White Pongo (1945)

[lester1/2jr]

this is just to convey my excitment over having put this on my queue.

WHITE PONGO


he's the missing link.  alot of people think the missing link was an ape with more human features, but really it's a white ape,  which has the color of caucasians and is therefore more advanced than other apes





he has MASSIVE online support

[RCMerchant]

WHITE PONGO,eh? 

May Gawd protect you,and have mercy on your soul...

A true classic of BAD film antiquity! If you enjoy(I'm not sure that's the correct term!) you may also enjoy...
.WHITE GORILLA from the same year...
.and BEAST of BORNEO (1934)-another atrocious BAD jungle film classic!

 

[peter johnson]

Is that Beast of Borneo, or East of Borneo?
Either way, that poster art is amazing --
I still like Raymond Burr in "Bride of The Gorilla" --
peter johnson/denny crane

[RCMerchant]

Is that Beast of Borneo, or East of Borneo?
Either way, that poster art is amazing --
I still like Raymond Burr in "Bride of The Gorilla" --
peter johnson/denny crane

OOPS! In getting the image...I got EAST OF BORNEO (1931) instead of BEAST of BORNEO (1934) !

I think my brains are starting to turn into cheese!!!!

[SynapticBoomstick]

*all grins* B-movies and mistakes: perfect together Ape-suit-movies just slay me and I don't know why. I have to see this one.

[lester1/2jr]

the head of the native tribe is named "Mumbo Jumbo".    I'm afraid it might be slightly racist.



also, was it considered any sort of legitmate fear that women would take up with gorillas?  was the depression THAT bad?

[peter johnson]

     I think you have to take off-the-cuff racism as a sort of cultural "given" in all films made during a certain era.  It's one of the things that keeps "A Day At the Races" off the list of great Marx Brothers movies. The film-makers in most cases were not savage or blatant racists, but were cultural products of their time --
     That being said, yes, there was an ongoing cultural paranoia that the Great Apes -- Gorillas in particular -- were going to be raping white women.  It goes back to stories and memoirs of white African explorers from the Victorian period.  Even though gorillas were never observed having sex with human women, native or white, the explorers would repeat breathlessly native legends of women who mate with the Great Apes, not getting that these were either the bush equivalent of "urban legends" or mythical totem stories reflecting tales of tribal origins. 
     Taking that into the '20's and '30's and the beginning of film, yes, you need only gaze on the negroid features of King Kong, for example, to show how these gorilla-rape stories were cousins to the white cultural fear of black people.  Blacks were viewed as closer to "nature red in tooth and claw", and reflective of the inner animal just below the skin.  (See Paul Robeson's portrayal of "The Emperor Jones" from the same period.) Now neither Willis O'Brien or the producers of the film were Klan members, and may have even found it repellent were the cultural racism inherent here be pointed out to them, but there it is nonetheless.
     "White Pongo", which I have yet to see, would seem to be taking this convention to a logical extreme.  "Bride of The Gorilla", on the other hand, makes the Ape-fear into more of a universal/the Id unleashed & fear of loss of control in white people.
     And, yes, there is just something inherently funny about a man in a hairy suit pretending to be a real ape --
peter johnson/denny crane

[lester1/2jr]

peter- i think Victorian people were very gross then.  regardless of on'es views on evolution it is not okay to talk about or insinuate women having relations with animals.  it's very terrible

[peter johnson]

     Yes, there is much that is gross about the Victorian era, but don't forget they also gave us Sherlock Holmes, H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, etc. etc. etc. --
     Every era has reasons to scorn as well as reasons to celebrate --
     Years from now, people will mock US for who we are now -- It was ever so --
peter johnson/denny crane

[lester1/2jr]

I happened upon on copy of this

today for 7.99.


10 ape movies featuring the likes of lugosi, karloff, and of course Pongo. 

Now I know how I'm spending my new years

[JaseSF]

I think of this film as an overstuffed safari film...

Overstuffed with what?

Well footage of people canoeing from here and there and people walking from here to there and unconvincingly inserted stock footage.  Even the regular scenes often feature little going on at times. Yeah this is pretty dull.

The stuff with the gorilla is pretty silly for the most part and yeah this film is racist but I think it's as peter johnson described above, a product of that era...in this case. The gorilla does seem to get enamored with the only female in the main cast but then so is nearly every other important male character in the film....

[lester1/2jr]

"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."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038246/reviews?ref_=tt_urv

[The Burgomaster]

I have this in at least one (and probably several) Mill Creek 50 movie packs.

[JaseSF]

Yeah, that's where I saw it. Pretty sure the scene lester described was there...the print was hardly the greatest though....

[lester1/2jr]

sequel