The Wild Women of Wongo with Johnny Walsh and friends: Shades of Jon Hall and the likes of Dorothy Lamour and Peggy Drake in, respectively, The Hurricane and The Tuttles of Tahiti.- The Wild Women of Wongo (movie 1958) review: For you to enjoy this adventure something or other, you must ignore minor details like direction, acting, and screenplay, and focus instead on what matters: Beautiful faces and bodies, in addition to Wongoland’s overall weirdness.
The Wild Women of Wongo (movie 1958) review: Prehistoric swingers are evidence that physical beauty has always been the end-all of everything
At first, the women in The Wild Women of Wongo don’t seem so wild. Sporting perfectly coiffed hair and donning custom-made summer wear, they are compliant and obedient to their Wongo male counterparts. Clearly, tailors and beauticians were plentiful around 1,000 BCE.
Now, when Engor (Johnny Walsh), a handsome male member of the neighboring Goona tribe, washes ashore to negotiate for a Wongo bride, the women are so smitten by him that they rise up against their men to prevent them from killing the Goona guy, even knocking over an image of their Reptilian God in the process.
Thereafter, they are banished from the tribe and must wander in the wilderness – in the land of the Ape Men – until the Reptilian God takes revenge on them. That’s when the Wongo women go wild, wrestling an alligator and slugging it out with each other over various Goona men.
See, the Wongo women are all beautiful. The Goona men are lovely to look at too. (One of them is Ed Fury, who was a successful bodybuilder and all-around beefcake in the 1950s, appearing as a physique model in several American Model Guild movie loops.)
On the other hand, the Wongo men and the Goona women aren’t so comely. So it’s only natural that the good-looking ones change partners.
What about the gay sequel?
Directed by James L. Wolcott, The Wild Women of Wongo contains the dreadful acting and senseless screenplay (credited to Cedric Rutherford) that’s usually found in drive-in fare.
Not helping matters is the filmmakers’ curious sense of humor, which includes a parrot whose irritating commentary is squawked out between scenes.
Also of note, this low-budget slice of cinematic camp shares much of the same music soundtrack as Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, released the previous year. And let’s not forget that someone named Olga Suarez is credited with the movie’s “choreography,” itself consisting of nothing more than bits of thrashing and writhing.
Lastly, if only The Wild Women of Wongo had been followed by “The Gay Guys of Goona.”
The Wild Women of Wongo (movie 1958) cast & crew
Director: James L. Wolcott.
Screenplay: Cedric Rutherford.
Cast: Ed Fury, Jean Hawkshaw, Johnny Walsh, Mary Ann Webb, Adrienne Bourbeau, Candé Gerrard, Zuni Dyer, Roy Murray, Olga Suarez.
Cinematography: Harry Walsh.
Film Editing: David J. Cazalet.
Producer: George R. Black.
Production Companies: Tropical Pictures | Jaywall Productions.
Distributor: Wolcott Productions.
Running Time: 72 min.
Country: United States.
“The Wild Women of Wongo (Movie 1958): Great-Looking Prehistoric Swingers” review text © Danny Fortune; excerpt, image captions, bullet point introduction, and notes © Alt Film Guide.
“The Wild Women of Wongo (Movie 1958): Great-Looking Prehistoric Swingers” notes
The Wild Women of Wongo movie credits via the American Film Institute (AFI) Catalog website.
Johnny Walsh The Wild Women of Wongo movie image: Wolcott Productions | Jaywall Productions.
“The Wild Women of Wongo (Movie 1958): Great-Looking Prehistoric Swingers” last updated in April 2023.