Special Event: Film Crew: THE WILD WOMEN OF WONGO

November 16, 2023 4:17 PM

Possibly the most awkward of the four movies Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy riffed as The Film Crew, it's 1959's version of a crazy sex comedy. Mother Nature and Father Time muse on the situation of the island of Wongo, where the menu are ugly and the women are beautiful, and of Goona, where the reverse is true. In the end those of matching levels of comeliness are paired up, and 1959 societal expectations are upheld.
posted by JHarris (7 comments total)

MST Club continues, on Thursday nights, at https://cytu.be/r/metafilter_mst3kclub, with the episode at 9 PM US Eastern time (that's 6 PM Pacific). Please come by if you have the time, energy, interest and desire! We also have shows, of different kinds of things, on Sunday and Tuesday nights!
posted by JHarris at 4:18 PM on November 16, 2023

There is a copy of Youtube here. Editing could be much, much slower back in the 50s. I found it interesting to be waiting for about 10 minutes for a line of dialogue while people walked along a beach or paddled a boat or looked at a crocodile - then the dialogue would come and I would wish they had just stayed quiet. What would be a really interesting challenge to film makers: "OK - you have to make a contemporary re-make of this; how are you going to do it?"
posted by rongorongo at 9:52 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

The IMDB page is worth a visit - firstly because you know when a film is rated under 3 out of 10 it might somehow be worthy of attention, secondly for confirmation what it was indeed made in Florida, thirdly for the bizarre rumor that Tennessee Williams was trying his hand as an unaccredited director and finally for calling out lines such as "Ocko brings you the kill, it is good, his father will buy you tonight."
posted by rongorongo at 3:20 AM on November 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

I say this about a lot of riffed movies, but it's so weird.

There's a running joke at MST Club that every night includes at least one harem dance, defined as scantily-clad women performing objectively ridiculous dance moves to music for the presumed gaze of straight male members of its audience. It's not literally true, but it certainly happens far more often than one might expect, and it's definitely in Wild Women of Wongo.

WWoW is probably the worst of the movies the Film Crew riffed, it's not just the story content but the cinematography is almost Manosian.
posted by JHarris at 6:10 AM on November 17, 2023

Editing could be much, much slower back in the 50s.

Yeah. I've found that a lot of the time, the real thing keeping some ill-conceived tire fire of a movie from being a cult classic is dated editing. I can forgive, even whole-heatedly enjoy, a truly stunning amount of dumb ideas and poor craftsmanship in the spirit of fun, but only as long as they can keep the pace moving. If you're gonna give the audience downtime to think about what they're watching, you'll really need to have something of value there for them to think about or the whole bubble kinda bursts.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 12:29 PM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

So many of the scenes looked like the idea started with, "You know what would be funny?" and then they just filmed it. It doesn't make sense in the story or setting. It was just funny — or, y'know, horny — and so they filmed it. An argument among a bunch of blue haired old men? Sure. Why not? Action! Wouldn't it be funny if four of the women stuck their heads out from behind a tree? Hell yes. Action! We should have the titular Women of Wongo tie up the Men of Gonzo or whatever the other place was called? That's hot. That's a hot way to live. Action!
posted by ob1quixote at 12:38 PM on November 17, 2023 [1 favorite]

Someone once made the wise decision to gift me The Encyclopaedia of Bad Taste and this film reminded me of several entries: notably Leopard Skin and Weeki Wachi mermaids (some of whom may have been in the cast).
posted by rongorongo at 3:43 AM on November 18, 2023