of place) are concerned, one of them actually rose to stardom afterwards: Ed Fury became Ursus in the Italian cinema series.

(Spoilers) Strangely made movie thats so badly acted that it comes across as a movie worthy to be classified with such bad movie epics as "Plan Nine from Outer Space" and "Manos: The Hands of Fate". In fact the film actually has a piece of music thats straight out of the soundtrack of the film "Plan Nine from Outer Space" that was released a year after, in 1959, in it.

Wango, as well as Goona, were islands created by Mother Nature back some 10,000 years ago where the men of Womgo were boorish brutes and the women were gorgeous babes and in the case of the people on the island of Noona the men were Greek Gods and the women were homely wallflowers.This made dating romance and marriage among the young couples of Wongo and Goona an act of duty rather then an act of love.

This all changes when one of the young men of Goona, the son of that islands king,traveled to Wongo by canoe to get the men of both islands to united against an invasion of ape-men from another island. The women of Wongo seeing the handsome Goonaien went ape over him which lead the jealous men of Wongo plan to kill him before he left the island. This was foiled by the Wongo women when they prevented their men from murdering the handsome Noona man which had them kicked out of the island by their man-folks.

Meanwhile, out of camera range, the ape-men attack Wongo and kill and scatter the men there leaving them to wounder through the forests and waterways to Goona. Back in Noona The men are given, through trial and fire, their chance to prove their manhood by their elders by being thrown out of their village and into the jungle without their spears to protect themselves. This leaves them open to be captured by the armed Amazon-like Women of Wongo and taken as slaves back to their island, which seems to have been abandoned by the invading ape-men.

At Goona the men of Wongo, who are lost in the woods, run into the women of Goona and the both boorish and homely men and women hit it on and fall head over heels in love with each other. The story ends with both the Men of Goona and Women of Wongo falling in love with each other as the Women of Goona and Men of Wongo did earlier. They all live happily ever after with Mother Nature as usual correcting herself from the mistake she made when she at first created the incompatible, to each other, men and women of Wongo and Goona. As for the invading ape-men? they must have gotten lost in the woods and were never seen or heard from again.

Yes, this was a bad movie (I watched it in a double bill with the similar-toned prehistoric tongue-in-cheek 'Prehistoric Women'--both from Mill Creek's 50-pack 'Nightmare Worlds'), but it was charming, short and sweet, and I enjoyed it. I wouldn't watch it again, probably, but it was decent fare to see once. I thought the way the credits were animated was cool (a low-budget Saul Bass), and I wouldn't have minded being trapped by the Wongo tribe, if I time-travelled back to that time, myself! At first, I thought they had misspelled Adrienne Barbeau's name, but no one looked like her in the film, and she would have been really young anyway.

It intrigued me that Tennessee Williams actually directed at least parts of the film. Though this film falls into the 'so-bad-it's good-territory, I'm glad it was made. Not everything has to be either a $300-million monster or Hamlet.

Wild Women of Wongo, The (1958)

** (out of 4)

As the film opens up a narrator tells us that some experiment was done on the island of Wongo. On that island all the beautiful women were given ugly men. On another island the beautiful men were given ugly women. When the ape people attack the two sides might come together so that the pretty can be with the pretty and the ugly with the ugly. Sound stupid? Well, it is and that's why this film came off mildly entertaining. The movie has the reputation of being one of the worst ever made and I won't argue that but at the same time it kept me entertained just because of how stupid it was. The movie even features some music that is best known from being used in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, which would be released the following year. I don't think it's ever explained why the looks of the people were mixed up to begin with but I'm sure it wouldn't have made any sense anyways. As is to be expected, the performances all are extremely bad and sometimes it does give us some laughter. The director does what he can with the material but the color is pretty good and the locations are certainly nice to look at. There's also quite a bit of footage of some of the wildlife and that's a plus. The movie doesn't feature too much of a story as we see women (or men) get kicked out of their tribes, have to find, look around, fight some more and then look around some more. Fans of bad movies will want to check it out but others should stay far, far away.

Outrageous camp factor, and every bit as weird and mindless as you've heard.

"Oh, Priestess, we request permission to find mates!" The narrator explains: "Nature made a mistake." Two independent tribes that mistrust but leave each other alone finally interact, as an alliance to fight some other weird tribe is proposed, then rejected. A parrot is perched somewhere, and periodically shows up to mock the characters, as if we the audience aren't doing that already.

Basically, some prehistoric guys and gals from each tribe run around the forest and occasionally meet each other. There's one girl (from the "pretty woman" tribe) who beats the snot out of a baby crocodile, and the monster people show up briefly. Her tribe has women with 50's hair styles, shaved legs, lipstick, and other make-up. The other tribe has women with buck teeth and attitudes that scare their sheepish men.

Beware of the soundtrack. They actually use some of the same music as the infamous "Plan 9 from Outer Space," and this movie makes that one look good by comparison. The acting is oafery, the director must have been out in the sun too long, and the story line is uhh, was there one? There's only one way to watch this: MST3K style. Get your buddies together and mock the thing, when it isn't bashing itself that is.