The wild women in THE WILD WOMEN OF WONGO (1958)
A colourful yet corny movie of island tribes living on some fictitious island named Wongo. It's just an elaborate excuse to show cheesecake and beefcake, in equal amounts even though the men bare almost all while the women are covered in one piece swimsuit-like clothes.
It's badly acted and totally unconvincing but, being just an excuse to show some cheesecake and beefcake, it's entertaining in its simple 1950s Pathécolor naiveté: it's the story of a tribe where the women are beautiful but the men are ugly (bearded). They meet another tribe were the women are ugly and the men are handsome (sans beard), with one of these men being Ed Fury. It ends with the beautiful women ditching their ugly mates for the handsome men.
Hard to believe but movies like this from that period were considered 'risqué'. The cast is mostly made up of unknowns but one fellow did stand out from the pack, Ed Fury. Fury played bit parts in many major Hollywood movies of the 1950s such as ATHENA (1954), FEMALE ON THE BEACH (1955) or SOUTH PACIFIC (1958). His role is slightly bigger in this but it wasn't very challenging by any means.
Fury (above an below) would travel to Italy and appear in much bigger productions such as the URSUS movies and THE SEVEN REVENGES (1961). After a couple of years there, he eventually returned to the US, unable to retain his leading star
The 'sets' in this production are Coral Castle located in Florida, which still exists today.
Will this movie even get the proper HD treatment? Does the original negatives still exist? One can see that the Pathécolor would look great with a proper transfer but alas only poor copies exist.
The movie is in the public domain but when uploaded to Youtube the soundtrack is claimed by multiple copyright claimants which prevents me from uploading it to my channels. It's stupid.
As a movie, it rates a 4 out of ten. But as an inoffensive time capsule of a good looking cast frolicking around some tropical setting, it rates a 6.
2 comments:
Pathecolor is simply a rebranding of Kodak's Eastmancolor single strip negative color film that largely replaced the more expensive Technicolor process by the mid-1950s.
Unfortunately films made with Eastmancolor fade badly and lack the rich saturation of Technicolor.
Pathecolor is not to be confused with a color tinting process using hand cut stencils (one for each color up to six) that was developed by Pathe in the very early 20th century.
The last film to use this very labor intensive process was made around 1930.
Pathecolor is simply a rebranding of Kodak's Eastman Color single strip negative color film. It largely replaced the more expensive Technicolor process in the mid-1950s.
Unfortunately Eastman Color films tend to fade badly and lack the rich saturation of Technicolor.
Pathecolor is not to be confused with the color tinting process involving hand cut stencils (one for each color up to six) that Pathe invented in the very early 1900s and was last used around 1930.
Post a Comment