Blonde Savage

Blonde Savage

In a performance consisting mostly of grunts and one word sentences, blonde bombshell Gale Sherwood finds her Jungle hunk when diamond hunter Leif Erickson (no relation to the famous explorer) locates her after his plane crashes in the middle of her kingdom. He learns that his ruthless employer (Douglas Dumbrille) killed her American parents in front of her when she was a child, leaving her in the jungle to be raised by the natives. Erickson fights to have Dumbrille charged for the ancient crime, and gets help from Dumbrille's floozy wife (Veda Ann Borg) who is obviously in lust with Erickson. This leads to the potential of cat-fights between Borg and Sherwood and lots of acting in getting the guilty party the justice he deserves. Silly, melodramatic and cheaply made, this is still an enjoyable campy experience, perfect for 1940's Saturday matinée audiences needing an escape after the end of the war, and today, it is still good for a few laughs. Borg gets the best lines, Dumbrille is as sinister as ever, and Frank Jenks provides some corny comedy.

On a very good St Clair Vision DVD, comes Blonde Savage (1947). in which the most beautiful opera singer in the world, namely Gale Sherwood (who needless to say never had a decent singing part in any of the eight films she made in Hollywood - except maybe her first, way back in 1939), is cast in the title role! The rest of the players, with the exceptions, of course, of villainous Douglass Dumbrille and super siren, Veda Ann Borg, are a write-off, most particularly Frank Jenks as the hero's platitudinous buddy. At least director Steve Sekely manages to keep the movie really moving for its welcome but brief 59 minutes, despite persistent attempts at sabotage from Mr Jenks. William Sickner's unexpectedly glossy photography also rates top marks.

Leif Erickson is a pilot in Africa and Frank Jens is his comic sidekick, unless you actually insist on something funny. They crash-land in the jungle, right by a village of savages, ruled by very blonde. Gale Sherwood. Director Steve Sekely directed this under an assumed name. There are some talented performers, including Veda Ann Borg, Douglas Dumbrille and John Dehner. There is also footage of a water buffalo in life-and-death struggle with a rubber snake. But Bob, you say. You always find some good point about the worst movie, even the dreckiest PRC release. Well, those are the good points.

Low budget jungle adventure. A brief 62 minute escape and quite predictable. Leif Erickson and his transport co-pilot buddy Frank Jenks crash land in the jungle in hopes of surveying a diamond mine. While working for the mine owner Douglass Dumbrille, the two fliers encounter a savage jungle tribe. To their astonishment a blonde white woman (Gale Sherwood)rules as a goddess being raised since infancy by the tribe. It turns out that the "blonde savage" is the daughter of the mine owner's murdered partner. So it is destination stateside to see if justice prevails; or will someone get away with murder. Other players: John Dehner, James Logan, Ernest Whitman and the alluring Veda Ann Borg.

"Blonde Savage" is not a great film. It's cheap, features lots of crappy stock footage and features a silly heroine....but despite all this, it's still pretty watchable. The story begins with Steve (Leif Erickson) talking to a police official--telling him he must kill Mark Harper (Douglass Dumbrille) and why. The story then goes back in time and you see Steve and his friend, Hoppy (Frank Jenks), on a mission flying a plane over the African jungle. They end up crashing and are found by a tribe of nice natives. But, inexplicably among them is a white lady....a lady raised by these people. What makes this MORE amazing is that she has gorgeous permed hair, perfect makeup and no bone through her nose like the rest of them! Soon, Steve and Hoppy make friends with them....and Steve becomes VERY friendly with the shapely 'Blonde Savage'. Then, they realize that the lady was there because their boss is evil and he murdered her parents and stranded her here as a baby. How can they prove this and bring justice to the evil boss? The two dumbest things about the film were the footage (very common at the time, unfortunately) and the stupidly coiffed lady. Apart from that, the story was interesting and Erickson and Jenks were awfully good....and the story, though dumb, is enjoyable in a low-brow sort of way.

(Some Spoilers) Hokey but watchable Trazan-like jungle movie with the very sexy and beautiful Gale Shergood, who was only 18 at the time, playing the blond jungle princess Meelah. Meelah's life was saved while she was just an infant by native chieftain Tonga played by the very talented black actor Ernest Whitman. It's Whitman who shocked audiences, as well as the star of the movie Ray Milland, two years earlier in playing the part of the hopelessly alcoholic black man who talked to himself, in the unforgettable Bellevue Hospital drunk-tank ward scene, in the 1945 Academy Award winning film "The Lost Weekend". The man who murdered Meelah's parents Bob & Mary Comstock, John Dehnen & Cay Forrester, Mark Harper, Douglas Dumbrille, had taken over the diamond mine that he was a partner with the Comstocks. Harper is still worried that if their bodies are ever found with his and his #1 henchman Berger, Matt Willis, .38 slugs in them he'd be arrested and tried for their murders! The problem for Harper is that Tonga and his native warriors buried the Comstock's bodies deep in the African jungle where he'll have a hard, if not impossible, time to find them. This brings the hero of the movie freelance pilot Steve Blake, Leif Ericson, onto the picture together with his wisecracking sidekick Happy Owens, Frank Jenks. The two who were hired by Harper to fly out in the uncharted Kawali Range in deepest and darkest Africa and find, without them really knowing it, the burial place where the Comestocks are. It's then that Harper would have his goons sent there and destroy the evidence, the Comstock's bodies, of him having murdered them. Crash landing in the jungle both Steve & Happy are captured by Tonga's natives who after showing them that he and Happy are really the good guys, not Harper's goons, in the movie end up winning him and his men over. It was Harper who was at war with Tonga for the last twenty years in him trying to find the Comstock's bodies that would in fact prove that he not Tonga's warriors murdered the couple! It's when Steve gets to see Meelah, and she him, sparks starts to fly and it's love at first sight. Not only is Meelah a knockout of a babe but is the only living witness, at age one, to identify Harper and Berger as her parents murderers! It's then that Steve becomes determined to get Meelah, as well as have the exhumed Comstock's bodies, back to civilization and, by Meelah implicating and testifying against him, have Harper brought to Justice! That's if Harper with his life hanging in the balance just sits back and allows Steve to do that! Besides the very sexy teenage Gale Sherwood as Meelah there's also the very voluptuous looking 32 year old Veda Ann Borg in the movie as both Harper's wife and Steve's ex-girlfriend Connie Harper. Connie is bored to tears living in the jungle away from the glitz and party life, in New York Paris and London, that she's been used to and wants Steve to take her with him when he checks out, after taking care of business, of the "Dark Continent". This leads to a conflict between not just Connie and her abusive husband Mark but Meelah as well over Steve's, how lucky can the guy get, affections. ***SPOILERS*** In the end things work out just right, Hollywood style, for everyone involved with the best thing to happen is that Harper ends up getting all that's coming to him not from Steve, who planned to do the job himself, but from the long arm of the law that he was attempting to escape from.

Low budget, formulaic - and lots of fun, especially for the 'camp' fans. Unlike a lot of 'camp' film 'classics,' there's nothing offensive about this one, which may explain its low rating, as camp fans sometimes demand the tasteless and forget what entertainment used to be about. It's not stupid, its just a light working class Tarzan-type pic with humor, '40s style knockabout action, a good guy finding redemption in the arms of a beautiful and innocent young woman, a nasty villain, and babes. The 'natives' are not treated with any racist derision, by the way, which makes the whole outing harmless fun 'for the whole family.' Defintitely the type of film you would like to see on late night TV just before hitting the sack.

Funny opening sequence: Steve Blake (Leif Erickson) enters the office of a lawyer and says: "You may have to defend me in a murder case." - "Have you killed someone?" asks the lawyer. - "Not yet!" replies Blake, and begins to explain what made him consider that final option. "Blonde Savage" is a B movie about yet another girl lost in the wilderness, but in true "Sheena" style became a goddess to the natives. One little difference between other movies and this one is that Blake tells almost the whole story as a flashback, thus providing the opportunity to give ironic comment on everything. Gale Sherwood plays Meelah, the jungle girl Blake refers to as "that blonde package of TNT". Maybe even better is the role of Veda Ann Borg as Connie Harper, the villain's wife who has a difficult decision to make: shall she keep her mouth shut and stick with her husband, or would it be better to leave him and tell the truth? Well, "Blonde Savage" is good old action adventure cinema of the kind they don't make anymore, maybe not very original but definitely enjoyable.