Director: Sam Newfield
Writer: Fred Myton
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org here
A man searches the jungles of Africa for a crashed plane containing money stolen from a bank.
A man and his daughter crash in Africa. The man kills the pilot when the pilot sees all the jewels and money the man’s carrying. Meanwhile, the daughter has found an injured gorilla.
Cut to many years later (without any indication of it being later) to a small village where several white people are gathering. A stranger has arrived and the other visitors are trying to figure out why he’s there. After he saves local man Tobo, Tobo draws him a map to the “house with wings” and the “white witch.” One of the other visitors finds out the stranger is looking for a crooked banker who went missing in the jungle with stolen goods. The visitor and his partner decide to follow the stranger and Tobo.
The connection between the stranger and the man from the beginning, as he tells Tobo, is that the man had been the stranger’s father’s banking partner. When the man ran off with the bank’s money, the stranger’s dad was blamed for it. The suspicion, guilt, and shame eventually led to the father committing suicide. The stranger wants to get the money back to the people it was stolen from to clear his dad’s name and set things right. Even though it’s gotta be at least a decade later. Plus getting to Africa and embarking on this search can’t have been cheap. I mean, sometimes you gotta take the L.
Anyway, nothing much happens. For a film that’s only a hair over 71 minutes, there’s a lot of padding. Tobo and the stranger go through the jungle, don’t face much peril, and Tobo gets killed by the gorilla the girl befriended years before.
The “white witch,” no surprise, is the girl all grown up. She’s called a “witch” because she can command the jungle creatures. The stranger tells her he wants to take her jewels, she says no, he says she doesn’t know right from wrong. The other visitor and his partner track the stranger down, trap the gorilla, and steal the money. Gorilla escapes, kills the villains, and stranger tells the girl she’ll like it in America. THE END
Quick note: the villain is going to kidnap the girl, take her back to America, and keep the money for himself. The hero, the stranger, also unilaterally decides to take her back to America and take all her money. I’ve seen a lot of movies where the good guys are the good guys because the movie says they’re the good guys, but you wouldn’t know it from their actions, but I’ve rarely seen movies where, in the final moment, the hero announces his plans to do exactly what the villain was going to do, except be handsome while doing it.
I don’t have much commentary to offer because there’s really nothing to the film. Nothing much happens, then they walk through the jungle without too much going on, and then the hero gets beat up and watches the gorilla murder the villain. I’d say it’s Walking: The Motion Picture, but that would imply more action. There’s not even anything to get mad about in this movie. It’s a null property.
However, it is at least in the public domain and you can grab a copy from archive.org here, but that print’s kind of dark (though slightly better than my copy) and it’s just not a visually interesting movie. Sure, it has a guy in a gorilla suit which always lands in the positive collumn of a film, but it’s otherwise flat and listless. There’s not much you can make fun of and I don’t think it’d be useful for editing or recontextualizing projects.
And, no, they never explain why it’s called Nabonga. I guess, from the title, it means gorilla? Maybe? But it’s never said in the movie. So, yeah. Skip it.
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