Wild Women

Over the years, I've seen a number of these "Primitive female tribe meeting civilized men" movies, and I have to confess that I am not a fan of them. I like the IDEA of these movies, because the idea promises that there will be a lot of campy unintentional humor. But for the most part I find them a slog to get through. "Bowanga Bowanga" (a.k.a. "Wild Women") didn't do anything to change my mind about these films.

For starters, I found this to be even cheaper and cruder than the usual cheap and crude nature of these movies. There is a TON of stock footage in the movie, and I suspect that the script was written AFTER the filmmakers got their hands on the stock footage and viewed it. The stock footage does show a couple of seconds of native African nudity (the only serious sexual aspect of the movie), and I admit I got a laugh that one stock footage clip showed a moose when the story is supposed to be taking place in Africa. But other than those two things, all the stock footage is just padding out a very thin story.

As for the women in this movie, it takes quite a long time to really get to them, aside from a few brief glimpses in the first part of the movie. And once we properly get to them, they turn out to be a really boring bunch of females. Their history - how they got to be their way, etc. - is never explained. Their dialogue is so garbled at times that it's hard to make out what they are saying. Their native customs (dancing, etc.) are boring as well.

One positive thing I can think about the movie - it's significantly shorter than other examples of its genre, so I was able to finish and put it in mind to forget about it quicker than usual. I'm already starting to forget it...

Abysmal pulp adventure exploitation in the jungle woman genre. Lousy audio thankfully obscures the dumb dialog. And it's awfully talky for a movie about people who don't speak English. There's no adventure to be found here; it's a jungle adventure with cliffhangers and one wild animal attack that happens in flashback.

Three pale-face dopes wander the African wilderness and encounter warring man-hungry tribes of Amazons. These wild women have advanced out of the Stone Age only so far as to invent makeup, shoes, and underarm hair removal technology. Despite their desperation for "hus-bahnd," the ladies insist that they will fight the men and burn the weaker ones.

The only thing of interest, as if there were any question, is the assortment of young women clad in animal skins cleverly designed like the bathing suits of 1951. Plenty of wrestling and bad dancing mixed with stripless 1950s stripper moves. No nudity or appreciable violence. On the other hand, you may be humming the catchy native song for days.

An unintentional precurser to grindhouse and mondo movies of the 60s and 70s, this movie gave grandpa a chance to see exotic Africa and, better yet, good looking scantily clad ladies cavorting about. I give it a 6 rating because it is entertaining in its silliness and I think a movie like this has its place in film history.

Bowanga Bowanga: White Sirens of Africa (1951)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Three hunters go into the jungles of Africa where they are kidnapped by a group of female savages wanting to make them their husbands. Another female tribe hears that there is fresh meat in town so they attack wanting the men for themselves. If you're a fan of bad movies then this one here is pretty bad and certainly bad enough to get a few nice laughs out of it. I'm really not sure what's up with the actual story because it seems to change every few minutes but this is probably because there's so much stock footage the producer's had to use and they just try to wiggle a story around all of it. The movie runs 61-minutes but I'm going to guess that at least half of that running time is nothing more that stock footage. I actually enjoyed this stock footage of various wildlife and that includes one scene with th biggest snake I've ever seen. I'm terrified of snakes so this scene certainly got under my skin. Tigers, chimps and various other forms of animals are also on full display. The movie has a lot of narration through the first portion of the film because this is where most of the stock footage is. The second half gets spoken dialogue and after hearing it you'll be wishing they switched back to the stock footage. The performances are all pretty bad and there's nothing naughty going on except for women in bathing suits. If you look closely you can see tags coming out of the women's outfits, which is rather strange considering we're in the jungles of Africa. A few laughs are to be had including the whole segment with one of the men being "scared" to go with a beautiful blonde, big breasted gal because she wants him for a husband. Most men would be running to the gal. All in all this is a pretty poor movie but thankfully it's silly enough to keep bad movie lovers mildly entertained. Original title: WILD WOMEN.

Why so many of these films were made is obvious. It's a chance to put women in bikinis. They're cheap to make. And it panders to the sexual fantasy of men who want to be dominated and be submissive to women.

There's also the creepy racism. Africans get shown as primitive. But put white people in the jungle, even "primitive" ones, and they get shown as naturally dominant and superior.

This film was so cheap, its "African tribesmen" are dressed in western jean shorts with leather belts. One of its "Africans" was a white guy they didn't bother putting blackface makeup on.

The supposed primitive women have perfectly blow dried hair in 1950s hairstyles, some of them permed. Some are wearing obvious lipstick.

The jungle is obviously California. Nice oak and pine trees, buddy.

And they can't even decide if it's Africa or the Amazon. "Amazon" women but "African" tribesmen.

It's not bad in a fun way, just bad.