Wild Women (1951) User Reviews

No adventure - no excitement - just girls wrestling in swimsuits

[punchinello · 3/10 · 23 July 2006]

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.

Great camp for insomniacs

[MartianOctocretr5 · 5/10 · 4 March 2012]

I'm hoping whoever was involved with this foolishness 60 years ago was just kidding. It takes "exploitation movie" to the outer limits. The outer limits of Africa, to be exact. There, a mysterious band of Amazon beauties frighten the bejeebies out of their neighboring tribes.

There's plenty of extraneous stock footage shot by some long-ago National Geographic safari tourists: I love that same hippo that floats by every few minutes in a river that is nowhere near the action taking place. There's also a curious chimp that is shown repeatedly watching something--I guess the Prehistoric women(?), as well as several other animals.

Some guy named Trent who, as a boy, saw a blonde siren up on a mountain, wants to find these ladies, and gets two other comic relief guys from Brooklyn to join in the quest.

The women are, like any women who have been cut off from civilization for generations, dressed in tailored leopard skin. They have their hair done in downtown Hollywood, carefully filed and polished nails, shave their arms and legs, and wear cool moccasins. Everybody has a spear and says, "huzzzzbennnndddd..." Also, the routine cat fights take place, and they worship something while dancing the Shake and Shimmy. How the Amazons got there in the first place is questioned, but never explained.

This is a must-see for anybody who wants to see a movie that makes you exclaim, "Did they really make a film like this?"

Not That Bad

[januszlvii · 5/10 · 4 July 2022]

Wild Women is not a bad movie: It will never be mistaken for The Godfather or Citizen Kane, but it is not Paradise Hills or Harley Quinn either. It goes without saying the main reason to watch is to see beautiful women ( especially one who reminded me of Jayne Mansfield when it came to looks, hair and body shape). It is about three men who go to look for a tribe of lost white white women in Africa and end up being captured by the ladies. The strongest one ( Trent) is supposed to mate with the Evil Queen and the others sacrificed to the fire god. Spoilers ahead:,Fortunately there is one woman named Owoona who is good and likes Trent and he likes her. ( It is interested to note of all the ladies she was the only one he smiled at in the beginning) and helps the guys escape ( of course she is going with them "As one of the guys named Kirby said "You are stuck with her." ). There is a lot of stuff that are far fetched like Moose and Orangutans in Africa, ladies speaking English saying Husbands, the ladies having polished nails, and the men and Owoona leaving and singing as they leave. If you do not take seriously it is not that bad.5/10 stars.

Creepy on Multiple Levels, But Laughable

[nafps · 1/10 · 19 March 2022]

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.

Unless you can get some friends together and pick on this film, you're in for one of the worst of the worst

[dbborroughs · 1/10 · 5 May 2008]

The plot has something about white hunters captured by a tribe of white women in the African jungle/ plains.Its a turkey and the some. What it really is is wildly mismatched footage from early sound and silent films mixed with badly shot recent(to the release) footage of men on a safari. There are scenes of a man in a gorilla suit, south seas natives at sea (used to represent people in the middle of Africa), women in bikini's, horrible narration and a guy in a loin cloth with make up all over his body (racially insensitive I think so). This is a movie to sit and make fun of- but only with lots of alcoholic drinks and witty friends. At any other time this is going to be a chore to get through. Its a bad bad bad movie. Beyond that I'm speechless

Campy Fun

[Michael_Elliott · 22 June 2009]

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.

Made for a reported $49.95 and partially filmed by chimps!

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 26 November 2009]

This story is about a safari in Africa that meets some guy named Trent--who convinces them to look for a tribe of white babes. Naturally, they turn out to be amazon warriors and capture the men. The rest is pretty predictable.

This movie has everything you'd expect in a bargain basement movie about Africa--the substantial use of often irrelevant stock footage, film of animals that are NOT native to the continent (such as Orangutans, Moose, Coatamundis and Ground Hogs),a white actor in dark makeup playing a native, bad acting (particularly from Trent--a handsome man with the personality of balsa wood), comic relief (sounding like Chico Marx), a guy dressed up in a gorilla suit and bikini-clad white women with perms who are supposedly fierce jungle warriors--like a tribe of angry female Tarzans. By the look of it, my assumption is that the movie was made for under $49.95--including developing costs and paying for rental of the gorilla suit! But, what I didn't expect was an IMDb score of 4.9. This is poor, but not that poor considering that this is a schlock production in every possible sense and there is no conceivable reason why the film is rated that high! Now I am NOT saying the film isn't worth seeing--it's campy and stupid enough to make enjoyable viewing--particularly with friends. Just don't expect anything resembling a professionally made or competent film.

Finally, here's a smattering of the dialog from this jungle classic:

"Oolama like strong white man. Oolama want strong white man..."

"oonga-bunga"

"me-te-tonga....no,....keeel ('kill') man"

What The Heck Is A "Bowanga"??

[thestarkfist · 1/10 · 22 November 2014]

Let's start off by admitting that the reason this picture was made was to titillate the audience with fantasies of white American males dominated by women. It wants to take the boy rape scene from Ed Wood's The Violent Years and stretch it out to a feature length film. That is its primary goal. This is not entirely a bad thing but it seems they forgot a few of the subtle details associated with making a movie, like having a writer, a story and a script. The director, Norman Dawn, introduces his ideas early on in the movie and then just lets them lay there without developing a single one. For instance, there is a scene in which the American game hunters spot one of the Ulama women walking hand-in-hand with a guy in a gorilla suit. Hmmmm. What's this about, you're likely to ask yourself. Don't bother because Mr. Dawn isn't about to elaborate on the relationship between the girl and the ape. He just knows that the film has to exceed an hour in length in order to qualify as a feature motion picture and so he just throws whatever footage is available onto the screen, almost at random in some cases. Stock scenes from some godforsaken film archive comprise the bulk of the movie. Most of them have an African setting, although Mr. Dawn is not opposed to throwing in shots of animals not indigenous to the continent. There is one brief and hilarious clip where a moose is shown.

The scenes featuring the actors all have an improvisational feel to them. The dialogue is all slapdash and does little to move the film forward. At one point the little Italian guy gets carried off by one of the wild women and you think that maybe Norman is about to take the bold step of actually having something happen in his movie, but nothing doing. That bit fizzles out like the rest of the flick.

Summing up, the movie does not even come close to achieving its goal. You will not be titillated by the proceedings in the slightest. most likely you will just be bored. This movie is for lovers of incompetent film-making only!

Amazing movie

[dave13-1 · 2/10 · 7 January 2024]

This movie is like a textbook on how to make a 61 minute feature length movie with the change in your pocket. First, acquire enough stock footage of wild animals and rivers to make California look like Africa (a bit), shoot a few action scenes without sound and have a character narrate over them to avoid having to shoot with synched sound, and have the three male 'leads' walk around a lot to kill time. Poof, you burned half an hour without encountering a single Wild Woman!

When we finally do meet the eponymous females we discover that they have just come from Mamie van Doren's hair salon, and like to wear animal print bikinis that show off their tan lines. Plus, they appear to have learned their tribal dances by watching drunks gyrate at a suburban New Year's Eve party. And at some point, they learned comic book native English ("me know white man talk").

The movie grinds to a halt at that point, as the male leads, having survived a somewhat uncomfortable hike for the first half of the movie, now only want to escape from the clutches of the very tribe they came all that way to meet. Fickle men. No wonder the Wild Women want to sacrifice them to the Fire God. (Note that no stock footage of fire gods was available, and so he remains offscreen.)

The inevitable tug-of-war over the hunkiest male ensues, leading to a showdown between alpha Wild Women. Five minutes of hair-pulling and dust-wrestling later, we have our sixty-one minute opus in the can. And only about ten of those minutes count as actual plot. A travel commercial by the Puerto Rico tourist board has more story development, not to mention better acting.

Is it worse than a Godfrey Ho ninja movie. No, but that is a tough standard to beat. Wild Women ultimately is too tame to hate watch, but also too thin and weak to make fun of. The fact that it got released at all after four years tucked away on a shelf (the distributor was embarrassed to have it) is something of an achievement.

A big waste of time

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 22 June 2016]

As other reviewers have noted, BOWANGA BOWANGA is a dreadful film. It's an exercise in stock footage featuring a threadbare plot involving a group of male explorers who travel into the interior of Africa and find themselves captured by a tribe of (white) female Amazons, at which point rivalry and the battle for power puts them in mortal danger.

These 'female tribe' movies seem to have been inordinately popular from the 1940s right through to the 1970s, but for the life of me I can't see why as they all tell variations of the same boring plot. This is a particularly excruciating example of its type, featuring not one distinguishable character, and laughable attempts at acting on the part of the Amazons.

At least half of the running time seems to be padded out with the usual stock footage of wild animals and the like, footage that barely matches the newly-shot studio footage. There's barely any action or incident here, just one lame sequence after another. It might only last an hour but BOWANGA BOWANGA feels like twice that length, it tests the patience so thoroughly.

If you start, stay to the end.

[driftdog · 4/10 · 11 February 2022]

Well, I will start with just why I give four stars. There are scenes with various wild animals in, trees and ?? That's as far as I can go. Now the movie, pretty bad really, over zealous acting and a class stereo typing (for its period) of tribal communities. Today it would (I believe wrongly) be called racist and a example of colonial control. I on the other hand feel it represents a part of movie history long consigned to the learning bin. It is however, another example of serious (for its period) sexism, not totally aimed, I feel, just at the female actors. Strange singing, dubious costumes and even worse, tan lines that are so bad even in black and white they are fully visible. To conclude, I recommend that if you are lost for something to do on a wet day, stick it out to the end.

Hilarious laugh riot!

[Jens-28 · 10/10 · 12 May 1999]

I saw this cheesy marvel of a flick under the "Something Weird 2000" filmfestival under the name "Bowanga! Bowanga!" with an introduction in person by The Mighty Monarch of Exploitation, David Friedman (Bloodfeast, 2000 Maniacs, Erotic Adventures Of Zorro etc.). Three white bozos are lookin' for the lost tribe of "the white sirens" in "Africa". Our merry trio witness lots of footage from several mondo jungleflicks: Tigers, elephants and even a moose!?! Finally they find the amazon tribe which captures the men. The tribeleader keeps the strongest man for breedin'(!) and the rest are to be sacrificed to the almighty sungod. But the other "sirens" revolt and our trio makes an narrow escape. The End. All the sirens are wearing zebra stribed bikinis, panties with matching high heels! They all learn English pretty fast and with different accents! Fans of "Wild Women Of Wongo" and "Cat Women Of The Moon" should check out this wonderful wacky junglegirl epic which is definitely pre-PC Hollywood.

Finally, a film that makes the Bomba and Jungle Jim movies look like the original "Tarzan" in comparison.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 27 April 2018]

Schlocky old stock footage and a ton of silliness situations makes for a harmless hour filled with many laughs, most obviously unintentional and some that film goers who saw this in 1951 might not have picked it up at the time. Looking as if they were put through a wind machine immediately after having their hair done, the several dozen women in this film are deliciously bad with their "Ooga Booga" school of acting. The men at least try to create some characterizations, overshadowed by the scrawny Hispanic sidekick who is obviously meant for stereotypical comic relief.

The story surrounds the legendary female tribe of white women (some obviously Hispanic) who dominate the African plains that these explorers discover. A fight between one of the stronger women and one of the men saves the life of the Latino sidekick doomed to be offered as a sacrifice to their fire good. But this also means that the man is automatically given to their queen as a mate, and this creates the potential for revolution where the other women, obviously desperate for a man, decide to fight for power. Some of the women are wearing clothing obviously not made of any animal skin, a ridiculous detail to be overlooked. I admit I enjoyed it simply for it's absurdity, making it a cult film I will definitely revisit.

More crude and primitive than usual

[Wizard-8 · 31 July 2009]

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...

Rather entertaining

[jmh-77559 · 6/10 · 11 August 2021]

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.

"She Was A Vision Of Womanly Loveliness!"...

[azathothpwiggins · 26 August 2021]

WILD WOMEN (aka: BOWANGA BOWANGA) stars no one in particular and is about a safari through the "dark continent" of Africa.

This movie's greatest assets are its preposterously erratic non-plot and its idiot dialogue. Absolutely nothing makes any sort of logical sense, with scenes seemingly tossed together in no particular order. This could be due to its being a patchwork of several unrelated movies stitched together. This only adds to the hilarity.

An orangutan, foreign to the continent of Africa, wanders about for no apparent reason. A man in a go-rilla suit roams through for 10 seconds, before disappearing forever. A sudden flashback sequence features an Amish-looking boy's encounter with a "tribe" of white women in 1950's swimwear. Holding spears! Natives dance around while their chief jumps up and down with a big snake in his hands. Savage women run through the jungle, pouncing on unsuspecting adventurers. Annnd, on and on.

Pure ultra-schlock gold!

Nothing can possibly prepare you for the male vs. Female throw-down showdown!

Blessedly short, this rivals other anti-classics like WILD WOMEN OF WONGO and MESA OF LOST WOMEN!,,,