Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A Masterpiece!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

WHITE PONGO is another of those movies with an interesting-sounding premise and a very dull execution. It's a jungle safari film in which a bunch of the dullest characters imaginable head into the jungle in search of a mythical white gorilla. The trouble is, this plotting plays out very slowly indeed, with a maximum of padding that makes it a tough watch. None of the characters stand out and the only people making an effort are the sound effects guys with their constant jungle ambience noises. As for White Pongo himself, he's just the usual guy in a gorilla suit you've seen a million times; he just happens to be a different colour.

Well, let's face it: a movie from the 1940's about a white gorilla (who's actually yellow on the packaging, but let's not obsess over details here) isn't likely to be Oscar material, and the Razzies didn't exist yet so that's out too, but if you're going into this with an open mind and appreciating of suckdom, then you can sure find worse ways to lose 70 minutes of your life.White Pongo is in the jungle, and the hunters all are trying to find him, since he's the missing link between man and ape, or something to that effect. Among the expedition are your obligatory hottie, your obligatory guy with a hidden agenda, and your obligatory hero undercover, who ultimately stops the obligatory guy with a hidden agenda and ends the film liplocked with the obligatory hottie. After you sit through 15-20 minutes of complete filler such as boats going down rivers, stock footage of real Africa (as opposed to "Hollywood Africa" that takes up most of the film) and what is apparently the only jungle noise that the sound technicians could come up with (some sort of monkey chirping that you'll be hearing in your sleep after listening to it for the duration of the film), White Pongo ultimately kills the obligatory guy with a hidden agenda, then saves the obligatory hottie who has been kidnapped by an unnamed evil gorilla by having the worst five minutes of gorilla brawling ever put to cellulite. However, this is made more fun by the audio track on the Alpha Video DVD being at least a full minute behind the video for a good six or seven minutes of the latter part of the film, so at some points it seems like the gorillas are girlie-screaming and running through a pile of crunchy jungle on two feet. Anyway, WP wins the battle, and his reward is being caged up and brought back to America by the obligatory hero undercover. Hey, who said life was always fair, right? To be honest, there actually was at least an attempt at a coherent storyline in this film, so I can appreciate that end of it. Beyond that, though, White Pongo is just another wonderfully awful film for all of us who can enjoy the worst Hollywood could give us in those days gone by.

This is another story of a jungle expedition that runs across a legendary white ape that may or may not be the missing link. There has got to be five or six of these films floating around in the film vaults and everyone of them is a turkey or a close cousin.The problem here, as in almost every jungle movie, is that the gorillas look like what they are, men in suits. Worse if the fact that the suits are absolutely terrible and so unconvincing that anyone watching it is going to laugh rather than scream. This movie isn't too terrible, and is actually okay if you have a love of bad movies, especially ones that you can talk back to and make fun of. As these things go its not a movie that I' search out, but it is one that I'd put on if I was in need of some unintentional laughs.

One of many Poverty Row jungle films, this has to be one of the truly "so bad it's good" films of its era. A Chief Native Bearer named "Mumbo Jumbo" -- addressed by the other actors with a straight face! Pongo is a white gorilla, and one of the natives points to the ground and cries, "B'wana! B'wana! Pongo tracks!" Normal gorillas leave recognizably different tracks? Pressing through the jungle on their trek, they pass the same tree multiple times.I have a copy of the film on videotape. One of my favorite scenes was edited out of the print it was made from. The hero and heroine are drifting down the river on a boat. They're sitting in the moonlight, and Pongo is following the boat in the jungle, making quite a racket as he snaps small trees, hurls aside boulders, and rustles through the underbrush, to keep up with the boat. He's framed by the profiles of the hero and heroine, in the background. The hero looks deeply into the heroine's eyes and says, dreamily, "Quiet out here in the river, isn't it?" I hope the DVD has that one left in.This is not a great film, and all of its humorous scenes are intended to be serious. But because of that, it's a fun film.