MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological* There can be little doubt that I've wasted considerable time researching the genesis of this "girl and gorilla" potboiler, but once I learned that there had been two "white gorilla" movies that came out in 1945, I felt compelled to look into their possible relationships. Here's what I posted on Classic Horror Film Board after getting input from the scholarly folks thereabouts. "So in August 1944 Sig Neufeld announces that because PRC's NABONGA is a success he's going to do a movie called "White Gorilla," directed like NABONGA by Sig's brother Sam. But apparently before PONGO gets made, Louis Weiss and Harry Fraser dust off some of the footage of 1927's silent PERILS OF THE JUNGLE (which Fraser wrote, and which appears to have had no white gorillas) and combine it with new footage, with Ray Corrigan of NABONGA playing both a hunter and a white ape, all of which I think hit theaters before Neufeld's WHITE PONGO. Contrary to my early impression, a squib on Wiki says that WHITE GORILLA did make money, Then PONGO comes out in October 1945, according to the Wiki writeup, with Corrigan playing Pongo (whose name almost rhymes with "Nabonga"). One online reviewer says that the same white gorilla suit was worn by Corrigan in both movies, though I don't know you'd prove that, and that it later showed up in Jerry Warren's MAN BEAST." After sorting all that out, though, what do we have in producer Neufeld's follow up to NABONGA, which I found moderately engaging even though it too was a potboiler? Well, PONGO's not even a "trash classic," though it does have its share of oddball details.
The main deficit of PONGO is that even for a jungle-bungle flick, it's saddled with a thoroughly boring set of stock characters, with only the sole billed actress Maris Wrixton managing to put across a little strong emotion. Here's the setup, which I will relate chronologically instead of the piecemeal way director Sam Newfield tells it. At some point prior to the action of the film, an anthropologist named Dierdorf sets up a station in the Belgian Congo, hoping to capture the fabled albino gorilla White Pongo, which Dierdorf thinks is the missing link between man and ape. Dierdorf captures Pongo but the ape breaks free and kills him, though Dierdorf's assistant Gerig escapes, only to be caught by a local tribe. (Weirdly, they're called "Negritos," which is a term that is probably verboten today but was formerly applied to tribes from Southeast Asia.) Gerig, whom the tribesmen don't seem in a hurry to execute, tells part of his story to a younger explorer, Gunderson, whom the natives do earmark for sacrifice. Gerig helps Gunderson escape with a diary containing Dierdorf's research. On his way out, Gunderson witnesses the Pongo himself as the gorilla assaults a Black couple who have a chimp on a leash. The Africans flee and we see Pongo take the leashed chimp away. One assumes the object of Pongo's intervention was anthropoid liberation, though since we never see the chimp again, he might have given up captivity to become a tasty morsel for a cannibal ape.
Providentially, Gunderson makes it to a settlement but dies of fever, serving only to place the diary in the hands of a group of European explorers. An upper-crust Brit anthropologist, Sir Harry, decides to take his merry band and seek out Dierdorf's enclave in the hope of capturing the missing link-- though until the movie's end, no one in the film ever offers a reason as to why they believe an albino gorilla would be such a link. So, even though the expedition didn't necessarily come to Africa to hunt gorillas, off they go loaded for ape-- Sir Harry, his daughter Pam (Wrixton), his snooty secretary Clive, a German jungle-guide, a comedy relief, another convenient anthropologist, and a hired gun named Bishop (Richard Fraser), who would've been the male lead if the film wasn't primarily about Pongo. That said, Pam provides the only thing like dramatic tension as the group tediously treks toward its destination. Though she has apparently at least dated Clive somewhat, she becomes very smitten by Bishop, though he pretends not to reciprocate. Sir Harry makes clear that he doesn't approve of his daughter making up to a man of the lower class. Eventually the party crosses path with the same "Negritos" who are still holding Gerig prisoner, and Gerig tells them everything that he didn't already tell Gunderson.
Once the expedition reaches the deserted Dierdorf compound, they set a trap for Pongo. In one of the script's few good details, they're assured that Pongo will show up, because the late scientist planted some sort of rare gorilla-goody vegetation in the area. Pongo does show up and pokes around the compound while everyone's asleep, though he wakes Pam, who sees him and screams. Despite the fact that everyone there is counting on Pongo to show up, for some reason they all think she just imagined the critter. Slightly later, Pam makes an all-out play for Bishop, to which he finally surrenders, moments before Clive walks in and the two men fight, very briefly. However, a new threat manifests as the German guide, with Clive as his ally, takes everyone prisoner and ties them up, for he only went along with the expedition to make his way to a cache of jungle-gold. Clive and the guide take Pam as a hostage, but once they're gone Bishop gets free and reveals that he's a Rhodesian agent who's been trying to find the party guilty of some earlier murders. But Bishop doesn't get to square off with the two rotters. That's left up to Pongo, who kills the bad guys and makes off with Pam. She's spared from the fate worse than death by yet a regular-hued gorilla who apparently also wants some human nookie. The fight between the two apes-- the only fairly lively part of the movie-- ends with Pongo's victory, but he's apparently weakened enough by the fight that the explorers manage to overcome him with nothing more than a gunshot to the shoulder. Pongo is taken prisoner and presumably gets shipped back to Europe for study in the thoroughly anti-climactic ending. And then, in the final ten minutes of the film, someone advances that they've tested Pongo's intelligence (how?) and determined that he's smarter than your average ape, so that proves that he is the missing link to man. Or at least maybe a recapitulation of whatever freak of nature led to such an evolutionary leap in antiquity? Who knows? No one ever states that the gorilla is smarter because he has white hair, but it's impossible not to imagine some sort of rough correlation on the part of the writer. The trope of the dueling beasts, who loosely mirror the conflict of the contentious human males for the sole female, is a little more rewarding, but only a little. For what it's worth THE WHITE GORILLA, cut-and-paste job though it was, captured a little more pulp-poetry at its conclusion.
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