"I am Mother Nature: designer of all the things you see, and all the things you are. For millions of years, Father Time and I have worked hand-in-hand to make the world a better place to live in; all things considered, we think we've done rather well. We have made our mistakes; there was a time, about ten thousand years ago, when we tried a topsy-turvy experiment with the human race."
The Wild Women of Wongo is a 1958 independent B-Movie, directed by James L. Wolcott and starring... well, no one, really. Oh, okay: Starring Jean Hawkshaw, Johnny Walsh, Mary Ann Webb and Candé Gerrard. It is a bizarre reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, with a quasi-feminist twist.
In the prehistoric village of Wongo, all the women are gorgeous (by modern beauty standards, even) and the men are Hollywood Homely at best but tend to be brutish and possessive. The chief's daughter Omu (Hawkshaw) is set to be married to a prominent Wongo man when arrives a handsome stranger named Engor (Walsh), whose home village Goona (where the men are beautiful but the women are not) wishes to form an alliance to fend off a potential invasion of troglodytes; however, the men of Wongo are totally jealous of this good-looking young man stealing the attentions of their women so they try to murder him, though he manages to escape with help from Omu and her girlfriends.
Because they accidentally desecrate a sacred totem during their rescue attempt, Omu and her friends are exiled from the village into the wilds of the jungle (hence the title). But when the exile ends and the women return home, they find that the troglodytes have indeed invaded just as Engor had warned, and all the men of Wongo are gone. The Wild Women Of Wongo must now figure out how to carry on now that they have no men in their lives. Wait, wasn't there another village not too far to the south, where there was a bevy of attractive men ripe for marriage? There's a Zany Scheme a'scheming...
The Wild Tropes of Trope Co.:
- Aborted Arc: Although the threat of a troglodyte invasion drives the conflict, and that invasion does happen, it occurs entirely offscreen and once the initial attack is over it is completely forgotten about.
- Arranged Marriage: Alko is the closest thing Wongo has to royalty or nobility (apart from the village chief and his immediate family, natch), so of course Omu is to be given to him even though it's a Marriage Before Romance situation, at least from her perspective.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Played straight for most of the film; the Wongo women and the Goona men (beautiful) are shown to be pleasant people, whereas the Wongo men and Goona women (ugly) are depicted as nasty and jealous. Subverted at the end when the two "ugly" groups meet; these find one another genuinely attractive and are more than happy to Pair the Spares, which helps everyone make peace.
- Behind a Stick: They manage to pull off an impressive live-action rendition of this classic cartoon sight gag, with four people peeking out from behind a narrow palm trunk.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- Engor arrives on a diplomatic mission to Wongo on the same day that Omu is to be married off; the news he brings postpones the nuptuals.
- The women of Wongo arrive in the vicinity of Goona seeking men, at just the time when the village's young men are going out into the jungle sans weapons or tools in a coming of age ritual. Cue Zany Scheme.
- There turn out to be exactly enough young men and women in each village to Pair the Spares evenly.
- Disney Death: The young men of Wongo seemingly disappear after the attack on their village; once the women have departed for Goona, the men come out of hiding to an empty home. Afterward they, like the women, decide to go to Goona for protection.
- Eating the Eye Candy: There's plenty enough of this to go around in mostly equal measure, as the whole point of the film is two distinct groups of attractive people having to live with unattractive people (and having never known attractive people of the opposite sex). Even so, since the women of Wongo are the focus of the plot (hence the title), we see a bit more of it from the female side.Woman 1: (of Engor) It's a man! It must be!
Woman 2: Oh no, it's a GOD! I'm sure! - Greek Chorus: There's a parrot which offers occasional commentary on the goings-on. It has no obvious connection with any of the characters and does not interact with them directly, suggesting it was filmed and inserted separately.
- Green-Eyed Monster: The primary conflict is ignited by the Wongo men's flagrant jealousy of Engor's physical attractiveness, and the Wongo women's reaction to him, to the point where they (the men) plot to murder him despite his being both an emissary of peace and prince of his home village.
- Honey Trap: The women of Wongo lure the men of Goona in to be captured using their feminine charms, relying on the convenient fact that the men are without weapons, then march them off to their crocodile temple for a mass Shotgun Wedding.
- Laser-Guided Karma: One Goona man snickers gleefully at seeing his compatriot captured by the Wongo women, watching from the safety of a high branch. But then he finds himself befriended by a big tree snake and jumps to the ground, only to be captured himself.
- The Laws and Customs of War: Apparently exist in prehistoric times.
- The men of Wongo attempt to murder Engor, an envoy of peace (and also son of his village's chief); this comes around to bite them in the arse when, after Wongo is attacked and the women seemingly disappear, the men must travel to Goona with hat in hand to ask for assistance.
- Later on, Omu commits an accidental variation of this same faux pas, when she approaches several Goona women "in peace" but forgets to drop her spear. The women (who are every bit as envious as the Wongo men) presume she's going to attack them and flee in exaggerated terror.
- The Load: One Wongo woman, Ahtee, is argumentative and belligerent, both during the girls' exile and afterward in the abandoned village, consistently refusing to accept Omu's leadership seemingly out of personal spite. She does get better during the third act, though.
- Loophole Abuse:
- The women of Wongo are exiled into the jungle on the proviso that they can return home only after the debt to their god "has been repaid in BLOOD!" In other words, Tonight, Someone Dies. (Despite this proviso, Omu not-so-secretly protects her sisters from deadly wildlife.) After they are attacked by a pair of troglodytes and these are eaten by crocodiles, Omu loopholes that the god had never specified whose blood had to be spilled, so technically their exile is concluded.
- Speaking of defending her sisters from attacks, when called out on this Omu justifies herself by saying that if/when their god decides it's time for a sacrifice to be made, she (Omu) would be unable to fight it off.
- No-Gear Level: Non-Video Game example. As a rite of passage into adulthood, the young men of Goona must survive in the jungle for one month with no weapons or tools of any kind. The Wongo women take advantage of this. What's odd is that this plot point completely ignores the previously established threat of a troglodyte invasion (which, indeed, by this point has already happened).
- Opening Narration: Mother Nature herself sets the scene, telling us of a time "ten thousand years ago", when she and Father Time set up the whole half-beautiful/half-ugly dichotomies seen in the film, apparently just to see how it would play out. Her summation? "It didn't work!"
- Pair the Spares: Not only does the film end with all the pretty Wongo women paired with the attractive Goona men, but also the 'brutish' Wongo men end up paired with the ugly Goona ladies (whom they find actually attractive).
- Pretender Diss: During and after their exile, Omu serves as the women's leader. Ahtee calls her out publicly for this; and, although the motive for said calling-out is pure spite, Omu is forced to agree.Ahtee: Omu is no king!
Omu: I am no king... Ahtee deserves to die but she is right! - Star-Crossed Lovers: As befitting a Romeo and Juliet knockoff, Omu and Engor are set up as this, being the children of their respective villages' leaders in the midst of a violent feud. Although in this case the animosity is entirely one-sided; and it's ultimately subverted, with everyone making peace and getting a happy ending.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Played with. The Wongo women are shown to be more than capable of taking care of themselves, both domestically and in the wild, without the aid of men. However, they feel their lives are incomplete without men. On the other hand, it's also eventually revealed that the Goona women are actually better at the domestic chores than the Wongo girls (although that could just be chalked up to the Goona men's preferences).
- Stop Trick: The crocodile priestess uses this camera trick to transform herself into a lithe dancer so that she can join in the women's dance of atonement (see
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment on the YMMV tab). - Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: One of the eventual pairings between the Wongo and Goona villagers is a very compact Wongo man and an extremely tall Goona girl.
- Zany Scheme: Since they don't know what happened to their men (and presume them dead), the women of Wongo travel to Goona to make friends (and husbands). Admittedly, the actual scheme (see Honey Trap) isn't thought of until after they get there.
