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At-A-Glance Film Reviews

Nabonga Gorilla (1944)

(aka: The Jungle Woman)

Rating

[1.0]

Reviews and Comments

"He's dead. Perhaps it's better this way. We couldn't have taken him with us."

How can you go wrong with a title like Nabonga Gorilla? Well, if you are looking for a movie that would have a title like Nabonga Gorilla, you can't. This movie recycles every jungle cliche in the book, performing then so laughably bad that it's hilarious. I particularly liked how a villain, creeping about in the night, gets caught by a goodguy, and the two fight in the dark. The badguy gets away, of course, and when people respond to the sounds of commotion, the goodguy explains the ransacked room and his disheveled appearance by saying he had a nightmare. And they buy it!

Of course there are fights between cheesy gorillas (who inexplicably snort like pigs) and profusive cornball dialogue ("Oh wait! I'm afraid of that gorilla!"), but my favorite moment was unintentionally self-referential: "I hear you were quite interested in some fantastic story about a white witch. Witches are a dime a dozen. The jungles are full of them." In movies like these, truer words were never spoken.

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